“Go Wild: Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization” John J. Ratey，Richard Manning Notes by Phil Huang of Beijing and Shenzhen
黄皓思的“Go Wild"英文书抄
“And his prescription is a lot simpler than you might think,boiling down to two crucial points. We cite them here because we agree. One is obvious,though it is not at all trivial: low carbs. The second is less talked about,but in Armelagos’s thinking and ours,the second is even more important: variety. But understand first that these problems did not end with the demise of the people at the Dickson Mounds.”
“But here is the dark little secret in all of this,and it sounds very odd to say it: glucose is toxic. It is poison,and the body regards it just that way. We have spent generations now in a search for toxins that sponsor the diseases that ail us,the industrial chemicals,pesticides,and pollutants that may kill us,and yes,these may be killing us. But the supreme irony in all of this is that the obvious toxin hides in plain sight.”
“That all-organic,all-natural fizzy fruit drink from the health-food store(no high-fructose corn syrup,only natural cane sugar)is every bit as damaging as a Coke,at least with respect to glucose. If you come away from this book with one rule and one rule only,it is this: don’t drink sugar water. In any form. Not a Big Gulp Coke. Not a Knudsen’s 100 percent natural and organic fruit juice.”
“And further still,there is plenty of evidence that says heart disease is better predicted by triglyceride levels,and this number ramps up according to how much sugar you eat,not fat.”
“Omega-3s are fats—fats that are in critically short supply in our diets. This shortage may well be a factor in widespread depression but also in high cholesterol,heart disease,inflammation,and compromised brain development.”
“The conclusion:“Supplementing infants with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids[specifically omega-3s],enrolling children in early educational interventions,reading to children in an interactive manner,and sending children to preschool all raise the intelligence of young children.”
“And it is a problem that can be easily solved by eating grass-finished beef,now widely available thanks to increased awareness and demand,but also wild-caught fish,free-range eggs,and even walnuts.”
“Remember that insulin immediately shuts off the body’s use of fat;it sends signals to keep it in storage and at the same time signals muscles to cease burning fat and start burning glucose. This alone goes a long way toward explaining why fatty acids jam up in our bloodstream,especially as triglycerides. It’s not because we are eating fats;people always have. It is because excessive carbohydrates,especially sugar,are preventing us from burning them. Cut out the carbs,and the fat problem takes care of itself,as long as you eat the right kinds of fats.”
“Don’t eat sugar,not in any form. Not sucrose,not pure cane sugar,not high-fructose corn syrup,not honey,not in all those other polysyllabic chemical names that reveal industrial processes rooted in corn: maltodextrin,dextrose,sorbitol,mannitol. Not apple juice.”
“Don’t eat dense packages of carbohydrates,particularly refined flour. No bread,no pasta,no bagels,certainly no cookies. No grain,period,not even whole grain. Don’t eat trans fats. Period. And you may have figured out the derivative rule by now. Trans fats and sugars are the foundation of processed food. Do not eat processed food.”
“Don’t eat dense packages of carbohydrates,particularly refined flour. No bread,no pasta,no bagels,certainly no cookies. No grain,period,not even whole grain. Don’t eat trans fats. Period. And you may have figured out the derivative rule by now. Trans fats and sugars are the foundation of processed food. Do not eat processed food.”
“All children make the enzyme lactase(the gene product that digests lactose)for the obvious reason that baby mammals have to digest milk to survive. But in deep evolutionary time,all adults lost that ability as we matured,which was not a problem in our ancestral homeland in Africa,near the equator,with ample sunlight. But as humans migrated north,winters brought shorter days,less sun,and a vitamin D deficiency,which was a serious problem.(And as we shall see,it still is a serious problem.)We get vitamin D from the sun,but also from milk.”
“Not only did evolution equip us so we can eat a wide variety of foods,but it made variety a necessary condition of our well-being. We not only can but must have variety to be healthy. Remember,this was George Armelagos’s second and more important rule,a fact so often missed in books that attempt to adapt evolutionary understanding to prescriptions.”
“This means that an important characteristic of omnivores is bred to the bone in humans: we are neophiliacs. We have to be. We have an innate love of novelty,of variety,a need to sample new things. And at the same time,some of those bright and shiny new things,some of those foods on offer in the wild,are poisonous—a lot more than you might think. Not acutely so,like sugar,but lethal poisons that drop you dead on the spot. Thus,it is equally in our interests to be neophobes,to fear new things,thereby causing a conflict at the center of the human condition.”
“Tyler Graham and Drew Ramsey are not evolutionary biologists but a science writer and a medical doctor,respectively,and their argument,summarized in their book The Happiness Diet,does not derive from !Kung practices but from modern humans. They argue as we do that our happiness and mental well-being are rooted in what we eat,and this is more than a matter of depression. For instance,trace brain-derived neurotrophic factor,or BDNF. In Spark,John called this chemical“Miracle-Gro for the brain.”It is the important link that explains why simple exercise can have such a profound effect on cognition and well-being,and we’ll have more to say about it in the next chapter,when we address movement. But nutrition affects BDNF,too. Eating a diet high in sugar decreases BDNF. Eating foods with folate,vitamin B12,and omega-3 fats increases BDNF in the brain,just as exercise does.”
“The body’s ability to absorb those nutrients is greatly influenced by the presence or absence of other nutrients. For instance,eating spinach with lemon helps the body absorb much more of the iron in the spinach. Eating eggs and cheese together delivers a better uptake of vitamin D and calcium.”
“We are not urging a diet or even calorie restriction;we are outlining a sustainable way of life,and it rests on variety: the profusion and explosion of flavors,colors,and textures that evolution tuned our senses to pursue. Nuts,root vegetables,leafy greens,fruits,fish,wild game,clean,cool water. Range far and wide. Eat well.”
“But this is completely wrong,”he says.“We have a brain for one reason only: to produce adaptable and complex movements. There is no other plausible explanation.”He is saying that our brains are literally built on and inextricably tied to movement of our bodies. Movement builds our brain because movement requires a brain.”
“This line of inquiry greatly illuminated what evolutionary biologists had already realized: that big brains and intricate physical movement went together,that evolution had in fact used some of the same principles to signal brain growth that it had used to signal muscle growth. Through time,evolution used biochemistry to enhance muscles,movement,and brains.”
“So far in our story,we have relied often on the concept of homeostasis,which is an array of signaling mechanisms within the body that responds to shocks or changes in the environment to return systems to a normal operating state.”
“Chemically,there is more to this story—lots more. For instance,exercise also triggers responses in the important neurotransmitters long studied in connection with issues like addiction and depression,chemicals like serotonin,dopamine,and norepinephrine. These are parallel processes. It all hangs together. But in the end,cells are cells. The brain is an energy-burning network of specially adapted cells like any other organ and is wrapped up in the health of the rest of the system. This ought to follow logically from the connection between the brain and movement: if the body needs stronger or more refined movement to meet a given challenge,it will need more brain circuitry to guide that movement. It would make no sense adaptively to build one without the other,so we need the biochemical provisions to do both.”
“Sedentary lifestyle is associated with lower cognitive skills.”
“Cognitive impairment is not so much a consequence of aging as it is a consequence of our sedentary lives.”
“All of this traces to a thread of this idea that John has been following since the 1970s,when he first noticed that marathon runners suffered depression when they quit running. Stopping running was like stopping effective medication. This phenomenon goes beyond cognition to tie in the element of mental health.”
“We hope to entice you out of the gym and,toward that end,invite you on a run with us,a late spring day of the sort that pulls you outdoors,the first day this year without gloves and a jacket,cold at first,but sun and a few hundred yards of warm-up make light dress just right. We’re in the Rocky Mountains. The path winds out from the trailhead through a short stretch of flat ground,a gentle warm-up,and then the climb begins,a short uphill that catches you pushing a bit too hard and then your clean,aerobic heart rate spikes past the red line. You hold your pace for as long as you can,pitting will against slope,and then you’re light-headed and winded and the quadriceps signal fatigue. Too soon for this. You’re busted,and you walk. Heart rate recovers as you climb,head clears in a few hundred yards,and then you notice the hill has flattened at ridgetop to deliver a sweeping vantage of the valley below. You take it in,recover,and now trot. You measure your pace,tune it to the incline,and then again you are[…]”
“The point is where O’Toole and Reebok went. He joined CrossFit,a worldwide formalized form of exercise that stresses a variety of movements: weight training,jumping,running,throwing,push-ups,pull-ups—all designed to involve the entire body,recruit all muscles,just as it recruits heart,lungs,and mind. Further,it is done in groups of people and is competitive,but not in the sense of team against team. Rather,there is a group ethic. You compete against yourself first and the group cheers you along,marks progress,forms a sort of community. We’ll have lots more to say about the element of community in a later chapter,but for the moment,let’s be reductionist and stick with the physical.”
“Robert Stickgold,one of the world’s leading researchers on sleep,who works out of a lab based at Beth Israel.”
“The people who slept alone had the emotional problems.”
“All of this helps explain what Worthman characterizes as an almost universal perplexed response among most other cultures upon hearing of the Western practice of making babies sleep alone.
“They think of this as child abuse. They literally do,”she says.”
“Indeed,it is wrong to characterize it as inactive or in retreat. Rather,it is a dynamic state important to brain function and some of our most important work.”
“More to the point,sleep is when we do some of our most important work,both in processing information and,as the cultural studies show,in engaging others and building social bonds of trust.”
“And because it is so important,it is adaptable and fluid. That is,our bodies are hardwired with a series of circuits to allow sleep to flow with the needs and demands of our day,what Worthman means when she calls it“fluid.”And as with most other cases of our adaptability,we need to practice adapting to strengthen that skill,to modulate,to read the signals and cues that attach us to our physical and social environment,flexing the adaptive tools like muscles.”
“Beyond this,evolution provides some hints about the proper context of sleep: Irregularity is okay. So are naps. A sense of safety is critical. If you can,sleep around others,and this may include traditional sentry animals like dogs. Some people have even found that the relaxed sounds of conversation typical of all-night radio do the trick. Avoid alarming sounds like sirens. Look for safe sounds like the lapping of gentle waves(a signal of safe weather,no storms)or a settling wood fire. Try recordings if you can’t be near the real thing.”
“Interestingly enough,some experiments in removing subjects from the influences of all artificial light have been done,just to see what would happen. In a matter of days,a pattern emerged in many subjects. They could sleep when they wished,and many adopted a habit of going to sleep early,say at eight o’clock,then would awake around midnight or so for a few hours,and then would go back to sleep—a bifurcated pattern of sleep. But what was intriguing about this was a parallel pattern that appears in writings from preindustrial Europe,a pattern of this“second sleep.”Historically,people would use that interim period as quiet,thoughtful time,or for having sex,or even for going to visit neighbors. It was social time and it appeared naturally on body clocks set by the absence of artificial light. Researchers have also found similar patterns in various cultures.”
“Generally,this mindful state is regarded as an ephemeral phenomenon that will not yield to hard-science,data-based analysis. Yet we think that mindfulness plays a large role in forming this common and wistful assessment by field researchers who have spent time among wild people: there is an otherworldliness and peacefulness to their lives we can but begin to imagine.
Through time,we have come to think there is a rough draft parallel to the hunter-gatherer mind-set that can be found in a modern-day practice—a practice that is in fact readily available to us and has been studied in detail,especially in recent years with the emerging tools of neuroscience. We are going to have a look at the formal practice of meditation as it emerged from Buddhist tradition. The thing is,the Koyukon hunters in our anecdote were not practicing meditators,as far as we know,and in this chapter,we are far more interested in the Koyukon state of mind than in meditation. We are,however,going to talk some here about formal meditation and the research behind it because we believe it illuminates the more general mind-set of hunter-gatherers[…]”
“Davidson wrote in his book The Emotional Life of Your Brain.“The attitude was basically one of haughty disdain that this riffraff occupied the same brain that gave rise to cognition.”
“In Davidson’s experiments,meditators performed better,with less attentional blink,showing that this is not a matter of bliss or relaxation but of awareness and competence.
The improved perception is a benchmark of meditation;the benchmark is known from some of the earliest experiments,and the results are robust enough to become recognized as a neurological signature of meditation.”
“There was a remarkable gathering of minds in 2005,an interdisciplinary conference,and the conversation was recorded in a book edited by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Davidson called The Mind’s Own Physician: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the Healing Power of Meditation.”
“The fact is,a complete absence of stress in your life is not an ideal state.
“For a short time,one or two hours,stress does wonderful things for the brain,”Sapolsky told the conference.“More oxygen and glucose are delivered to the brain. The hippocampus,which is involved in memory,works better when you are stressed for a little while. Your brain releases more dopamine,which plays a role in the experience of pleasure,early on during stress;it feels wonderful,and your brain works better.”
“Sapolsky:“I said that lack of control is very stressful. Here a lack of control feels wonderful and your dopamine goes way up. What’s the difference? As I mentioned earlier,the research shows that if your lack of control occurs in a setting that you perceive as malevolent and threatening,lack of control is a terrible stressor. If the lack of control occurs in a setting perceived as benign and safe,lack of control feels wonderful.”
“All of this is to say that our pleasure circuits are attuned to awareness and unexpected rewards,and stress is in this mix—not chronic unremitting stress that characterizes day-to-day life for many of us,but the ups and downs that flow from normal life. The pleasurable life is not stress-free,and Sapolsky argues that this realization provides a precise analogue for meditation:
People think that you secrete stress hormones when there is stress,and when there is no stress,you don’t secrete them or secrete just a little bit. You are at baseline. It was a long-standing tradition in the field to consider the baseline to be extremely boring. What’s now clear instead is that the baseline is a very active,focused,metaphorically muscular process of preparation for stress. The jargon used in the field is that it has permissible effect,allowing the stress response to be as optimal as possible. That’s a wonderful endocrine analogue to the notion of meditation. A state of peace is not the absence of challenge. It is not the absence of alertness and energetic expenditure. If anything,it is a focusing of alertness in preparation. It absolutely matches[…]”
“Cortisol can track this matter with stress,but there is a more interesting way that’s emerging to gauge our undoing,our literal unraveling. Remember that confounding the issue of diseases of civilization was the unavoidable fact of nature that we all must die of something. Obviously,though,most of us would rather there be nothing more precise than“old age”written on the certificate under“cause of death.”The process we’d all like to see in play(given the alternatives)is senescence,the unwinding of the biological clock spring.
The study of our DNA,though,has turned up an interesting measure of this process,structures called telomeres that serve as protective caps on the ends of strands of DNA. Telomeres seem to have some clear role in preserving the integrity of DNA through the countless divisions and recombinations that occur with cellular growth and reconstruction. They keep the code intact—but as we age,they seem to wear out,which is part of the reason the process of cellular growth becomes less reliable. And then we sag,sink,and wrinkle. Senescence.
Yet the decay of telomeres is not simply a chronological process,a measure of time,of old age[…]”
“In light of this,it seems somewhat odd that what we have reported does occur,that memory or performance or cognition or even physical health get better as a direct result of training the mind to do nothing. A demonstrated improvement in immune response from simply quieting the mind? Yes indeed. Or,more profound still,recent results from one research project show a link between meditation and increased brain mass,including increased gray matter in regions of the brain associated with learning,memory,and emotional regulation—the last linked to specific physical changes in the hippocampus and posterior cingulate regions of the brain.
What this is saying is that the brain responds to meditation as a muscle does to exercise,and of course it does. That was the implication from neuroscience’s realization about neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Yet it is wrong to say that meditation alone accomplishes a reshaping of the brain. The fact is,everything effects a reshaping of the brain,especially our relationships with one another. The tangible,weighable,measurable,energy-sucking organ is being built from the ground up,beginning even before we are born,and the whole stream of information we call life is doing the[…]”
“This last experiment steers us toward Langer’s definition of mindfulness,and it is every bit as simple as“awareness.”She doesn’t teach subjects in her experiments how to meditate,but she does teach them how to“notice new things.”That’s all: notice new things. This is the same instruction that evolution issued to hunter-gatherers to ensure their survival.”
“Imagine for a moment how simple attentiveness to one’s surroundings becomes when amplified with a bit of obsessiveness,of fascination,of real attachment—not merely observing but reveling in the conditions of nature. People with this trait would be more likely to survive.”
“This simple idea can translate into hard dollars and cents. Rooms with a view or houses fronted by a lake or stream replicate conditions important to us throughout evolution. Anthropologists who have studied bushmen invariably note that the nomadic wanderings of hunting and gathering are governed by daily cycles that place people in safe camps at night,always with access to water and with an unobstructed view of the surroundings. There is no reason for that preference to hold up millennia later other than a genetic memory—but an apartment with a commanding view of Central Park or waterfront property costs more. This is a measure of biophilia,the price tag on our genetically programmed preference for certain places.”
“The research was the work of the Canadian psychologists Elizabeth K. Nisbet and John M. Zelenski,who wrote:“Modern lifestyles disconnect people from nature,and this may have adverse consequences for the well-being of both humans and the environment.”
“When we deny these preferences,these innate attachments to nature,we suffer,and this is a big part of what ails us in a high-tech world of artifice that’s increasingly disconnected from nature. The author Richard Louv has argued that this is a key affliction of civilization,even going so far as to give it a name: nature deficit disorder. Louv built his case on ten years’worth of interviews with parents in the United States and concluded that the glitzy attractions of the virtual world,coupled with what he cites as oversensationalized media coverage about the dangers of the outdoors,have created an epidemic of detachment from nature among modern children and,by extension,adults.
This is troubling enough,even on the obvious level that nature contains all of biological life,and children ought to gain the knowledge and appreciation on offer in the wild. But Louv and others point out that there are more subtle issues,and those parallel some we have already talked about in detailing the afflictions of civilization. To cite a few,play in nature exposes kids(and everyone else)to a full range of microbes to support their internal microbiomes and challenge[…]”
“Korean researchers took this a step further and found that urban settings activated a brain area associated with anger and depression,but that natural scenes produced a pronounced effect in the anterior cingulate and insula. This is an important center for empathy,and the effect was confirmed through psychological tests in which people are asked to give away money to other people,exactly as was the case with the meditation studies we cited. And just as with meditation,there was no goal or described pathway for becoming a more empathetic person. Just as the simple act of calming one’s brain made one more empathetic,so did a simple walk in the woods.”
“For instance,a number of studies have shown that people in hospitals get better measurably faster if they are in a room with a window or have a bit of green as simple as a potted plant. Placing potted plants in view of workers at one factory reduced time lost to sick leave by 40 percent.”
“Taken together,these findings begin to offer some advice for public policy and design. That is,greenways,open space,landscaping,and even potted plants ought to be integrated into any efficient design of urban space as a simple,cost-effective investment in public health and tranquility. Research in both schools and workplaces has demonstrated clearly that performance of students and workers increases as a result of these simple,low-cost,and uncontroversial measures.”
“As we progress in our story,the lever effect is going to come increasingly into play. Remember the lever? Beverly Tatum gave it that name when she talked about sleep,that the simple act of getting more sleep made her attentive to other matters,like nutrition and exercise. One thing led to another. In the authors’lives,this matter of contact with nature is also a lever,and one with a profound effect. A lot of this comes together at Rancho La Puerta. That’s where we met Tatum,but also the remarkable Deborah Szekely,now in her nineties,who cofounded the ranch in the 1940s. She also founded and is pressing forth with her project Wellness Warrior,to do the sort of grassroots change necessary to fundamentally rework society. The message is fitness and nutrition,but the lever that works these is contact with nature,a conscious goal of re-wilding the people,sometimes rich and famous,who are the ranch’s clients. Szekely says everything begins with the mountain at Rancho La Puerta,which is another way of saying everything begins with nature. Szekely and the ranch loom large in John Ratey’s own story,and we will get to[…]”
“You might be thinking that nature can be capricious and cruel,and that maybe it’s better to stick to the gym. But we think this capriciousness is a part of the real benefit of living as much of your life as you can in wild settings.”
“Our need for experiencing both the rawest nature and the most instantaneous social technologies may seem contradictory but the root cause of these peculiar rituals stems from a deep and basic desire. We want to be connected,to be a part of something bigger than our individual selves.
In The Art of Loving,Erich Fromm writes,“The human race in its infancy still feels one with nature. The soil,the animals,the plants are still man’s world. He identifies himself with animals.… But the more the human race emerges from these primary bonds,the more it separates itself from the natural world,the more intense becomes the need to find new ways of escaping separateness.”
Fromm further believed that this devastating departure from nature is the root cause of all human suffering:“The experience of separation arouses anxiety. It is indeed the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off,without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence,to be separate means to be helpless,unable to grasp the world,things and people actively. It means that the world can invade me without my ability to react.”
“This in turn is rooted in the idea of what is famously labeled the“selfish gene,”meaning that evolution selects for genes that perpetuate themselves and so selects for individuals that ensure perpetuation of their own genes over those of others.”
“As a practical matter,this has made the experiment with human subjects easier and a lot less invasive,ramping up this line of inquiry. Notably,experiments using standard tests for altruism,exactly like those we saw with meditation and exposure to nature,have delivered clear demonstrations that oxytocin enhances empathy and altruism. Oxytocin made subjects more likely to part with their money to offset what they saw as unfairness to another person. Oxytocin also enhances what psychologists call social cognition—that is,social skills. For instance,we can easily see how—and research has demonstrated this—our social bonds are dependent on our brain’s ability to recognize faces,and oxytocin enhances that ability. It also enhances the ability to identify emotional states as they are displayed on faces,meaning the ability to read emotions in others. A whole series of experiments has shown the molecule’s ability to enhance trust in others,and this idea expands how we might think about the importance of social relationships.
Research has also shown that oxytocin plays a key role in business transactions,especially in establishing trust. This is not as squishy as it might sound. Economists will tell you that the workings of[…]”
“There are a couple of interesting asides in this same line of research. People engaged in business transactions produce a spurt of oxytocin. If one person gives another person ten dollars,the recipient’s oxytocin levels spike a bit. But here’s the kicker: if a computer gives that same person ten dollars,his levels of oxytocin do not increase. And there’s a bit of intraspecific research that is our personal favorite: if you engage your dog,your oxytocin level increases,as you might expect—but your dog’s oxytocin level increases even more.”
“xytocin that’s gushing with promise and titled The Moral Molecule.”
“Vasopressin is what gave us the ability to practice the form of persistence hunting that David Carrier(the mountain runner–researcher at the University of Utah)talked about and what helped him begin to understand why humans were born to run.”
“The South African researcher Tim Noakes has done an extensive study of this matter and has shown pretty clearly that the more excessive modern advice on runners and water is,in fact,just that: excessive. The data show that the advice to drink lots of water(actually to“hydrate,”and that’s part of the problem—that we no longer drink water;we“hydrate”)is simply wrong. Noakes’s analysis showed that runners who were the most dehydrated after marathon-length races actually tended to win. More to the point,no one suffered medical problems from dehydration,while those who drank the recommended amount of water or sports drinks often suffered severe consequences from too much water. Some even died.
”
“But back to the social side of this chemistry. Many of the effects that produce monogamy in voles are triggered not just by oxytocin but by the right balance of oxytocin and vasopressin. In all of this,there is not a straightforward,dose-dependent response to oxytocin,no rule that says more oxytocin yields more warm and fuzzy behavior. Rather,these adaptive social traits emerge from a complex dance between the two neuropeptides—at least these two—and then play into a cascade of hormones. And all is gender-dependent.”
“Carter told us she thinks those early doses of oxytocin are,in effect,“downregulating”—that is,desensitizing—the normal receptors of those young voles. As they age,then,the receptors are less able to read normal levels of oxytocin.”
“Compared with men who got a saline spray,those who sniffed oxytocin behaved more altruistically to members of their own team—but at the same time,they were more likely to preemptively punish com”
“And you need not think long to answer in the negative. That distrust of outsiders often leads to violence against those same people,and in evolutionary terms,violence is not necessarily a problem. Violence is useful and therefore adaptive;we need it to survive and always have. Even today,in situations where violence seems to be counteradaptive,it persists because in so many other situations it was critical to survival.”
“At the same time,our closest living relatives—even the comparably peaceful bonobo,but especially chimpanzees—show plenty of ability when it comes to violence,even warfare,and so this,too,is part of the state of nature. Further,we have seen it emerge in the inquiries of people like Carrier,who began by looking at our body’s adaptation for running but wound up concluding that we are equally adapted for and well suited to punching and throwing spears. Truly,violence is in our bones and muscle. This conclusion will not go away,evident also in the headlines of the day,the confirmation of hatred and carnage in our times and in all times. Indeed,the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker has argued that we in fact live in relatively peaceful times,and that the record shows the past has been characterized by stunning degrees of aggression toward one another far worse than today. He argues that a decline in violence is a benefit of civilization and that slowly humanity is learning to put this aside. We can only hope. Yet there are some lessons from evolution that may help us think about this most vexing of human dilemmas.”
“She is saying our cooperation and ability to bond to one another is primal,foundational,the bedrock. In her book Mothers and Others,she hits on the essence of this idea:“Brains require care more than caring requires brains.”
“evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson:“The human condition is an endemic turmoil rooted in the evolution processes that created us. The worst in our nature coexists with the best,and so it will ever be. To scrub it out,if such were possible,would make us less than human.”
“Remember that when we considered the sweep of evolution and its intention for our well-being,it brought us ultimately to social bonding;the whole business—the brain,exercise,eating,minding,and sleeping—traced in the end to our need to deal with one another,to empathy and altruism.”
“Richard Manning has had a direct and similar personal experience with a grizzly bear in the wild and observed exactly the same protocol,accepted by bear biologists as the way to deal with these big predators. The protocol is ancient and endures and has much to say about meeting not just predators but the challenges of modern life. Porges thinks he can trace the development of that protocol in the body’s most ancient and tortuous nerve,the vagus nerve—it gets its very name from the same word as“vagabond,”a wanderer,a traveler,a time traveler.
”
“A curiosity about the physical manifestations of a psychological state is what brought Porges to the vagus nerve in the first place. What kept him there was the realization that the vagus nerve runs both ways. It is mostly a control nerve,signaling organs to relax,but it also sends information back up to the brain on the state of the organs.”
“(Likewise,science has begun talking about a“second brain”in your body: the enteric nervous system. We have long known that the digestive system has a robust set of nerves of its own,but research is finding out that this system does far more than regulate digestion. It is a full complement of neurotransmitters and,in fact,seems to play a key role in regulating your sense of well-being,both physical and mental. It plays a role in your decision process,hence“second brain.”Now metaphors like“gut instinct”get some real-world traction.)”
“But people studying depression figured out long ago that if you force yourself to smile,the specific spots in the brain that register depression suddenly say your depression is better. Nothing else changed in your life,so why should this be? Through the years,neuroscience has produced a refinement of this intriguing little bit of information. It turns out that a halfway,forced smile won’t do the trick because it won’t light up the neurons of increased happiness in your brain. But if that forced smile goes so far as to engage the little muscles in the corners of your eyes—that is,if you do what socially adept people understand instinctively—these neurons do indeed light up. And the muscles at the corners of your eyes are within the reach of the vagus nerve.
Yet where this idea really hits home is with the breath,the one response over which we have control and which,in turn,exerts control through the alarm system that is the autonomic nervous system. Porges says he realized a long time ago—because he is a musician,specifically a horn player—that the act of controlling the breath to control the rhythm of[…]”
“The psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist argues that music predated language in human development,simply because it was more important,more necessary,and already developed by evolution in other animals like birds and whales. Language merely allowed communication. Music and components of music like lilt and prosody facilitated engagement,even with other animals,even with predators. It engaged the breath in its making.”
“The vagus linkage suggests that these sorts of activities might well extend beyond emotional well-being simply because so many of the physical maladies of modern times play out in the territory of the vagus nerve and the enteric nervous system. Your yoga practice or your choral group may well have some leverage on your irritable bowel syndrome or the persistent pain in your neck for no apparent reason,because both of these are wired to the signal path of breath.”
“The alternative,though,is group activity,group play and exercise,the very sort of activity that humans seem to have preferred through the ages. Done right,this does indeed involve the arousal of the flee response,but also the social engagement of teammates and competitors and the rich sensory messages from nature and the outdoors. Now both arousal and engagement are activated,meaning your heart,body,and mind are fully involved in the most elaborate of social exercises.”
“Trauma is about immobilization,”he says.“What works is people moving together in time,rhythmically.”Through the decades of his dealing with this problem,he’s gotten results by making people move.”
“Immobilization without fear,which is really what society is all about,as opposed to immobilization with fear,which is what trauma is about,”was the way Porges expressed this to us.
This is where van der Kolk slides from the biological evolution that has dominated our discussion so far to the idea of cultural evolution. His reasoning is this: Humans have dealt with terror and psychic injury for as long as there have been humans,and certainly as long as there have been lions,and more certainly as long as there have been wars. So we have developed time-tested—no,deep-time-tested—methods of coping. Van der Kolk looks for these methods,and he finds them in places you might expect,all in line with his foundation tenets of moving rhythmically together,controlling breath,and feeling the vibrations of voice. He practices yoga himself and prescribes it for others. He likes the ancient Chinese practice of qigong,a form of ritualized movement. Meditation,certainly. Many forms of dance,and chanting. He pays particular attention to theater,citing examples such as successful projects in troubled high schools,where students—many of them the victims of violence—write,rehearse[…]”
“Besides,he says,“people cannot rhythmically move together without beginning to giggle.”Laughter trumps trauma.”
“This brings us back to a central point in this book: variety. Remember,we argued from the beginning that the hallmark of the human condition is our ability to tolerate and thrive and in a wide variety of conditions—the Swiss Army knife model. So if our tolerance for variety is so great,how can we argue that modern life,with all its apparent variety—wheat,sugar,agriculture,iPads,noise,and the rest—is killing us? Much of that answer lies in deciding who each of us is.”
“Yet McEwen and Getz argue that this ignores epigenetics and life history and that those influences are if anything more important. Specifically,they argue that there is such a thing as“orchid”children and“dandelion”children,individuals sorted by their specific tolerance for variability and challenge as shaped by the events in their lives. Dandelion children thrive anywhere;orchids are hothouse flowers. How far one goes in the direction of novel challenge and how attentive one needs to be to a safe,familiar base is a matter of where one falls on the orchid-dandelion continuum,and this is true for adults as well as children. But over time,with effort,one can move toward the dandelion end of the scale. This is growth. This is building resilience by inoculation against stress. This is re-wilding.”
“Food. Eat no refined sugar in any form. Fructose contained in fresh fruit is okay if not excessive. But no fruit juices. And pay special attention to avoiding sugar dissolved in water: soft drinks but also energy drinks and juices that contain sugar in any form. Don’t eat grain. Don’t eat anything made from grain. Get your calories from fat,but avoid manufactured fats,otherwise called trans fats. Don’t eat processed food. Don’t eat fast food. Look for foods high in omega-3 fats,like eggs,grass-finished beef,cold-water fish like salmon,and nuts. Go for simple fresh fruits and vegetables. Go for variety. Eat as much as you like. Enjoy what you eat.
Movement. Look for a form of exercise you like. That comes first. Something you can do easily and as part of your daily routine. Look for forms that involve a variety of movements,full body,with lots of variability,as in both trail running and CrossFit workouts. The gym is okay in a pinch,but look for ways to get outside. Exercise in nature is exercise squared. Feel the sun but also the wind and the rain in your face. Slog through the[…]”
“This whole business becomes not an assignment or duty—rather,an exploration,a process of discovery. It’s guided by rewards. So you’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks. Do you feel better? Want to feel better still? What else is out there? Does the lever lead to better sleep? Awareness? Better engagement with your tribe? Better brain? It should. In time,and not much time,it should.
There is a frustrating irony buried in this whole topic: The more you understand about what needs to be done,the less you are inclined to write about it. Someone once said(the real source is a matter of some debate)that writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture. The Zen Buddhists have another way of saying pretty much the same thing: meditation is not something you think about;meditation is something you do. Same with well-being. No matter what ails you,you are not going to think your way out of it or read your way out of it. Living well is something you do.”
