Chapter One: WE WANT TO BELIEVE: The Church of False GodsAt sometime in the past, scientists discovered that time flows more slowly the farther from the center of the earth. The effect is minuscule, but it can be measured with extremely sensitive instruments. Once the phenomenon was known, a few people, anxious to stay young, moved to the mountains.
Now all houses are built on Dom, the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, and other high ground. It is impossible to sell living quarters elsewhere...To get the maximum effect, they have constructed their houses on stilts...People eager to live the longest have built their houses on the highest stilts...They celebrate their youth and walk around naked on their balconies...
In time, people have forgotten the reason that higher is better. Nonetheless, they continue to teach their children to shun other children from lower elevations. They have even convinced themselves that the thin air is good for their bodies, and following that logic, have gone on sparse diets, refusing all but the most gossamer food. At length, the populace have become thin like air, bony and old before their time. -Alan Lightman,
Einstein's Dreams
In Woody Allen's classic film Sleeper, Miles Monroe, health-food-store owner and clarinetist, checks into Saint Vincent's Hospital in 1977 for a routine procedure. He has a peptic ulcer. When he awakens two hundred years later, he discovers he's died, and a caring aunt has placed him in cryogenic suspension.
The plot thickens when two renegade scientists illegally defrost him to take advantage of the fact that he is a numerical nonentity and, as such, can help them overthrow the fascist regime controlling America in 2173. We eavesdrop as they discuss his progress:
"Has he asked for anything special?"
"For breakfast, he requested something called wheat germ, organic honey, and tiger's milk."
"Ahh, yes, yes, back then people thought of such things as charmed substances that contained life-preserving properties."
"You mean there was no deep fat, no steak, or hot fudge?"
"Oh, no, those were thought to be unhealthy, precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true."
"Incredible!"
What's most unnerving about this snippet of filmdom? That social security numbers classify every citizen in a Big Brother-like computer bank, that a fascist regime is controlling America, or that The New England Journal of Medicine released a study in 1998 concluding that fat may actually protect you from heart disease? Could the 1970's nutritional wisdom we've been relying on for decades be completely bogus?
What's next? Sleep more or you'll get cancer?
Consider the last statement prophetic.
Later, Miles/Woody watches Diane Keaton's character light up a cigarette for medicinal purposes and moans:
"How could we have been so wrong? Everybody knew fat and caffeine were toxic substances!"
"Miles, everybody knows that the only things that have kept mankind alive are coffee, cigarettes, and red meat!"
Somehow that's not as funny, now that it might be true.
Coffee and cigarettes certainly seem to keep the French alive. They even look better than we do. In this same tragicomic scenario, the wheat grass and tiger's milk are thinly veiled doppelgangers for our salads and Balance bars. In the 1970s, salads and Balance bars definitely would have been classified as "health food" for "health nuts." Everyone was very comfortable with the fact that there were "health nuts" and there were the rest of us. Today, if you're not into your health, you're considered nuts.
Today, everything is labeled "low-fat," "fat-free," "99% fat free," or "30% lower in fat," in an attempt to qualify as "health" food. Even fruit juice and dried pasta are sold as "fat-free," because we're all nuts. Your doctor and the media docs on TV all say, even after Dr. Atkins, Protein Power, and Enter the Zone have proven otherwise, that you can't get enough high-quality carbohydrates to lose weight unless you consume
- 5 to 7 servings of fruits and vegetables a day on top of the
- recommended 5 to 7 servings of grains and breads on top of
- pasta and wine.
They never even figure in the Pepsi, Coke, Snapple, honey in your tea, and the high-fructose corn syrup that shows up as a preservative in almost all processed food. Now, let's imagine all of the food they've recommended piled up on the table (because it would never fit on your plate). Doesn't that seem like a lot?
What if all those low-fat promises of a long, cancer-free, diabetes-free lift in a beautiful, thin body, run by a strong, clear, non-hypertensive heart, were bogus from the start? What if carbohydrates, not fat, were the cause of obesity, diabetes, and cancer?
THE GOD MODULE
We think it's the exercise that's the key to why you feel so good while you're dying. It's also the reason why some people are able to stay on a low-fat regimen long enough to kill themselves. What could make a person do this?
The desire to be thin and well? No way.
Michael Persinger, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and psychology at Laurentian University in Canada, has isolated an area of neurons in the brain's temporal lobes that repeatedly fire bursts of electrical activity when one thinks about God or has any feelings of spirituality. We scientists know this from CAT scanning praying monks, nuns, and schizophrenics as they "talk to God." Near the front of these temporal lobes is the amygdala, an almond-shaped organ that imbues events with intense emotion and a sense of meaningfulness.
Because of the way the temporal lobes are structured and hardwired to the amygdala, they are the most electrically sensitive regions in the brain. Dr. Persinger has personal knowledge of this because he created a helmet with coils of wire set just above the ears (picture Woody in Sleeper). By passing a carefully controlled electrical current through these coils, the doctor creates a pulsating magnetic field that mimics the firing patterns of the neurons in the temporal lobes. This creates a mystical spiritual experience, complete with a healthy dose of peace. Dr. Persinger's subjects report an "opiatelike effect with a substantial decrease in anxiety, a heightened sense of well-being, similar to reports of enlightenment."
While Dr. Persinger was doing his best mad-scientist impression, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Ph.D., director of the Brain and Perception Laboratory at the University of California at San Diego, was channeling heaven. Dr. Ramachandran announced in 1998 that he had discovered the "God module." This "module" is located in the brain in an area within the temporal lobes that becomes electrically active when a person thinks about God or spirituality or recalls a "mystical" experience. Wow, that sounds familiar.
We also know that stress, grief, and mostly a lack of oxygen also trigger heavy electrical firing in the same neighborhood as the God module. Since lack of oxygen brings on such neural bursts, some scientists believe this mechanism may account for many near-death experiences of euphoria and tranquillity. Also, sleep apnea in people with twitchy temporal lobes may mean that they hear someone calling their name as they fall asleep, or that they have an "out of body experience," such as flying, in their dreams. We're also going to tell you that the hyperventilation resulting from the exercise that goes along with urban yuppie low-fat living kicks the God module into play. That's why a runner's high is such a religious experience.
Your brain thinks you're dying. But you're just out of breath.
We're worried that you might be out of time, too.
The truth is, all of that exercise is doing more than making you high. It's exacerbating the burnout of your cortisol receptors. Running is a fear response. In the real world, it means something is after you; at least that's what your body and brain think. If you run long enough, all your systems believe you're not going to outrun that predator. The brain chemistry that follows extended running has evolved to make your exit from this world more pleasant. This means that oxygen depletion alone will kick in the part of the brain that takes you to heaven or, in this world, gives you a reason to keep running. The mechanism of brain chemistry that causes you to see God as you run out of oxygen evolved from programmed responsesresponses to environmental cues that no longer exist, responses that once upon a time might have kept you alive or made dying okay.
Now, they're killing you.
HEALTHY LIVING?
What other modern environmental cues are triggering ancient survival switches? The answer to that question is a chilling scenario worthy of a science fiction novel. Or a book like ours.
Working late in bright lights after dark, or watching David Letterman, or checking late-night Email, for even just half an hour, all register as the long days of summer to your inner environmental controls. This means that your brain will force you to seek energy for storage by eating sugar. Sugar (carbohydrates) is the only path to insulin release; insulin's job is to store excess carbohydrates as fat and cholesterol so you have something to live on when summer's over.
The abdominal fat pad common in insulin-resistant, high-cholesterol heart patients and Type II diabetics would, in another time and place, have served to keep internal organs warm and would have been utilized as energy during normal famine (winter). Increased intake of carbohydrates (sugar) is always dumped into increased cholesterol production, too, because the carbs lower the freezing temperature of the cell membrane. in the real world, you'd never have access to that much sugar unless it was summer before winter. You don't live in the real world.
The next time your doctor says your cholesterol is too high and you should cut back on the fat and exercise more, tell him he's mistaken. Tell him you're not sick, you're ...
