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This is an adapted summary of a talk I gave at the Foundry Treatment Center in Steamboat Springs, CO, on 5/11/18. This essay is intended to summarize some of biological processes that were discussed in an attempt to give a general idea of how our lifestyle affects our mental health.
If you’re like the average American, you spend most of your day inside, hunched over, surrounded by people you’d rather avoid; eating the standard American diet: a diet that is high in calories, low in fermentable fiber, and exceeds the recommended sugar and grain intakes [1]. After work or school, you mindlessly commute home to finally enjoy the day; to then spend it glued to your handheld looking glass later than you should; to only wake up dreading having to repeat the cycle, like you’re Sisyphus reincarnated [2].
The current narrative on mental health leads us to believe that we are physiologically broken, and we need the help of a professional to properly function as a human again. We are told to blame genetics like it’s the new God of the gaps cursing us with a neurotransmitter imbalance for bad karma in a past life — probably because blaming ourselves make us feel even worse [3–6]. Perhaps it’s not genetics. Maybe it’s our lifestyle that we should blame first and start to rebuttal.
