Every year you can expect a slew of new “guaranteed diet” books for weight loss, brain health, aging, spiritual well-being, and general lifestyle. There’s the vegan one, the raw meat one, the low-fat one, the high-fat one, the juice-from-fruits-picked-during-a-full-moon one, the blood type one, and the one based on your latest tarot card reading. It becomes quite confusing. Authors confuse a little information with knowledge, then try to translate that into sales.
There are too many factors to factor in to a proper diet. Serious nutritionists recognize that good health requires a nuanced understanding of individual genetics, environment, and gut microbiome. Then there’s the speed you consume your food, the types of sugar you eat—in juice or whole fruit, in which the fiber plays a critical role—then the types of fat you digest, and stress levels.
Let’s pause on that last one for a moment, as stress is rampant. An overtaxed body is an inflamed body. A recent study investigating the role of inflammation in regards to brain health and dementia is worth considering. It’s not the only factor in a good diet, but it is a crucial one.
A team at Columbia University Medical Center, led by neuropsychologist and epidemiologist Yian Gu, studied the cognitive performance of 330 elderly adults to see if the Mediterranean diet—one of the longer-lasting and most-studied diets in the world—could lower their risk of diseases of dementia, including Alzheimer’s. All adults involved did not suffer from dementia during the course of the study.
Gu points out numerous studies have shown that this diet, which is fish- and poultry-heavy with an emphasis on whole grains, fruits, olive oil, vegetables, and moderate alcohol intake, offers protection against the development of Alzheimer’s. Gu wanted to know if this is due to a decrease in inflammatory biomarkers in the subject’s brain.
The result was yes, decreased inflammatory markers were prevalent in those who ate this diet. They also had better visuospatial cognition, thanks to nutrients such as vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, D, and E, as well as higher intake of omega 3-fatty acids, calcium, and folate. Gu notes:
This study suggests that certain nutrients may contribute to the previously observed health benefits of some foods, and anti-inflammation might be one of the mechanisms. We hope to confirm these results in larger studies and with a wider range of inflammatory markers.
To understand why lower inflammation helps overall health and aging I emailed Drew Ramsey, also at Columbia University. The psychiatrist, Big Think expert, and author of numerous books, including Eat Complete, told me:
Inflammation is how our body deals with stress and injury. Today, most people eat a diet and have a lifestyle that promotes incredible stress via excess sugars, eating the wrong fats, and losing the sense of joy that food should give us. Currently, inflammation is considered a major factor in the development of depression, dementia, and other brain disorders. People should worry about inflammation because it is contributing to the degradation of their health.
This is especially important as we age. As Gu and team write in the study, Alzheimer’s is the leading cause of dementia worldwide, and is the most common neurodegenerative disorder. While medical interventions help us live longer that does not always translate to healthier. We can overcome cancer and heart surgery and survive longer with AIDS and type 2 diabetes, but quality of life is greatly compromised when suffering from dementia. The strain on family and friends can be overwhelming.
Which is why it’s important to start interventions earlier in life. Most of what is sold in packages is not food, but a combination of food-like substances preserved by unpronounceable chemistry. Sugars and unhealthy fats hide, disguised by numerous names, slowing transforming our microbiome in ways that degrade health. And it’s not only visceral fat, body mass index, and heart disease we need to worry about. Without healthy cognition the very concept of “I” disintegrates. The so-called golden years are effectively meaningless if you can’t remember them.
While studies like Gu’s remind us of the bigger picture, Ramsey suggests taking it meal by meal. When I ask him how people can implement changes in their diets now, he expresses skepticism about considering the long game. Change starts at the dinner table tonight, he says.
People don't get motivated by “long term benefits” or “risk reduction.” We have the most success in our clinic when we encourage patients to make better food choices at their next meal. We find that there are very rapid effects when people switch from modern Western food to nutrient dense whole foods (which are also brain food). Sure, eating more avocados can decrease dementia risk, but encouraging patients to eat more avocado toast and guacamole is more compelling when it comes to behavioral change.
Gu knows that one study does not change a discourse. But the combination of better understanding the microbiome and the effects of decreasing inflammation is too prevalent to deny. The Mediterranean diet offers a simple lesson applicable globally, to eat seasonal fresh foods and enjoy moderate amounts of alcohol. Such an approach worked for our species for millions of years until the advent of refrigeration and industrial processing. And we know it works now. We just have to implement it, be it through the recognition of cognitively strong aging or, as Ramsey suggests, hitting the produce aisle for dinner tonight.
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Derek is the author of Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health. Based in Los Angeles he is working on a new book about spiritual consumerism. Stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter.
Ash deposits of some of North America's largest volcanic eruptions.
The end of the world as we know it
Panoramic view of Yellowstone National Park
Image: Heinrich Berann for the National Park Service – public domain
Of the many freak ways to shuffle off this mortal coil – lightning strikes, shark bites, falling pianos – here's one you can safely scratch off your worry list: an outbreak of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
As the map below shows, previous eruptions at Yellowstone were so massive that the ash fall covered most of what is now the western United States. A similar event today would not only claim countless lives directly, but also create enough subsidiary disruption to kill off global civilisation as we know it. A relatively recent eruption of the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia may have come close to killing off the human species (see further below).
However, just because a scenario is grim does not mean that it is likely (insert topical political joke here). In this case, the doom mongers claiming an eruption is 'overdue' are wrong. Yellowstone is not a library book or an oil change. Just because the previous mega-eruption happened long ago doesn't mean the next one is imminent.
Ash beds of North America
Ash beds deposited by major volcanic eruptions in North America.
Image: USGS – public domain
This map shows the location of the Yellowstone plateau and the ash beds deposited by its three most recent major outbreaks, plus two other eruptions – one similarly massive, the other the most recent one in North America.
Huckleberry Ridge
The Huckleberry Ridge eruption occurred 2.1 million years ago. It ejected 2,450 km3 (588 cubic miles) of material, making it the largest known eruption in Yellowstone's history and in fact the largest eruption in North America in the past few million years.
This is the oldest of the three most recent caldera-forming eruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot. It created the Island Park Caldera, which lies partially in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming and westward into Idaho. Ash from this eruption covered an area from southern California to North Dakota, and southern Idaho to northern Texas.
Mesa Falls
About 1.3 million years ago, the Mesa Falls eruption ejected 280 km3 (67 cubic miles) of material and created the Henry's Fork Caldera, located in Idaho, west of Yellowstone.
It was the smallest of the three major Yellowstone eruptions, both in terms of material ejected and area covered: 'only' most of present-day Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, and about half of South Dakota.
Lava Creek
The Lava Creek eruption was the most recent major eruption of Yellowstone: about 640,000 years ago. It was the second-largest eruption in North America in the past few million years, creating the Yellowstone Caldera.
It ejected only about 1,000 km3 (240 cubic miles) of material, i.e. less than half of the Huckleberry Ridge eruption. However, its debris is spread out over a significantly wider area: basically, Huckleberry Ridge plus larger slices of both Canada and Mexico, plus most of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Long Valley
This eruption occurred about 760,000 years ago. It was centered on southern California, where it created the Long Valley Caldera, and spewed out 580 km3 (139 cubic miles) of material. This makes it North America's third-largest eruption of the past few million years.
The material ejected by this eruption is known as the Bishop ash bed, and covers the central and western parts of the Lava Creek ash bed.
Mount St Helens
The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history: it created a mile-wide crater, killed 57 people and created economic damage in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
Yet by Yellowstone standards, it was tiny: Mount St Helens only ejected 0.25 km3 (0.06 cubic miles) of material, most of the ash settling in a relatively narrow band across Washington State and Idaho. By comparison, the Lava Creek eruption left a large swathe of North America in up to two metres of debris.
The difference between quakes and faults
The volume of dense rock equivalent (DRE) ejected by the Huckleberry Ridge event dwarfs all other North American eruptions. It is itself overshadowed by the DRE ejected at the most recent eruption at Toba (present-day Indonesia). This was one of the largest known eruptions ever and a relatively recent one: only 75,000 years ago. It is thought to have caused a global volcanic winter which lasted up to a decade and may be responsible for the bottleneck in human evolution: around that time, the total human population suddenly and drastically plummeted to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs.
Image: USGS – public domain
So, what are the chances of something that massive happening anytime soon? The aforementioned mongers of doom often claim that major eruptions occur at intervals of 600,000 years and point out that the last one was 640,000 years ago. Except that (a) the first interval was about 200,000 years longer, (b) two intervals is not a lot to base a prediction on, and (c) those intervals don't really mean anything anyway. Not in the case of volcanic eruptions, at least.
Earthquakes can be 'overdue' because the stress on fault lines is built up consistently over long periods, which means quakes can be predicted with a relative degree of accuracy. But this is not how volcanoes behave. They do not accumulate magma at constant rates. And the subterranean pressure that causes the magma to erupt does not follow a schedule.
What's more, previous super-eruptions do not necessarily imply future ones. Scientists are not convinced that there ever will be another big eruption at Yellowstone. Smaller eruptions, however, are much likelier. Since the Lava Creek eruption, there have been about 30 smaller outbreaks at Yellowstone, the last lava flow being about 70,000 years ago.
As for the immediate future (give or take a century): the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone is only 5 percent to 15 percent molten. Most scientists agree that is as un-alarming as it sounds. And that its statistically more relevant to worry about death by lightning, shark, or piano.
Strange Maps #1041
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
Stoicism can help overcome anxiety
Are you a worrier? Do you imagine nightmare scenarios and then get worked up and anxious about them? Does your mind get caught in a horrible spiral of catastrophizing over even the smallest of things? Worrying, particularly imagining the worst case scenario, seems to be a natural part of being human and comes easily to a lot of us. It's awful, perhaps even dangerous, when we do it.
But, there might just be an ancient wisdom that can help. It involves reframing this attitude for the better, and it comes from Stoicism. It's called "premeditation," and it could be the most useful trick we can learn.
Practical Stoicism
Broadly speaking, Stoicism is the philosophy of choosing your judgments. Stoics believe that there is nothing about the universe that can be called good or bad, valuable or valueless, in itself. It's we who add these values to things. As Shakespeare's Hamlet says, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Our minds color the things we encounter as being "good" or "bad," and given that we control our minds, we therefore have control over all of our negative feelings.
Put another way, Stoicism maintains that there's a gap between our experience of an event and our judgment of it. For instance, if someone calls you a smelly goat, you have an opportunity, however small and hard it might be, to pause and ask yourself, "How will I judge this?" What's more, you can even ask, "How will I respond?" We have power over which thoughts we entertain and the final say on our actions. Today, Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
One of the principal fathers of ancient Stoicism was the Roman statesmen, Seneca, who argued that the unexpected and unforeseen blows of life are the hardest to take control over. The shock of a misfortune can strip away the power we have to choose our reaction. For instance, being burglarized feels so horrible because we had felt so safe at home. A stomach ache, out of the blue, is harder than a stitch thirty minutes into a run. A sudden bang makes us jump, but a firework makes us smile. Fell swoops hurt more than known hardships.
What could possibly go wrong?
So, how can we resolve this? Seneca suggests a Stoic technique called "premeditatio malorum" or "premeditation." At the start of every day, we ought to take time to indulge our anxious and catastrophizing mind. We should "rehearse in the mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck." We should meditate on the worst things that could happen: your partner will leave you, your boss will fire you, your house will burn down. Maybe, even, you'll die.
This might sound depressing, but the important thing is that we do not stop there.
Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
The Stoic also rehearses how they will react to these things as they come up. For instance, another Stoic (and Roman Emperor) Marcus Aurelius asks us to imagine all the mean, rude, selfish, and boorish people we'll come across today. Then, in our heads, we script how we'll respond when we meet them. We can shrug off their meanness, smile at their rudeness, and refuse to be "implicated in what is degrading." Thus prepared, we take control again of our reactions and behavior.
The Stoics cast themselves into the darkest and most desperate of conditions but then realize that they can and will endure. With premeditation, the Stoic is prepared and has the mental vigor necessary to take the blow on the chin and say, "Yep, l can deal with this."
Catastrophizing as a method of mental inoculation
Seneca wrote: "In times of peace, the soldier carries out maneuvers." This is also true of premeditation, which acts as the war room or training ground. The agonizing cut of the unexpected is blunted by preparedness. We can prepare the mind for whatever trials may come, in just the same way we can prepare the body for some endurance activity. The world can throw nothing as bad as that which our minds have already imagined.
Stoicism teaches us to embrace our worrying mind but to embrace it as a kind of inoculation. With a frown over breakfast, try to spend five minutes of your day deliberately catastrophizing. Get your anti-anxiety battle plan ready and then face the world.
Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.
