In February 2020, MindHealth360 hosted a live event featuring a presentation by paediatric neuroendocrinologist and best-selling author Professor Robert Lustig: The Secret to Wellness is Identifying the Illness.
In this presentation, he discusses why ‘deaths of despair’— suicide, substance abuse and Type 2 diabetes—are to blame for the decline of life expectancy in the UK and US. He considers the combination of technology addiction, drug abuse, depression and suicidal ideation to be a mental health pandemic (and this was before Covid-19 hit and further exacerbated the mental health crisis) and, drawing concrete links between poor metabolic health and poor mental health, suggests simple ways to achieve optimum wellness in the modern world.
In this talk learn about:
- Why life expectancy continues to decline in the UK and US, why modern life’s ‘deaths of despair’ (suicide, substance abuse, diabetes and liver diseases) are to blame, and the research data that proves it
- The 2 more surprising forms of addiction that are cheap and accessible (sugar and technology), and how they are undermining our mental and metabolic health
- Why we should be seeking happiness rather than pleasure: the central role of dopamine in metabolic syndromes, depression and addiction, and its inverse correlation to serotonin
- Why rising rates of depression and our increasing use of tech are integrally related
- Ways pleasure pathways have been hijacked for profit by social media and other industries, and why this is damaging our mental health
- 4 simple ways to achieve wellness: reduce dopamine, reduce cortisol and increase serotonin by connecting, contributing, coping and cooking
Professor Lustig’s most recent book Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine elaborates further on these important themes, focusing especially on the lies around processed foods that the food industry doesn’t want you to know.