12. Is melancholy yummy?

Hi friends,

Welcome to the twelfth dispatch of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter on how humans thrive.

This is our last week reading “The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health” by Dr. Emeran Mayer, Director of UCLA’s Center for Neurobiology of Stress. 

What an exciting month it’s been delving into this book! If you remember, last week we learned about intergenerational transmission… a form of epigenetic inheritance that causes stressed and neglected mothers to raise stressed and neglected daughters who in turn become stressed and neglectful mothers. 

When I first read this in Dr. Mayer's work, I immediately thought of this heart-breaking line from award-winning poet Warsan Shire, “Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women; kitchen of lust, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy… The bigger my body is, the more locked rooms there are.”

To me, this is how the gut communicates with us, as a tableau of emotional glimmers. We feel a fleeting sense of fear here, a pang of skepticism there. The gut speaks the language of our emotions, though culturally we’re not taught to be particularly attuned to what it has to say. 

Dr. Mayer writes, “Gut feelings and moral intuitions have an interesting origin, related to, of all things, food. Hunger is an early emotion related to survival. And it is foundational to all the gut feelings you experience later in life, including your sense of right and wrong. 

…Gut feelings related to hunger comprise your earliest signals about what is good and bad in the world, and they begin at birth…The satiated feeling that follows the consumption of breastmilk– which is full of prebiotics and probiotics– is likely the earliest experience of feeling good. Other positive gut feelings include gentle touch with mom, as well as warmth and comforting sound…

When your stomach was empty, it released a hormone, gherlin, that led to an urgent feeling of hunger. This sensation, coupled with a strong motivational drive, would be the basis of other bad gut feelings… 

The cycling experience in infancy of feeling full or hungry–good or bad–may lay the foundation for… how your gut registered how well your needs were met or not met in infancy. A hungry baby left in its crib to cry for an hour perceives the world very differently from the baby who is quickly picked up, cradled, and fed. Thus your earliest gut feelings serve as a model for what the world is like and what I must do to survive in it.”  (Mayer, pg. 174-176 - Kindle)

Here is a profound question for all of us: If our relationship to survival begins with sustenance, what does healthy survival look like? Better yet, what does it taste like?

Dr. Mayer shares, “Only a small percentage of people in the United States live in a state of optimal health, a condition that has been defined as complete physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being, with peak vitality, optimal personal performance, and high productivity. In other words, it’s a person who not only has no bothersome physical symptoms,  but is also happy, optimistic, has lots of friends, and enjoys his or her work…It has been estimated that these people make up less than 5 percent of the North American population.”

Most Americans, “live in a state of suboptimal health you could call a ‘predisease’ state. These people have received no official medical diagnosis. Their blood tests have turned up no biochemical evidence suggesting early disease. But they are likely to feel chronically stressed and worried, and it takes them longer to return to a relaxed state after a stressful experience. They are also more likely to be overweight or obese, have borderline elevated blood pressure, experience low-grade chronic digestive discomfort (ranging from heartburn to bloating and irregular bowel habits), and have limited time and energy for a fulfilling social life. They often experience poor sleep, loss of energy, symptoms of fatigue, and recurrent aches and pains in their bodies, in particular low back pain and headaches. They may also consider these symptoms as the price they have to pay for making a living for their family, or for a career in the fast lane.” (Mayer, pg. 260-263 - Kindle)

I don’t think any of us are unaware that the food we eat, especially in the United States, is largely correlated to this prediseased state. But, why? Why do we salivate over a slice of carrot cake instead of slices of carrots? And why two or three slices of cake instead of one?

Dr. Mayer writes, “We know now from animal experiments that a regular high-fat diet can numb the satiety response both at the gut and the brain level, reducing your ability to tell when you’ve eaten enough. There is solid evidence that it does this in both locations by causing low-grade inflammation. In the gut, that inflammation reduces sensitivity to satiety signals by sensors on the vagus nerve, which normally tell your hypothalamus that you’re full. In your hypothalamus, it reduces sensitivity to satiety signals arriving from the gut…” 

Moreso, “Several laboratories have shown that chronically stressed rats showed a down-regulation of their stress system when they were allowed to eat high-fat or sugary drinks, compared to those given no such ‘comfort foods.’ Similarly, when adult rats who had experienced early life adversity (the stressful maternal separation paradigm after they were born) were allowed to eat a highly palatable, high-fat diet, this eating pattern actually reversed the up-regulation of their stress response system and reduced their anxiety and depression-like behaviors. Inspired by the findings of these mouse studies, several investigators explored whether human subjects experience similar positive effects from eating comfort food when they’re stressed or in a negative emotional state. 

Janet Tomiyama and her team in the Department of Psychology at UCLA investigated whether the stress responsiveness of healthy subjects to an acute laboratory stressor was related to a history of higher consumption of comfort foods after stressful events, and also whether this was reflected in a greater degree of obesity...To test their theory, they exposed fifty-nine healthy women to a stressful laboratory task. They measured levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the subjects’ blood and charted their subjective experience of stress while performing the task. Consistent with the researchers’ hypothesis and the animal literature, the women who had the lowest stress ratings and the lowest cortisol response were the most likely to report a history of stress-related eating of comfort food and also had the greatest degree of obesity. Even though other explanations of these findings are possible, they suggest that women who regularly eat comfort foods when stressed dampen their physiological response to stress. Unfortunately, this food-induced stress reduction comes at the cost of weight gain and all the other detrimental changes in our bodies and brains.” (Mayer, pg. 225-231 - Kindle)

What a revelation. We don’t necessarily crave high fat foods like pizza because they are delicious. For many of us, we crave because we are stressed. Because we are sad. Because it is easier to eat than to feel.

So, how do those of us committed to healthy living counter this overwhelm? 

We’re answering this very question by reading The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner for the month of April. Dan is an award-winning researcher who traveled the planet to find the world’s oldest and healthiest people to learn if there are common elements in lifestyle, diet, and mindset that lead to an amazing quantity and quality of life. His revolutionary work unveils nine lessons to optimal and vibrant health. 

As we step into Dan’s world of evidence-based wellness, break*through is opening up a complimentary virtual experience for you.

Led by our AI Community Wellness Managers, you can enjoy a 30 day wellness challenge like you’ve never experienced! Designed to work with very busy schedules, I like to think of our challenges as a creative laboratory where like-minded friends experiment with interactive reflections, data-driven insights, and practical exercises all designed to enhance resilience against the stresses of modern life. We’re diving deep into Blue Zones methodology for the next 30 days and we only have 2 spots left for our April 1st kickoff. Reserve your spot today with this quick 8 question sign-up form.

The challenge is 100% free for members of this community, but in the sign-up form there is an option to donate if you’d like to support this work. Your support makes all the difference.

With gratitude,

p.s. Pizza cravings are real. Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day… that’s 350 slices per second!