Perhaps you’ve heard the fable of the blind men and the elephant. When confronted with a huge, mysterious entity with which none of them was familiar, each man reached for the portion of the beast that he could grasp.
One man took hold of the trunk and decided that the elephant was long and flexible, like a snake. Another grabbed the leg and concluded that the elephant was round and sturdy, like a tree
. A third grasped the tusk and intuited that the elephant was smooth and pointy, like a polished stick.
These men did what most of us do when confronted with a completely unfamiliar concept—they broke it up into individual pieces and related each to what they already knew.
Because they had no concept of an elephant and no way of perceiving it in its entirety, they tried to generalize from an individual part to imagine the whole. But because they were considering the animal piece by piece, they couldn’t figure out the relationship between the pieces.
After all, an elephant is not simply a trunk plus legs plus tusks plus a tail. The elephant is greater than the sum of its parts—a huge, magnificent beast like no other that we know.
If you focus only on the parts, you might never understand the whole.
With some rare and welcome exceptions, the scientists and physicians who have studied the human brain have been like those blind men.
They have noted that specific neurotransmitters are linked to specific disorders, localizing each disorder in a different region of the brain.
So, one scientist studies depression and focuses on the neurotransmitters and synapses that produce listlessness, low mood, and other depressive symptoms. A second scientist studies Parkinson’s, examining a different set of neurotransmitters and a different location.
A third scientist addresses learning and cognition, a fourth deals with memory, a fifth zeroes in on stress… You get the idea.
Of course, to some extent, looking at the brain in this way has helped us to understand it better. But by carving up the brain into separate parts, I believe we have missed something crucial.
The vast majority of scientific literature has examined the brain not as a unified whole, not as a living system, but as merely a collection of discrete parts as if they operated in isolation.
I would like to propose a new paradigm for healing brain disorders. I believe we need to address the Whole Brain, understanding that the brain, the gut, and the microbiome are all aspects of the same system as surely as the elephant’s trunk and leg and tusk are all parts of the elephant.
The different components of the Whole Brain might look like separate entities, and to some extent, they are, but they must also be understood as part of the same whole.
Here are four new ways of thinking about what’s going on.
Paradigm Shift #1: From Discrete Object to Interconnected Ecology
The old approach to medicine can be readily seen in my medical school training, where the basis for anatomical study was a discrete object—the cadaver.
Like generations of students before me, I was given human cadavers to dissect so that I could learn the location and dimensions of each organ.
I soon came to understand that seeing the body this way was more than a convenient teaching device—it was actually the foundation of conventional medicine.
Instead of viewing the human being as a living system, in which electrical impulses, biochemical communication, and hundreds of tiny transformations are constantly taking place,
I was taught to view the human as, basically, an inert object that could be readily cut into pieces.
If you’re working with a corpse, it’s easy to separate the heart from the lungs, the thyroid from the adrenals, the gut from the brain—just take out your scalpel and slice.
And when you go on to choose your medical specialty, you follow that same principle of dividing things up: You select from such specialized roles as cardiologist, pulmonary specialist, endocrinologist, rheumatologist, gastroenterologist, or psychiatrist.
Those specialists each have their own medicine cabinet, their own go-to pharmaceuticals, their own special diagnostic tests.
If they see that your symptoms happen to cross the line into another specialist’s zone, most doctors don’t pause and wonder whether maybe they should view you as an elephant instead of a tusk plus a trunk plus a leg.
They just send you to another specialist. You might easily end up with two, three, four separate diagnoses, each with its own protocols and medications.
If the paradigm is “the human body as an inert collection of parts,” it will seem perfectly logical for physicians to prescribe to antidepressants for depression, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) for acid reflux, and antispasmodics for irritable bowel syndrome, without ever bothering to wonder whether maybe all three conditions are related.
And yet… why do so many depressed people also have irritable bowel syndrome? Why do depression and weight gain so often go together? Why are brain fog and anxiety and irritability so frequently found among those who are diagnosed as depressed?
Suppose we shift to a different paradigm. Suppose, instead of viewing the body as an inert object that can be easily carved into separate parts, we view it instead as an ecology in which every aspect and system of the body influences the others—an ecology in which all elements are vastly interconnected. What happens then?
To understand what I mean by an ecology, visualize a lake in the midst of a forest.
In the forest, deer graze while wolves roam. In the lake, many varieties of fish swim, algae grows in just the right amounts, and herons and cranes patrol the shore in search of dinner.
When this ecology is balanced, every part of it thrives.
Each part helps to support every other part, directly or indirectly. The deer eat the grass; the wolves eat the deer. When the wolves die, their bodies fertilize the grass that one day the deer will eat. Some of that fertilizer runs down into the lake, nourishing the algae that feeds the fish. Birds eat the fish, and sometimes the wolves eat those creatures, and sometimes their bodies, too, go to fertilize the grass and the algae.
There is a constant interaction among all the many elements of this ecology—a constant exchange of resources, if you will, to create a healthy, thriving whole.
Now, suppose one aspect of that ecology changes. Suppose hunters have killed off too many wolves.
Eventually, there will be too many deer, all competing for the same grass. Eventually, when all the grass has been eaten, the deer population might face starvation. Meanwhile, the lake is either getting not enough fertilizer (too few wolves) or too much (too many deer), all of which has serious consequences for the algae and the fish.
Or suppose that some polluted groundwater full of industrial chemicals and pesticides seeps into the soil and suddenly the grass starts to die or become toxic. Now the deer population might decline.
Without enough deer to eat, the wolves may also begin to die, affecting the algae, the fish, and the birds.
You get the idea. Alter any part of the ecology, and sooner or later, every part is affected.
Paradigm Shift #2: From “Disease as Invader” to “Health as Process”
Historically, doctors and scientists have viewed disease as a foreign invader, a “thing” that must be destroyed or removed from the body.
Disease was seen as an obstruction that exists in one specific place, with little relationship to other organs and systems that occupy different regions of the body. Accordingly, the old medicine has viewed health as simply “the absence of disease.”
But the new approach to medicine holds that neither disease nor health is a thing—rather, both are processes, with disease being viewed as a type of unhealthy ecology.
This unhealthy ecology might be triggered by a single problematic event—the killing of the wolves, or poisoning of the soil. More often, several problematic factors come together.
Either way, curing the disease is rarely so simple as just “cutting out” or “destroying” the problem.
A negative process has been set in motion, triggering many other negative processes. A decline in wolves causes an overpopulation of deer, which causes a shortage of grass, and so on.
The poisoning of the grass causes an underpopulation of deer, which causes the wolves to die, which poisons the fertilizer they provide, and so on. The problem in these examples is not a thing but a process.
Instead of removing the disease, you have to reverse the process.
Thus, when I came to work with my patient Annette, whom you met in Chapter 1, I didn’t want to just give her a pill to combat her depression. I needed to look at her whole
Paradigm Shift #3: From Treating Only the Body to Treating the Whole Human
Here is where the ecological perspective really comes into its own. In most versions of medicine today, the “physical” is sharply divided from other, deeper aspects of being human.
Treatments are largely medication-based, aimed at correcting the physiological.
What you believe, how you feel, and the way you understand your place in the world are rarely considered by most doctors. Even many psychiatrists tend to focus on which medications you need to address mood or cognitive disorders rather than on your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
Sometimes a functional or holistic practitioner will bring in other aspects of the human, such as the mind or even the so-called spiritual dimensions of our experience.
However, deeper still—and underlying all healing factors—is the will.
As I explained here, when I say will, I do not mean willpower. I do not mean you can get yourself out of depression or anxiety through sheer determination, or that you just need to “get over it” because “nothing is really wrong—you’re just creating problems with your bad attitude.”
Such a view is insulting to those who suffer from the very real problems we are talking about, not to mention scientifically incorrect.
What I do mean by will is the powerful and fundamental human force that underlies your sense of agency and purpose. Will used in this way has two aspects: our will to receive and our will to give. Both are crucial.
We need a will to receive so we can ensure our own survival and so that we develop ourselves to our full capacity. Only in that way do we have anything to give.
We also need a will to give so that we can give of ourselves to others. Our experience of giving to others is vital to our human identity—and to our health.
When you are struggling with anxiety, depression, or brain fog, you can easily feel helpless, hopeless, and despairing, as though all your resilience seems to have has drained away.
You might feel as though you have no right to receive any good thing in life, or that no one will ever give you anything, or that you have lost the capacity to receive even from people who wish to give to you.
You might easily feel as though you have nothing to contribute, or that what you have to offer is worthless, or that you are so overwhelmed by life’s demands that you no longer have the capacity to give to others.
These responses are both causes and effects of a depleted will—a loss of vitality and engagement that saps your energy, your enthusiasm, and your joy.
By contrast, when your will to give and receive is strong, you can learn to rise above negative emotions and tap into positive ones.
You can fight your way through any number of physical challenges. You can continue to restore wholeness to your brain, your Whole Brain, and your body.
THE POWER OF SEEING THE BIG PICTURE
• The human body is not made of separate, discrete parts but rather is an interconnected system.
• Likewise, disease is not an isolated thing that can simply be removed from the body. Rather, it is a process that must be reversed. Our goal in responding to disease is to restore a healthy ecology.
• Whenever any aspect of the brain malfunctions, that indicates a problem throughout the entire brain.
• The overall health and vibrancy of the body has a profound effect on brain function.
• The will to receive and the will to give also have a profound effect on brain function.
Healing the Whole Person
Let’s go back to my patient Annette, who you met in Chapter 1. The shift to an unhealthy ecology began early in her life and included a number of detrimental processes that led to a dysfunctional whole.
In my experience, the two most powerful disrupters of the Whole Brain are childhood emotional trauma and dysfunction of the gut and microbiome. Those factors as well as several others were all disrupting Annette’s ecology:
• Her diet was high in sugar, artificial sweeteners, processed flour, unhealthy fats, and processed foods—all of which triggered inflammation and unbalanced her microbiome.
• Her diet was high in gluten, which contributed to leaky gut.
• Her diet lacked the nutrients and cofactors that her body needed for optimal function in thyroid, gut, and brain.
• As a child, she had suffered from ear infections, which were treated with antibiotics. This further disrupted her microbiome.
• She had undergone a number of stressful events, beginning with a stormy childhood and continuing through the romantic and career challenges of her teens, twenties, and thirties. Even twenty-four hours of stress can alter the microbiome.
Prolonged stress without adequate stress relief severely disrupts the microbiome, distresses the gut, and, all too frequently, saps the will.
• Annette had been taught very early that she was just “acog in the machine,” as she put it—someone who could never have a real impact on the people around her.
Instead of seeing herself as cherished member of the human family and a valuable part of the universe, Annette saw herself as insignificant, powerless, and with little to offer. These beliefs also undermined her will to receive as well as her will to give.
Can you see how these factors worked together to disrupt Annette’s health? Her anxiety, depression, and brain fog were not individual diseases to be treated separately.
They were evidence of an unhealthy ecology. The solution was not to “eliminate her disease,” but rather to restore her ecology, and particularly to reignite her will, a crucial factor in any healing.
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