The Primal Blueprint (14 page)

Ken extracts his sedan from the campus swarm and soon begins his navigation of interstate freeways. As he drives up and over the small mountain range that marks the geographic boundary of the Bay Area, Ken spends his hour of “solitude” listening to talk radio—bouncing back and forth between sports and news talk—and taking several phone calls from friends or coworkers in the office. This constant and distracted stimulation to a brain still experiencing the effects of Ambien leads to mental fatigue before he even sets foot in the office. What’s more, at the 40-minute mark of Ken’s journey, he is suffering from heartburn and bloating (from his regular consumption of fried and fatty foods, dairy products, alcohol, sugars and desserts, sodas and other carbonated beverages, and substantial caloric intake before bed) as well as his typical recurring back pain (an affliction he shares with 60 to 80 percent of the general population).

Ken reaches into his briefcase and whips out his pill container, extracting a purple pill and a white capsule. The “healing purple pill” is Nexium (the third best-selling drug in the world with $5.7 billion in sales in 2005), which is used to treat the increasingly
common condition known as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and its main symptom of heartburn. Nexium, classified as a proton pump inhibitor, blocks the production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. This provides immediate relief for Ken’s pain but seriously inhibits the digestive process, which relies on hydrochloric acid and other powerful acids to break down and assimilate nutrients from food.

Next is the white capsule Celebrex, a popular nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) prescription medication that reduces levels of hormonelike substances called prostaglandins that are part of a natural inflammation response occurring in Ken’s body. He takes it to alleviate the back pain that accompanies the inflammation. He will pop another Celebrex this evening per the recommendation of his physician, who also suggested at his last visit that he schedule an appointment at a physical therapy clinic to obtain a customized back and core strengthening exercise routine. He’s been meaning to schedule that but hasn’t yet found the time.
¹³
Instead, Ken grabs some exercise here and there when the stars align and gaps open up in his schedule. Owing to his athletic youth, his competitive appetite is bigger than his physical condition. His forays into adult pickup basketball at the health club usually produce more tweaks and pulls than inspiration and motivation to pursue a regular, balanced total-body fitness program.

If Ken proceeds with the typical behavior pattern, he will use these prescription NSAIDs for years and neglect sufficient regular exercise. Down the road, owing to Ken’s long-term use of such a powerful systemic anti-inflammatory medication, the drug’s impact will diminish (at which point his doctor will probably put him on something stronger) and his body’s natural ability to control all types of inflammation will have been steadily decimated. This will set the tone for a variety of serious health conditions to take root, including—owing to his poor diet and lifestyle habits—many cancers and heart disease. Yep, that’s right—studies suggest a significant increased risk of heart attack when taking NSAIDs. Vioxx was a very popular NSAID taken by 80 million people worldwide from 1999 until 2004, when it was taken off the market due to concerns about side effects that increased heart attack risk. Celebrex sales skyrocketed as a result, until research suggested it posed similar risks. Celebrex sales then dropped sharply but steadily resumed to exceed $2 billion in 2006.

“
The idea on the medical horizon is that chronic inflammation is a root cause of degenerative disease. It is time for medical schools to improve nutrition education. If physicians are trained to use “food as medicine” they may not need to rely on drugs and their distressing side-effects to treat the inflammatory process.

—
Dr. Andrew Weil”

After an hour and eight minutes of driving from the elementary school, Ken arrives at his office. He works as an accountant for a software company. The hours are regular (unlike many of his coworkers, who are selling or developing software and routinely working 10- to 12-hour days), and he makes a third more than he could in the same position in Stockton. Aside from the set hours and compensation benefits, the working conditions are challenging. Executives and division sales managers constantly enroll the accounting team in their hyperdrive, desperate mentality. They have a penchant for requesting ridiculously fancy presentations on short notice or strolling into Ken’s office and literally breathing down his neck to obsessively review sales figures in the days counting down to quarterly close.

The perk of being able to leave promptly at 6:00
P.M
. each evening is muted by the feeling of complete mental exhaustion that overcomes Ken as soon as he opens his car door in the parking lot. In his previous position (closer to home and for significantly less pay), Ken would take a leisurely lunch hour to eat a sandwich in the park or even join a coworker for a light workout at the gym. He’d return to work refreshed and proceed at a sensible pace through the afternoon hours, pausing often to share a laugh with coworkers. Lately, he has stayed at his desk to eat lunch, typically procured via a 40-second drive to a busy nearby intersection with numerous quick options.

Ken, inspired by Kelly’s commitment, is also making a concerted effort to “do the right thing” and eat healthier. He eschews McDonald’s and Burger King for Chinese buffet, which sounds healthier but is actually just as bad. He returns to the office armed with chow mein noodles and sweet-and-sour chicken, trying not to spill the mostly simple carbohydrate meal onto his spreadsheets. Laughter in the hallways has been replaced by the discernible buzz of anxiety, the unspoken fear that heads will begin to roll out the door if Ken’s spreadsheets don’t impress stockholders and executives. In contrast to the few brief moments of Grok’s life-or-death encounter with a bear, Ken’s work-place is essentially a daily nine-hour grind of unrelenting moderate stress. Ken and the rest of us would still choose the spreadsheets over being scared sheetless by a bear, but the impact of prolonged chronic stress is far more destructive to human health (and misaligned with our genes) than a pattern of brief intermittent stresses coupled with adequate downtime and a relaxed lifestyle.

The postlunch, insulin-driven sugar crash hits Ken hard, so he scarfs down one of the PowerBars Kelly had thrown into his briefcase (PowerBar Energize Tangy Tropical has 42 grams of carbs—25 of them sugar) and heads to the break room for his daily afternoon cup o’ joe. Ken consumes two cups and one to two diet sodas each day, a total of about 250 milligrams of caffeine.
¹⁴
Not quite enough to classify him as an addict (actually, that’s about the daily average for Americans), but it’s definitely another substance,
along with the several prescription and over-the-counter meds, that he is dependent upon to make it through his day.

Even while making a comfortable income by any reasonable definition, the Korgs are experiencing financial stresses familiar to many.
¹⁵
After paycheck deductions for taxes, 401(k), and, of course, the enticing employee stock purchase program (where 5 percent of his gross income is fed back to the monster), a third of his annual net goes to mortgage and related tax and insurance costs. Other healthy chunks go to car payments and insurance, groceries and dining out, medical expenses not covered by Ken’s skimpy company policy, and the occasional whopper, such as two grand for a major surgery at the vet, two grand for Kenny Korg’s class field trip to Washington, D.C., 800 bucks for Kelly’s last-minute bereavement trip to the East Coast for a family friend’s funeral, a C-note for a weight-loss “starter kit” that gung ho neighbor Wendy basically forced upon them (a 28 percent discount when buying an entire case!), and so on.

Kelly contributes to the family’s bottom line running her own stimulating but stressful business as a freelance graphic designer. The flexible hours are great, although the healthy boundary between work and personal life often gets blurred. One favorite ritual is picking up her daughter from school every day and taking her out for a treat—carrying on a fond family tradition she and her sisters enjoyed with their mother. As Eric Schlosser details in
Fast Food Nation
, Kelly is cooperating with the food industry’s institutionalized exploitation of American families that allows parents to replace quality time (particularly the nearly extinct family home mealtime, and the guilty conscience that goes with being too busy) with instant gratification—and therefore love—for their children.

The treat time coincides with Kelly’s daily affliction of the afternoon blues, owing to her predawn wake-up call, the caloric depletion brought about by her crash diet, and the work/parent/personal health and fitness juggling act that is her life. The colorful, peppy, healthy lifestyle messaging inside the local Jamba Juice franchise helps Kelly rationalize about her impending insulin flash flood. She confidently orders up a 24-ounce Strawberry Surf Rider for herself and a 16-ounce Mango-a-go-go for her daughter. Cindy excitedly suggests adding a couple baked goods from the child’s-eye-level display case to the tab. Ever vigilant, Kelly scans the choices to pick the healthiest and settles on a couple of reduced-fat blueberry-lemon loaves, “part of a complete breakfast—complement with a smoothie or fresh squeezed orange juice,” says the Jamba Juice menu. Each loaf offers 290 calories, 73 percent of which come from processed carbohydrates (lead ingredients: sugar and flour) with virtually zero nutritional value and a guaranteed strong insulin response. Cindy finishes only half her loaf, but Kelly makes sure it doesn’t go to waste.

The discipline of Kelly consuming fewer than 500 calories in the previous 19 hours is no match for a depleted brain and body. While the 24-ounce Strawberry Surf Rider will provide Kelly with some much deserved antioxidants and other healthy nutrients from the frozen fruit, 87 percent of its 490 calories come from sugar. Along with one and a half blueberry-lemon loaves, Kelly has ingested 925 calories (make that an even thousand, counting a few long pulls on her daughter’s straw to try the Mango-a-go-go), including 187 grams of refined carbohydrates (that’s more than the
Primal Blueprint’s
recommended range of 100 to 150 grams for an entire day!). Her sugar/insulin roller coaster will again hamper her fat-burning efforts for hours after this onslaught and lead to fatigue and sugar cravings come dinnertime.

Young Cindy Korg’s drink and half loaf send more than 100 grams of sugar into her little body, stressing her insulin system—and her immune system—yet again. The previous day, at a classmate’s birthday party, she had consumed typical party fare of two slices of thin-crust cheese pizza (460 calories), a small slice of chocolate cake (235) with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream (150), some box juices with high-fructose corn syrup (she opened three over the course of the party and drank only half of the fluid [a typical ratio, as any parent who’s hosted a birthday party can confirm] = 130 calories), and several assorted bite-sized candies from the take-home party favor bag (150 calories). Her total calories in the three-hour period came to 1,125, more than half in the form of simple sugar. That’s enough to stimulate a significant insulin response in a 300-pound man, let alone a 55-pound child.

Naturally (owing to family genes, her parents rationalize), young Cindy is already significantly over-weight. Fortunately (from a psychological perspective only), unlike in past generations, her plump physique is shared by many of her fellow first graders.
¹⁶
While this certainly protects her self-esteem, it makes it difficult to change the popular chartered course of this young ship, sailing toward peril and doom. Studies suggest that overweight kids are highly likely to become overweight adults and consequently suffer from serious health problems and life-threatening diseases.

“
Studies suggest that overweight kids are highly likely to become overweight adults and consequently suffer from serious health problems and life-threatening diseases
.
”

We haven’t heard much about the Korgs’ teenage son, Kenny, which is appropriate because he is already emotionally disconnected from his busy family and pulled by the powerful force of peer influence in directions that create conflict with stable family life. In his early years, Kenny was naturally active and spent hours outside running and playing.
Unfortunately, each passing preteen year saw more sedentary technological distractions commandeering his time and innocent backyard play being exchanged for competitive organized sports.
¹⁷

While Kenny has some innate athletic ability, he lacks the naturally healthy aggression and competitiveness that allow young athletes to move to the front of the pack. Lacking time to connect with his son, Ken makes the common mistake of overpressurizing his son’s athletic experience with misplaced emotion and “encouragement” that feels to his son like results expectations and criticism. By the time Kenny becomes a teen, he is finished with organized sports and deep into a new cultural phenomenon called MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing games),
¹⁸
such as
World of Warcraft
and
Runescape
, where a player creates a digital persona and interacts with many others in a virtual world, often immersed for eight or 10 hours at a time. At school, he maintains grades that are decent yet below his potential, but he is incurring increasing reports of misbehavior in class. During a telephone conversation with the school counselor, the topic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is broached as a potential reason for Kenny’s misbehavior.

Kenny’s feelings of alienation are exacerbated at the dinner table that evening, when Ken peppers him with the exact same questions heard at the breakfast table about his son’s decision to skip freshman basketball tryouts. The teen is naturally offended, unaware that one of the most common side effects of Ambien is short-term memory loss and that Ken truly has no recollection of the conversation from 12 hours prior (and some eight hours after popping the Ambien).