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Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

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Steven Lesk M.D.

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“We need to sweat more. Humans moved around in warm climates generally, which led us to lose our fur, and although there was some migration northward, activity in warm air makes one sweat. (Incidentally, the farther one goes from the equator, the greater the suicide rate. We evolved near the equator. There may be a connection there.) Sweating may have been a much greater excretion paradigm than we're now used to. Go toa sauna or a steam room. There are studies that show that using them reduces sudden death and cardiac mortality. Sorne toxins are stored in the fatty tissue of the skin only to be eliminated as we sweat. Along with sweating we need to replace fluids with good old water. Drink from the stream. Dietarily, ancient humans no doubt ate occasional meats but usually foraged around for edible plants and fruits. Not on a time schedule like a modern office dude, cave guy ate anytime he found something edible.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“Sitting eight hours a day may take more of a toll than we realize. We were not designed for that. On the other hand, evolution helps us adapt to these modern demands. Those whose bodies are more tolerant of sitting have no doubt already been favored by natural selection.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“It makes sense to pay heed to our past even though the demands we place on our bodies (and minds) are now vastly different. We are still in the midst of the course correction that's happening all around us, but we don't see it. We do notice it when things screw up the process. Illnesses can be considered evolutionary misfires if they do not meet the criteria of Darwin's rules regarding genetic principles that usually lead to extinction.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“Out of chaos comes order. And order is supplied by the ego with the help of dopamine suppression in the context of our spiffy new operating system. When order is lost, the chaos of entropy -which lurks behind this process, seeking disorganization and lower energy states - again reigns. All of this goes along with dopamine de-suppression as the fulcrum of organized thinking painfully reverses.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“At some point in our infancy, we draw a curtain across this terrorizing mental state and put it behind us. Freud called this infantile amnesia, and it was said to happen around age five. We forget the gruesome terror and brutality of that drama. Civilization is based on pushing it aside, perhaps delusionally, to create acquiescent civility. When we regress to psychosis, that door is opened up again and often reveals feelings that have been submerged since infancy: the door to the psychotic id. Is civilization based on a delusion of safety? Perhaps, or possibly just the need to maintain a sense of security that promulgates itself, in fragile pose, like a ballerina en pointe too long. The maintenance of this civilized state of calm has much to do with the suppression of dopamine.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“We are no longer in that primitive state of mind. We have an expectation of survival and have conquered most of the obvious predators that plagued us day to day with our superlative contemplation skills born of language. We sit in our comfy heated houses while the snow flutters like butterflies around us and we bask in a feeling of general contentment.”

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“The definition of meditation is to learn to live in freedom. Meditation means to break all chains and destroy all walls that surround you. Meditation is to come out of the prison of the mind into the open sky of the heart. The heart is capable of knowing freedom. To be free one has to move from the mind to the heart. Living in the heart you learn the ABC of freedom. You go beyond the boundaries step by step, and you taste the beauty of freedom.”

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Book:Man is Part of the Whole: Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Compassion, Freedom and Grace
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“Our minds have advanced from the brutal, terrified, survivalist ethos of Mr. Caveman to the secure plateau of modern-day living. We now expect to survive into our eighties or beyond, to not endure brutal conditions, and to be able to negotiate a society that provides pathways toward success and even happiness, which is one reason I assert that happiness is a modern invention. It is when societies begin to break clown and fail in their promises that we begin to question this exchange.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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