Biochemistry Quotes

We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.

The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself—not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day.

Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddam Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think... when I get tired enough... I think I'll just sit down

The obesity pandemic is due to our altered biochemistry, which is a result of our altered environment.

At the level of their biochemistry, the barrier between bacteria and complex cells barely exists.

It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry—which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books—that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's.

We all like to think we’re open-minded and objective when it comes to evaluating situations and people. But are we? A huge body of research in physics, biochemistry, and psychology says we’re not.

Something, somewhere, somewhen, must have happened differently... PETUNIA EVANS married Michael Verres, a Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford. HARRY JAMES POTTER-EVANS-VERRES grew up in a house filled to the brim with books. He once bit a math teacher who didn't know what a logarithm was. He's read Godel, Escher, Bach and Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases and volume one of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. And despite what everyone who's met him seems to fear, he doesn't want to become the next Dark Lord. He was raised better than that. He wants to discover the laws of magic and become a god. HERMIONE GRANGER is doing better than him in every class except broomstick riding. DRACO MALFOY is exactly what you would expect an eleven-year-old boy to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father. PROFESSOR QUIRRELL is living his lifelong dream of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, or as he prefers to call his class, Battle Magic. His students are all wondering what's going to go wrong with the Defense Professor this time. DUMBLEDORE is either insane, or playing some vastly deeper game which involved setting fire to a chicken. DEPUTY HEADMISTRESS MINERVA MCGONAGALL needs to go off somewhere private and scream for a while. Presenting: HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY You ain't guessin' where this one's going.

If you stimulate seizures in an animal every day, the seizures eventually become automatic; the animal will go on having them once a day even if you withdraw the stimulation. In much the same way, the brain that has gone into depression a few times will continue to return to depression over and over. This suggests that depression, even if it is occasioned by external tragedy, ultimately changes the structure, as well as the biochemistry, of the brain.

Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable.

Ascribing personal responsibility to the obese individual is not a rational argument for an eminently practical reason: it fails to advance any efforts to change it. The obesity pandemic is due to our altered biochemistry, which is a result of our altered environment.

You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can't just visualise a whole cat's anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?

Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps that represent successive developmental stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles, like advanced problems in a graduate exam in biochemistry or logic. But to understand life and the cosmos better, perhaps we are required to transform not only our minds but our hearts. For the whole being, body and soul, mind and spirit, is implicated. Perhaps we must go not only high and far but down and deep. Our world view and cosmology, which defines the context for everything else, is profoundly affected by the degree to which all out faculties–intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral, emotional, somatic, spiritual, relational–enter the process of knowing. How we approach "the other," and how we approach each other, will shape everything, including out own evolving self and the cosmos in which we participate.

When the sex is persuasively rendered, it tends to read autobiographically, and there are limits to my desire for immersion in a stranger's biochemistry.

The biochemistry and needs of each patient is unique. Chronically ill patients require nutritional support for healing.

I shall argue that the distinction between a ‘living planet’ – one that is geologically active – and a living cell is only a matter of definition. There is no hard and fast dividing line. Geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry. From this point of view, the fact that we can’t distinguish between geology and biology in these old rocks is fitting. Here is a living planet giving rise to life, and the two can’t be separated without splitting a continuum. Move

If you put sexual attraction on a scale of one to ten, where ten equals "you can't keep your hands off each other,"five equals "you can take it or leave it," and one equals "repulsed," to support a vibrant relationship, it should be at least a seven, preferably an eight, nine, or ten. With work, you might raise the attraction one notch, but because there is so much biochemistry involved in sexual attraction, it's hard to do much more than that. So if a sexual attraction doesn't evolve, remember, it's not anyone's fault and it's just the what is of your pairing, and you might make better friends than lovers. Sexual attraction doesn't have to be instantaneous on first meeting, but it must eventually flower because it provides a basic glue for successful conjugal union. If we're not sexually alive to our beloved, it often leads to a subdued relationship, loneliness, affairs, or lots of fantasies.

Happier thoughts lead to essentially a happier biochemistry. A happier, healthier body. Negative thoughts and stress have been shown to seriously degrade the body and the functioning of the brain, because it’s our thoughts and emotions that are continuously reassembling, reorganizing, re-creating our body.

If you believe you are fragile, the biochemistry of your body unquestionably obeys and manifests it. If you believe you are tough, irrespective of your weight and bone density, your body undeniably mirrors it.

You have to make your own condensed notes. You learn from MAKING them. A lot of thinking goes into deciding what to include and exclude. You develop your own system of abbreviations and memory methods for the information.

Only upon death does an organism reach equilibrium with its inanimate environment.

For example, at a recent conference on psychoneuroimmunology—a new science that studies the way the mind (psycho), the nervous system (neuro), and the immune system (immunology) interact—Candace Pert, chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health, announced that immune cells have neuropeptide receptors. Neuropeptides are molecules the brain uses to communicate, the brain's telegrams, if you will. There was a time when it was believed that neuropeptides could only be found in the brain. But the existence of receptors (telegram receivers) on the cells in our immune system implies that the immune system is not separate from but is an extension of the brain. Neuropeptides have also been found in various other parts of the body, leading Pert to admit that she can no longer tell where the brain leaves off and the body begins.

The four most common, chemically active elements in the universe—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen—are the four most common elements of life on Earth, with carbon serving as the foundation of biochemistry. We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us.

The biochemistry of pleasure can counteract the biochemistry of aging. Nitric oxide is the über-neurotransmitter that increases and balances levels of all the others: endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin (a bonding neurotransmitter released while breast-feeding, experiencing an orgasm, or even enjoying the company of others), and DMT, which is generated in the pineal gland in the brain and probably plays a role in dreaming.3

Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. Many of them don't have much to do with evolution - they're observations about the details of physiology, biochemistry, development, and so on - but many of them do. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect, supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don't have a single one. We don't find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that only benefit a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth.

And I am absolutely intellectually able to agree, yes, all of this great crashing wave of negative feeling is not actually being caused by the things I am pinning it to. This is something generated by my biochemistry, grown in my basal brain and my liver and my gut and let loose to roam like a faceless beast about my body until it reaches my cognitive centres, which look around for the worry du jour and pin that mask on it. I know that, while I have real problems in the world, they are not causing the way I feel within myself, this crushing weight, these sudden attacks of clenching fear, the shakes, the wrenching vertiginous horror that doubles me over. These feelings are just recruiting allies of convenience from my rational mind, like a mob lifting up a momentary demagogue who may be discarded a moment later in favour of a better. Even in the grip of my feelings I can still acknowledge all this, and it doesn’t help. Know thyself, the wise man wrote, and yet I know myself, none better, and the knowledge gives me no power.

During this time (at high school) I discovered the Public Library... It was here that I found a source of knowledge and the means to acquire it by reading, a habit of learning which I still follow to this day. I also became interested in chemistry and gradually accumulated enough test tubes and other glassware to do chemical experiments, using small quantities of chemicals purchased from a pharmacy supply house. I soon graduated to biochemistry and tried to discover what gave flowers their distinctive colours. I made the (to me) astounding discovery that the pigments I extracted changed their colours when I changed the pH of the solution.

Maybe hope is like a turtle under ice breathing through its shell, through its biochemistry, still alive. Maybe hope waits for spring to come, for the ice to thaw for the weight of the pond that encapsulates us to melt into nothing. But maybe we are not meant to wait for springtime. Maybe, instead, we are meant to break the ice and be free." -Ariana

Next is diet or nutrition—or as I prefer to call it, nutritional biochemistry. The third domain is sleep, which has gone underappreciated by Medicine 2.0 until relatively recently. The fourth domain encompasses a set of tools and techniques to manage and improve emotional health. Our fifth and final domain consists of the various drugs, supplements, and hormones that doctors learn about in medical school and beyond. I lump these into one bucket called exogenous molecules, meaning molecules we ingest that come from outside the body.

Information and complexity go hand in hand.

Prereading is a game changer. It changed my life...Everyone is smarter when they have seen the material before. You will be too.

On the other hand, the sun of Naples might be conducive to learning something about the biochemistry of the embryonic development of marine animals.

It’s some kind of beautiful.” I understood, and still understand, little of Lorenzo’s work, but Patrick’s got the biochemistry background to process it.

He knew about alcohol, nothing about this. He could drink and he could stop. Others couldn’t and drank themselves dead. Personal biochemistry. Fate. “I

All life on earth shares a common genetic code and basic biochemistry. We share genes with peas.

Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry.

People think that this political revolution or that social reform will make them happy, but their biochemistry tricks them time and again.

The inhibition of an inhibitor leads to the activation of an inhibitor of an inhibitory pathway. This is the point where most people might be tempted to give up on biochemistry!

Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create a buildup of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight. The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into awareness.

There are things in life that we simply must experience in order to know. Someone can tell you what it feels like to experience or witness the birth of your first child, but the actual experience is in another realm altogether. The same is true of love. You can read sonnets, hear romantic songs, and understand the biochemistry, but until you experience love, it’s all just a bunch of words.

Eating in our time has gotten complicated — needlessly so, in my opinion. I will get to the “needlessly” part in a moment, but consider first the complexity that now attends this most basic of creaturely activities. Most of us have come to rely on experts of one kind or another to tell us how to eat — doctors and diet books, media accounts of the latest findings in nutritional science, government advisories and food pyramids, the proliferating health claims on food packages. We may not always heed these experts’ advice, but their voices are in our heads every time we order from a menu or wheel down the aisle in the supermarket. Also in our heads today resides an astonishing amount of biochemistry. How odd is it that everybody now has at least a passing acquaintance with words like “antioxidant,” “saturated fat,” “omega-3 fatty acids,” “carbohydrates,” “polyphenols,” “folic acid,” “gluten,” and “probiotics”? It’s gotten to the point where we don’t see foods anymore but instead look right through them to the nutrients (good and bad) they contain, and of course to the calories — all these invisible qualities in our food that, properly understood, supposedly hold the secret to eating well.

The detox phenomenon is interesting because it represents one of the most grandiose innovations of marketers, lifestyle gurus, and alternative therapists: the invention of a whole new physiological process. In terms of basic human biochemistry, detox is a meaningless concept. It doesn’t cleave nature at the joints. There is nothing on the “detox system” in a medical textbook. That burgers and beer can have negative effects on your body is certainly true, for a number of reasons; but the notion that they leave a specific residue, which can be extruded by a specific process, a physiological system called detox, is a marketing invention.

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system... We find such systems within living organisms.

To earn the prestigious descriptor of “venomous,” an organism must be more than just toxic; it must also have a specific means of delivering its dangerous goods into another animal. It has to be proactive about its toxicity.

No one knows, because no plastic has died a natural death yet. It took today’s microbes that break hydrocarbons down to their building blocks a long time after plants appeared to learn to eat lignin and cellulose. More recently, they’ve even learned to eat oil. None can digest plastic yet, because 50 years is too short a time for evolution to develop the necessary biochemistry. “But give it 100,000 years,” says Andrady the optimist. He was in his native Sri Lanka when the Christmas 2004 tsunami hit, and even there, after those apocalyptic waters struck, people found reason to hope. “I’m sure you’ll find many species of microbes whose genes will let them do this tremendously advantageous thing, so that their numbers will grow and prosper. Today’s amount of plastic will take hundreds of thousands of years to consume, but, eventually, it will all biodegrade. Lignin is far more complex, and it biodegrades. It’s just a matter of waiting for evolution to catch up with the materials we are making.

I did my graduate research paper on the biochemistry of schizophrenia . Intellectually , I believe that most serious mental illness has a biological component and that the visible results are partly a personality reaction to a body that can’t be trusted .

In the past ten years there had been truly amazing advances in those areas of research – psychopharmacology, biochemistry, psychosurgery, clinical psychology – that directly and indirectly contributed to the less reputable but nonetheless hotly pursued science of mind control.

Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry.

When conventional medicine fails, when we must confront pain and death, of course we are open to other prospects for hope. And, after all, some illnesses are psychogenic. Many can be at least ameliorated by a positive cast of mind. Placebos are dummy drugs, often sugar pills. Drug companies routinely compare the effectiveness of their drugs against placebos given to patients with the same disease who had no way to tell the difference between the drug and the placebo. Placebos can be astonishingly effective, especially for colds, anxiety, depression, pain, and symptoms that are plausibly generated by the mind. Conceivably, endorphins -the small brain proteins with morphine-like effects - can be elicited by belief. A placebo works only if the patient believes it’s an effective medicine. Within strict limits, hope, it seems, can be transformed into biochemistry.

I held a brain for the cameras at St Paul’s teaching hospital in Addis. It is the most complex single object in the known universe, a most intricate example of emergent complexity assembled over 4 billion years by natural selection operating within the constraints placed upon it by the laws of physics and the particular biochemistry of life on Earth. It contains around 85 billion individual neurons, which is of the same order as the number of stars in an average galaxy. But that doesn’t begin to describe its complexity. Each neuron is thought to make between 10,000 and 100,000 connections to other neurons, making the brain a computer way beyond anything our current technology can simulate. When we do manage to simulate one, I have no doubt that sentience will emerge; consciousness is not magic, it is an emergent property consistent with the known laws of nature.

We walked to another door with an amber light above it. This one led to a hall I hadn’t seen before. It was less pristine than the others. There were whiteboards on the walls, scribbled with notes about cafeteria menus and security sweeps. There were even a few flyers taped up, advertising cars for sale or asking if anyone knew a good tutoring service for high school biochemistry. It looked so much more real than the place I’d been since I woke up, so much more human, that it almost made my chest hurt. The world still existed. I’d died and come back, and the whole time I was gone, the world continued.

And it wasn’t just Marla. I witnessed similar transformations in dozens of patients. I finally realized that the medical establishment’s nearly exclusive focus on the biochemistry of the patient’s body, often to the exclusion of the health of the patient’s mind, was doing our patients a grave disservice.

(Please excuse my lack of depth; I’m a generalist, not a specialist. Why bother learning all that biochemistry stuff—or how to design a building, or conn a boat, or balance accounts, or solve equations, or comfort the dying—when you can get other people to do all that for you in exchange for a blow job?)

Humanity shares a common ancestry with all living things on Earth. We often share especially close intimacies with the microbial world. In fact, only a small percentage of the cells in the human body are human at all. Yet, the common biology and biochemistry that unites us also makes us susceptible to contracting and transmitting infectious disease.

This chapter reveals and elaborates upon the exquisite beauty of protein structure.

Sex is far more widespread than seems reasonable.

The critique of every experience from below, the voluntary ignoring of meaning and concentration on fact, will always have the same plausibility. There will always be evidence, and every month fresh evidence, to show that religion is only psychological, justice only self-protection, politics only economics, love only lust, and thought itself only cerebral biochemistry.

For me the only way total calories consumed matter in terms of weight management are their total contribution to fattening biochemical reactions from different foodstuffs. In other words it does matter how many calories of bread or meat you eat as 100 calories will have a smaller biochemical effect than 1,000 calories of both foods. Biochemistry leads and physics follows.

We tend to believe that if we could just change our workplace, get married, finish writing that novel, buy a new car or repay the mortgage, we would be on top of the world. Yet when we get what we desire we don’t seem to be any happier. Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.

But fear not, there does appear to be one dietary item that can mitigate the damage that sugar does to the brain and promote the biochemistry and the processes that can predispose us to happiness. And perhaps not surprisingly its presence in the diet correlates positively with tryptophan and negatively with sugar. What is this magic chemical? It’s omega-3 fatty acids, of all things.

Some air-conditioning systems are set at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete.

Placebos can be astonishingly effective, especially for colds, anxiety, depression, pain, and symptoms that are plausibly generated by the mind. Conceivably, endorphins—the small brain proteins with morphinelike effects—can be elicited by belief. A placebo works only if the patient believes it’s an effective medicine. Within strict limits, hope, it seems, can be transformed into biochemistry. As

Every branch of science likes to think it’s important, and of course, they all are. But they’re specializations. Much of biology, for example, is biochemistry, which is a specialization of organic chemistry, which is a specialization of chemistry, which is a specialization of physics, and physics is practical mathematics. No matter which set of matryoshka dolls you open in science, the innermost is always math.

The antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties of honey were revealed as a result of clinical observations and research. Honey is exceedingly effective in painlessly cleaning up infection and dead cells in these regions and in the development of new tissues. The use of honey as a medicine is mentioned in the most ancient writings. In the present day, doctors and scientists are rediscovering the effectiveness of honey in the treatment of wounds. Dr. Peter Molan, a leading researcher into honey for the last 20 years and a professor of biochemistry at New Zealand's University of Waikato, says this about the antimicrobial properties of honey: "Randomized trials have shown that honey is more effective in controlling infection in burn wounds than silver sulphadiazine, the antibacterial ointment most widely used on burns in hospitals.

Phenotypic effects of genes, whether at the level of intracellular biochemistry, gross bodily morphology, or extended phenotype, are potentially devices by which genes lever themselves into the next generation, or barriers to their doing so. Incidental side-effects are not always effective as tools or barriers, and we do not bother to regard them as phenotypic expressions of genes, either at the conventional or the extended phenotype level.

Comparable biochemistries. They might eat us. “Whoever these beings are, they don’t even live in sunlight. No territorial overlap, no resource overlap, no basis for conflict. There’s no reason we shouldn’t get along just fine.” “On the other hand,” Szpindel said, “technology implies belligerence.” Michelle snorted softly. “According to a coterie of theoretical historians who’ve never actually met an alien, yes. Maybe now we get to prove them wrong.” And

depression can occur because of biological factors such as genetic predispositions, hormonal changes (including menopause, childbirth or thyroid problems) and differences in biochemistry (an imbalance of naturally occurring substances called neurotransmitters in the brain and spinal cord). In other cases, depression is caused by psychological factors, severe life stressors, substance abuse and certain medical conditions that affect the way your brain regulates your moods.

It now seems that life began, not with a single component like a gene, but with several components that could work together. Life is less about a particular substance, and more about the way a group of substances behave when they are combined.

: “It’s all chemicals, says the biochemistry text. Chlorophylls keep the leaves green while thy are green, carotenoids – as in butter, corn, canary feathers – turn them yellow when the chlorophyll goes. Tannin adds the browns, the bronzes; something called anthocyanin turns leaves red if the sap of the plant is acidic, blue or purple if it is alkaline. Color is a substance, says the chemist.” – John Jerome, Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play & Other Aspects of Country Life, p. 140.

Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom they are based on calculation. (page 36)

David Lester, a psychology professor at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey, has likely thought about suicide longer, harder, and from more angles than any other human. In more than twenty-five-hundred academic publications, he has explored the relationship between suicide and, among other things, alcohol, anger, antidepressants, astrological signs, biochemistry, blood type, body type, depression, drug abuse, gun control, happiness, holidays, Internet use, IQ, mental illness, migraines, the moon, music, national-anthem lyrics, personality type, sexuality, smoking, spirituality, TV watching, and wide-open spaces. Has all this study led Lester to some grand unified theory of suicide? Hardly. So far he has one compelling notion. It’s what might be called the “no one left to blame” theory of suicide. While one might expect that suicide is highest among people whose lives are the hardest, research by Lester and others suggests the opposite: suicide is more common among people with a higher quality of life. “If you’re unhappy and you have something to blame your unhappiness on—if it’s the government, or the economy, or something—then that kind of immunizes you against committing suicide,” he says. “It’s when you have no external cause to blame for your unhappiness that suicide becomes more likely. I’ve used this idea to explain why African-Americans have lower suicide rates, why blind people whose sight is restored often become suicidal, and why adolescent suicide rates often rise as their quality of life gets better.

I was suspicious of such a theory because biology tends to run on hormones and enzymes, that is, control mechanisms, not on mass action (the principle that chemical processes are determined by how much reactants are put into them). The grand principle in biochemistry is that there is hardly anything that is not connected with feedback. If you try to lower your dietary cholesterol, the liver will respond by making more. So simply adding more or less is not guaranteed to give much change at all and I was skeptical if not well-informed.

Two fantasies dominated my darting then. I wanted to dart Fritz Lipmann. Lipmann was an incredibly famous biochemist, got the Nobel Prize decades ago, and now was an august octogenarian who would spend his day shuffling around the campus in his running shoes, endlessly passing my first-floor dorm window. I would get him in my blowgun sights from behind my biochemistry textbooks (which were half about him), choose between his rear end and shoulders, try to calculate his body weight for a proper dosage. I refrained from darting, however.

In our profession, we tend to name things exactly as we see them. Big red stars we call red giants. Small white stars we call white dwarfs. When stars are made of neutrons, we call them neutron stars. Stars that pulse, we call them pulsars. In biology they come up with big Latin words for things. MDs write prescriptions in a cuneiform that patients can’t understand, hand them to the pharmacist, who understands the cuneiform. It’s some long fancy chemical thing, which we ingest. In biochemistry, the most popular molecule has ten syllables—deoxyribonucleic acid! Yet the beginning of all space, time, matter, and energy in the cosmos, we can describe in two simple words, Big Bang. We are a monosyllabic science, because the universe is hard enough. There is no point in making big words to confuse you further. Want more? In the universe, there are places where the gravity is so strong that light doesn’t come out. You fall in, and you don’t come out either: black hole. Once again, with single syllables, we get the whole job done. Sorry, but I had to get all that off my chest.

When our cells sense sustained danger, they divert resources to defense and alarm pathways instead of normal functions that generate sustainable health. Given this, no matter how pristine your dietary intake is, how much you’re moving, how much sunlight you’re getting, or how many hours of quality sleep you’re getting, if the cells are bathed in a stew of stress created by the way psychology translates to biochemistry (via hormones, neurotransmitters, inflammatory cytokines, and neurologic signals), all the other healthy choices will fall

People who are born with a cheerful biochemistry are generally happy and content. Such people are more attractive spouses, and consequently they have a greater chance of getting married. They are also less likely to divorce, because it is far easier to live with a happy and content spouse than with a depressed and dissatisfied one. Consequently, it’s true that married people are happier on average than singles, but a single woman prone to gloom because of her biochemistry would not necessarily become happier if she were to hook up with a husband.

These phenotypic consequences are conventionally thought of as being restricted to a small field around the replicator itself, its boundaries being defined by the body wall of the individual organism in whose cells the replicator sits. But the nature of the causal influence of gene on phenotype is such that it makes no sense to think of the field of influence as being limited in this arbitrary way, any more than it makes sense to think of it as limited to intracellular biochemistry. We must think of each replicator as the centre of a field of influence on the world at large.

I would not be among you to-night (being awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) but for the mentors, colleagues and students who have guided and aided me throughout my scientific life. I wish I could name them all and tell you their contributions. More, however, than anyone else it was the late Rudolf Schoenheimer, a brilliant scholar and a man of infectious enthusiasm, who introduced me to the wonders of Biochemistry. Ever since, I have been happy to have chosen science as my career, and, to borrow a phrase of Jacques Barzun, have felt that 'Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment'.

There is only one historical development that has real significance. Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry. If we invest billions in understanding our brain chemistry and developing appropriate treatments, we can make people far happier than ever before, without any need of revolutions. Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression.

Chloroplasts bear chlorophyll; they give the green world its color, and they carry out the business of photosynthesis. Around the inside perimeter of each gigantic cell trailed a continuous loop of these bright green dots. They spun . . . they pulsed, pressed, and thronged . . . they shone, they swarmed in ever-shifting files around and around the edge of the cell; they wandered, they charged, they milled, raced . . . they flowed and trooped greenly . . . All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts . . . If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish’s tail.

The night before a biochemistry class, I read the last year's lecture notes. I look at the pictures in the book. Now, I've got the general concept. Sure...There's a couple of details to fill in and a a few things to memorize. But that's no big deal. I've got the big picture, and that's all I need. Bring it on professor, I'm ready. That's right. The next day, I'm a goalie sitting in the front row. "Nothin gets past me." My ability to comprehend a biochemistry lecture just went from 30% to 95%. I went on to score 780 out of a possible 800 on the medical school boards exam in biochemistry. Given that the 99th percentile began around 690, this was one of the highest scores in the USA, perhaps the highest.

Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point. Some air-conditioning systems are set at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete. Indeed, even if our gloomy friend wins $50,000,000 in the morning, discovers the cure for both AIDS and cancer by noon, makes peace between Israelis and Palestinians that afternoon, and then in the evening reunites with her long-lost child who disappeared years ago - she would still be incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may.

Fiction, more than any other written form, explains and expands life. Biology, of course, also explains life; so do biography and biochemistry and biophysics and biomechanics and biopsychology. But all the biosciences yield to biofiction. Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, how it goes wrong, and how we lose it. Novels speak to and from the mind, the heart, the eye, the genitals, the skin; the conscious and the subconscious. What it is to be an individual, what it means to be part of a society. What it means to be alone. Alone, and yet in company: that is the paradoxical position of the reader. Alone in the company of a writer who speaks in the silence of your mind.

Of course, it is not absolutely impossible that AI will develop feelings of its own. We still don’t know enough about consciousness to be sure. In general, there are three possibilities we need to consider: Consciousness is somehow linked to organic biochemistry in such a way that it will never be possible to create consciousness in nonorganic systems. Consciousness is not linked to organic biochemistry, but it is linked to intelligence in such a way that computers could develop consciousness, and computers will have to develop consciousness if they are to pass a certain threshold of intelligence. There are no essential links between consciousness and either organic biochemistry or high intelligence. Therefore computers might develop consciousness—but not necessarily. They could become superintelligent while still having zero consciousness.

Nobody is ever made happy by winning the lottery, buying a house, getting a promotion or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies. A person who just won the lottery or found new love and jumps from joy is not really reacting to the money or the lover. She is reacting to various hormones coursing through her bloodstream and to the storm of electric signals flashing between different parts of her brain. Unfortunately for all hopes of creating heaven on earth, our internal biochemical system seems to be programmed to keep happiness levels relatively constant. There's no natural selection for happiness as such - a happy hermit's genetic line will go extinct as the genes of a pair of anxious parents get carried on to the next generation. Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that evolution has moulded us to be neither too miserable nor too happy. It enables us to enjoy a momentary rush of pleasant sensations, but these never last for ever. Sooner of later they subside and give place to unpleasant sensations. (...) Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point. Some air-conditioning systems are set at twenty-five degrees Celsius. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete (...) incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may. (...) Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to the set point.

There is only one historical development that has real significance. Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry. If we invest billions in understanding our brain chemistry and developing appropriate treatments, we can make people far happier than ever before, without any need of revolutions. Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression. Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: ‘Happiness begins within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.1 In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, published in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, happiness is the supreme value and psychiatric drugs replace the police and the ballot as the foundation of politics. Every day, each person takes a dose of ‘soma’, a synthetic drug which makes people happy without harming their productivity and efficiency. The World State that governs the entire globe is never threatened by wars, revolutions, strikes or demonstrations, because all people are supremely content with their current conditions, whatever they may be. Huxley’s vision of the future is far more troubling than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley’s world seems monstrous to most readers, but it is hard to explain why. Everybody is happy all the time – what could be wrong with that?

As we mentioned in the previous chapter, scientific insights into the way our brains and bodies work suggest that our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of 'free will'. Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom they are based on calculation.

As we mentioned in the previous chapter, scientific insights into the way our brains and bodies work suggest that our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of 'free will'. Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom they are based on calculation. (page 36)

There is only one historical development that has real significance. Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry. If we invest billions in understanding our brain chemistry and developing appropriate treatments, we can make people far happier than ever before, without any need of revolutions. Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression. Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: ‘Happiness Begins Within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.

Learning from Negative Experiences Many people with social anxiety can remember certain events that contributed to their fears. Martin knows exactly why he is afraid to speak in class. When I was in seventh-grade science class, the teacher had each student read aloud a paragraph from the textbook. It was a chapter on different types of organisms. When it was my turn, I accidentally said “orgasm” instead of “organism.” Everyone howled with laughter, including the teacher. I felt so embarrassed. My face was bright red and I wanted to hide. Kids teased me about it for a long time. Ever since then, I am terrified about reading anything aloud. Sometimes, I am even afraid of simply speaking. This event, together with Martin’s biochemistry and genes, set him up to have a form of social anxiety. People who don’t have the same heightened sense of awareness or the same chemicals rushing through their bodies may not have been upset by this event. They may have laughed with the class or even have been able to make fun of themselves.

In his history of biology, Ernst Mayr showed that many biologists originally rejected the theory of natural selection because of their belief that a species was a pure type defined by an essence. They could not wrap their minds around the concept that species are populations of variable individuals and that one can blend into another over evolutionary time.36 In this context, the fear of genetically modified foods no longer seems so strange: it is simply the standard human intuition that every living thing has an essence. Natural foods are thought to have the pure essence of the plant or animal and to carry with them the rejuvenating powers of the pastoral environment in which they grew. Genetically modified foods, or foods containing artificial additives, are thought of as being deliberately laced with a contaminant tainted by its origins in an acrid laboratory or factory. Arguments that invoke genetics, biochemistry, evolution, and risk analysis are likely to fall on deaf ears when pitted against this deep-rooted way of thinking.

No matter what monks in their Himalayan caves or philosophers in their ivory towers say, for the capitalist juggernaut, happiness is pleasure. Period. With each passing year our tolerance for unpleasant sensations decreases, and our craving for pleasant sensations increases. Both scientific research and economic activity are geared to that end, each year producing better painkillers, new ice-cream flavours, more comfortable mattresses, and more addictive games for our smartphones, so that we will not suffer a single boring moment while waiting for the bus. All this is hardly enough, of course. Since Homo sapiens was not adapted by evolution to experience constant pleasure, if that is what humankind nevertheless wants, ice cream and smartphone games will not do. It will be necessary to change our biochemistry and re-engineer our bodies and minds. So we are working on that. You may debate whether it is good or bad, but it seems that the second great project of the twenty-first century – to ensure global happiness – will involve re-engineering Homo sapiens so that it can enjoy everlasting pleasure.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY FATHER My Lord, the Creator, has many names, but He is one and the same. God is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, and Hindu. God is love. God is truth, and the true light of love sees no walls. Do not abandon him even when your days are gray; for He is only returning your call when you asked for strength. The Creator will talk to you only in daylight, through the rays of the sun, and He does not use words. Instead, he will reflect his dancing mirrors inside your head, and they will communicate to your heart and change your biochemistry to see with His eyes and think like Him. There is no such thing as prophets and seers; for all of mankind was created equal. However, if you are open to love all without fear, and to forgive all without hate, He will radiate His love through your heart and eyes in a way that your magnetic field becomes a reflection of His sunshine. Yes, God is near and God is here. His tests are many, but so are his blessings. Yes, faith is the flame to eliminate all fear. For if you are truly good, serve Him, and stand only by your conscience -- He will grant you whatever you ask of Him when you enter His heavenly garden.

when we consider DNA, the genotype is the DNA sequence that contains instructions for the living organism. The phenotype is the observable characteristics of an organism, such as its anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, and behavior. The genotype interacts with the environment to produce the phenotype. To put this in an everyday situation, consider the blueprint as a house’s genotype and the actual house its phenotype. The phenotypic construction process is the building of the house using the blueprint as information about what and how to do it. The phenotype is related to the genotype that describes it, but there is a world of physical difference between the genotype and the phenotype and even the phenotypic construction process. For one, the genotype is non-dynamic; it is a quiescent, one-dimensional sequence of symbols (DNA’s symbols are nucleotides) that has no energy or time constraints. Like a blueprint, it can sit around for years, as you have probably learned from watching CSI. The genotype dictates what should be constructed (perhaps a really cute dog), but the DNA itself does not look or act anything like a cute dog. On the other hand, the phenotype (the cute dog) is dynamic and uses energy, especially if it is a border collie.

Something, somewhere, somewhen, must have happened differently… PETUNIA EVANS married Michael Verres, a Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford. HARRY JAMES POTTER-EVANS-VERRES grew up in a house filled to the brim with books. He once bit a math teacher who didn’t know what a logarithm was. He’s read Godel, Escher, Bach and Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases and volume one of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. And despite what everyone who’s met him seems to fear, he doesn’t want to become the next Dark Lord. He was raised better than that. He wants to discover the laws of magic and become a god. HERMIONE GRANGER is doing better than him in every class except broomstick riding. DRACO MALFOY is exactly what you would expect an eleven-year-old boy to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father. PROFESSOR QUIRRELL is living his lifelong dream of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, or as he prefers to call his class, Battle Magic. His students are all wondering what’s going to go wrong with the Defense Professor this time. DUMBLEDORE is either insane, or playing some vastly deeper game which involved setting fire to a chicken. DEPUTY HEADMISTRESS MINERVA MCGONAGALL needs to go off somewhere private and scream for a while. Presenting: HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY You ain’t guessin’ where this one’s going.

Ultimately, one goal of this research is to create a “smart pill” that could boost concentration, improve memory, and maybe increase our intelligence. Pharmaceutical companies have experimented with several drugs, such as MEM 1003 and MEM 1414, that do seem to enhance mental function. Scientists have found that in animal studies, long-term memories are made possible by the interaction of enzymes and genes. Learning takes place when certain neural pathways are reinforced as specific genes are activated, such as the CREB gene, which in turn emits a corresponding protein. Basically, the more CREB proteins circulating in the brain, the faster long-term memories are formed. This has been verified in studies on sea mollusks, fruit flies, and mice. The key property of MEM 1414 is that it accelerates the production of the CREB proteins. In lab tests, aged animals given MEM 1414 were able to form long-term memories significantly faster than a control group. Scientists are also beginning to isolate the precise biochemistry required in the formation of long-term memories, at both the genetic and the molecular level. Once the process of memory formation is completely understood, therapies will be devised to accelerate and strengthen this key process. Not only the aged and Alzheimer’s patients but eventually the average person may well benefit from this “brain boost.

To reason about something is to proceed from one premise or proposition or concept to another, in order ideally to arrive at some conclusion, and in a coherent sequence whose connections are determined by the semantic content of each of the steps taken—each individual logical syntagma of the argument, each clause or sentence or symbol. In a simple syllogism, for example, two premises in conjunction inevitably produce a conclusion determined by their logical content. “Every rose in my garden is red; the rose I am looking at now is in my garden; therefore, the rose I am looking at now is red.” But then the series of steps by which the mind arrives at the conclusion of a series of propositions simply cannot be identical with a series of brute events in the biochemistry of the brain. If the mechanical picture of nature is correct, after all, any sequence of physical causes and effects is determined entirely by the impersonal laws governing the material world. One neuronal event can cause another as a result of physical necessity, but certainly not as a result of logical necessity. And yet the necessary connection that exists between the addition of two numbers and the sum thereby yielded is one produced entirely by the conceptual content of the various terms of the equation, and not by any set of biochemical contingencies. Conversely, if the tenets of mechanistic materialism are sound, the mere semantic content of a thought should not be able to affect the course of physical events in the cerebrum. Even if the long process of human evolution has produced a brain capable of reason, the brain cannot produce the actual contents of reasoning; the connections among the brain’s neurons cannot generate the symbolic and conceptual connections that compose an act of consecutive logic, because the brain’s neurons are related to one another organically and therefore interact physically, not conceptually. Clearly, then, there are mental events that cannot be reduced to mechanical electrochemical processes.

the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play…. All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “co-operative”, i.e., to do exactly what everybody is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them…. Except for the one matter of loyalty to the world State and to their own order, members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous and full of initiative. It will be recognized that it is their business to improve scientific technique, and to keep the manual workers contented by means of continual new amusements…. In normal cases, children of sufficient heredity will be admitted to the governing class from the moment of conception. I start with this moment rather than birth since it is from this moment and not merely the moment of birth that the treatment of the two classes will be different. If, however, by the time the child reaches the age of three it is fairly clear that he does not attain the required standard, he will be degraded at that point. [T]here would be a very strong tendency for the governing classes to become hereditary, and that after a few generations not many children would be moved from either class into the other. This is especially likely to be the case if embryological methods of improving the breed are applied to the governing class, but not to the others. In this way the gulf between the two classes as regards native intelligence will become continually wider and wider…. Assuming that both kinds of breeding are scientifically carried out, there will come to be an increasing divergence between the two types, making them in the end almost different species. (pp. 181–188, emphasis added)

REPROGRAMMING MY BIOCHEMISTRY A common attitude is that taking substances other than food, such as supplements and medications, should be a last resort, something one takes only to address overt problems. Terry and I believe strongly that this is a bad strategy, particularly as one approaches middle age and beyond. Our philosophy is to embrace the unique opportunity we have at this time and place to expand our longevity and human potential. In keeping with this health philosophy, I am very active in reprogramming my biochemistry. Overall, I am quite satisfied with the dozens of blood levels I routinely test. My biochemical profile has steadily improved during the years that I have done this. For boosting antioxidant levels and for general health, I take a comprehensive vitamin-and-mineral combination, alpha lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10, grapeseed extract, resveratrol, bilberry extract, lycopene, silymarin (milk thistle), conjugated linoleic acid, lecithin, evening primrose oil (omega-6 essential fatty acids), n-acetyl-cysteine, ginger, garlic, l-carnitine, pyridoxal-5-phosphate, and echinacea. I also take Chinese herbs prescribed by Dr. Glenn Rothfeld. For reducing insulin resistance and overcoming my type 2 diabetes, I take chromium, metformin (a powerful anti-aging medication that decreases insulin resistance and which we recommend everyone over 50 consider taking), and gymnema sylvestra. To improve LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, I take policosanol, gugulipid, plant sterols, niacin, oat bran, grapefruit powder, psyllium, lecithin, and Lipitor. To improve blood vessel health, I take arginine, trimethylglycine, and choline. To decrease blood viscosity, I take a daily baby aspirin and lumbrokinase, a natural anti-fibrinolytic agent. Although my CRP (the screening test for inflammation in the body) is very low, I reduce inflammation by taking EPA/DHA (omega-3 essential fatty acids) and curcumin. I have dramatically reduced my homocysteine level by taking folic acid, B6, and trimethylglycine (TMG), and intrinsic factor to improve methylation. I have a B12 shot once a week and take a daily B12 sublingual. Several of my intravenous therapies improve my body’s detoxification: weekly EDTA (for chelating heavy metals, a major source of aging) and monthly DMPS (to chelate mercury). I also take n-acetyl-l-carnitine orally. I take weekly intravenous vitamins and alpha lipoic acid to boost antioxidants. I do a weekly glutathione IV to boost liver health. Perhaps the most important intravenous therapy I do is a weekly phosphatidylcholine (PtC) IV, which rejuvenates all of the body’s tissues by restoring youthful cell membranes. I also take PtC orally each day, and I supplement my hormone levels with DHEA and testosterone. I take I-3-C (indole-3-carbinol), chrysin, nettle, ginger, and herbs to reduce conversion of testosterone into estrogen. I take a saw palmetto complex for prostate health. For stress management, I take l-theonine (the calming substance in green tea), beta sitosterol, phosphatidylserine, and green tea supplements, in addition to drinking 8 to 10 cups of green tea itself. At bedtime, to aid with sleep, I take GABA (a gentle, calming neuro-transmitter) and sublingual melatonin. For brain health, I take acetyl-l-carnitine, vinpocetine, phosphatidylserine, ginkgo biloba, glycerylphosphorylcholine, nextrutine, and quercetin. For eye health, I take lutein and bilberry extract. For skin health, I use an antioxidant skin cream on my face, neck, and hands each day. For digestive health, I take betaine HCL, pepsin, gentian root, peppermint, acidophilus bifodobacter, fructooligosaccharides, fish proteins, l-glutamine, and n-acetyl-d-glucosamine. To inhibit the creation of advanced glycosylated end products (AGEs), a key aging process, I take n-acetyl-carnitine, carnosine, alpha lipoic acid, and quercetin. MAINTAINING A POSITIVE “HEALTH SLOPE” Most important,

All our behaviors are manifestations of the biochemistry that drives them. To pull ourselves and our children back from the edge of this man-made abyss at which we now stand, we first have to understand the science.