Err Unbalanced Quotes

The modern, developed world is experiencing an ever-growing crisis of both chronic immunological diseases and mental health conditions. Perhaps this is not a coincidence, but is instead a pandemic of unbalanced defence systems. This is partially because the bodies and minds we have inherited from our ancestors were honed to survive in a very different environment. Until the health and sanitation revolutions of the twentieth century, humans in all strata of society lived in differing layers of filth, with no access to antibiotics or vaccines. This resulted in a high infectious mortality; those who survived tended to have more aggressive immune systems, prone to err on the side of inflammation. It was also a world of constant inter-human violence and regular exposure to predatory animals. Psychologically, this would have favoured a tendency towards both anxiety about others and also depression-like sickness behaviour during infection.10 Across human history, from generation to generation, there has thus been a leaning towards an ‘inflammatory bias’.