By Patrick Holford
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Quite a few intelligent people extrapolate a rather apocalyptic future for humanity. Whether we nuke ourselves, run out of resources, become infertile, overtaken by AI robots or are struck by a meteor, some go so far as to recommend space travel to secure humanity’s future.
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My ponderings conclude that there are two fundamental problems – and one essential requirement to solve them. The first problem is corruption, primarily driven by greed. The second is a lack of design, for truly sustainable living in the areas of health, ecology and economy. The essential requirement to solve both of these problems is benevolent intelligence – that is, intelligence for the benefit of all, with the right motive and not driven by greed for money, power or status.
Here lies a key problem to add to the list of dwindling resources, pollution and war mongering, and it is the undeniable decline in that unique attribute which makes Homo sapiens dominant in the world, perhaps even the universe – that is his intelligence. IQ, brain size and mental health are all in rapid decline. Scandinavian research says IQ is falling by about 7% a generation. Brain volume, based on skull size, has decreased by 20% in the last 20,000 years or so. Rates of mental illness and neurodegeneration are escalating across all ages and seemingly in all countries.
We do not just need a few super-bright people, although that helps, if the populous in general is dumbing down. That’s a recipe for dictatorship. We need the majority to ‘wise up’ – including both the young, because they are the future and the elders, because they hold knowledge from experience. (I like Isabelle Allende’s – the best selling Chilean American novelist – definition of experience as ‘what you learn just after you need to know it’.)
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In China for example, the ‘silver haired’ economy of people over the age of 60 comprises 300 million people. The tragedy of course, is that many are drifting into dementia and losing the memory of all that has been learned.
That is why, along with peace, climate, ecology and sustainable energy activism, the mission of foodforthebrain.org is to protect and promote intelligence and mental health and must expand to become global if we are to survive as a species.
The acceleration of societal change in the digital age, compared to the industrial age, will be rapidly surpassed by the age of artificial intelligence. Resistance is futile. For us, on a mission to protect and promote mental health and enhance intelligence, AI opens up the possibility to make our COGNITION programme available to all, in any language, and to learn from the experience of thousands, what specific messaging really helps drive positive behaviour change to promote mental health and intelligence.
Of course, we would like all this taught in schools and prioritised in healthcare but we cannot afford to wait for the corrupted governmental bureaucracies to paradigm shift. So called healthcare, in most countries, remains deeply in the claws of big Pharma and big Food.
Putting prevention before profit is not even in their futuristic sights, whether one votes left or right. In the UK, for example, the NHS remains the fastest growing failing business, with no plans for preventing disease. The latest person put in charge of prevention, Professor John Deanfield, is paid by and has shares in, pharma. He considers prevention to be achieved by more drugs to more people earlier, despite the fact that the crippling diseases we have created in the 21st century were never caused by a lack of drugs.
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Hence, we have to ‘do it ourselves’, direct to the public, people telling people, funded by people – citizen science and education at its best. Our impact may be small to start with, lacking significant funding or buy-in from progressive countries but both are increasingly likely as the mental health meltdown becomes epidemic. The cost of dementia crises will linger and the breakdown in children’s mental health, upon which our future depends, looms as catastrophic. Who will care for the billions with neurodegeneration? This is not a problem that is going away.
China is a case in point. There are 300 million people over 60 and the estimated annual cost of dementia will exceed $1 trillion in the next decade. Do we ‘make Britain dementia friendly’ and pour yet more money into our failing health services or do we end dementia? The scientific fact is that less than one in a hundred cases of Alzheimer’s are caused by genes. Theoretically, 99 percent could be prevented with nutrition and lifestyle changes. It isn’t actually that difficult.
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This is not a pipe dream. We can do so much together to change this – anything is possible!
Next year we are targeting 18 million over 60 year olds in China with the blessing and collaboration of the former minister and vice minister of health, both now ‘silver-haired’. What we are doing – personalising and popularising prevention – is doable on a global scale, precisely because we are in a digital age. AI allows us to break down the barrier of language.
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You can support us with this vital mission in three ways:
There is so much hope for our future humanity if we work together!
Thank you for reading!
Food for the Brain is a not-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices.
Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
