As long as I can remember, one of my favorite activities has been intense people watching. For me this has never been a casual activity. When my Greek wife and I first started dating almost 15 years ago, she sometimes accused me of “ogling” other women when we were together because my gaze often drifted away from her to others nearby. Our conversations on the subject sometimes became a bit tense! I admit that she was right up to a point, except that I never used sex to determine exactly who I would watch. For some reason, I have always been intensely interested in observing the behavior of my fellow human beings.
Give Me People Over Places and Things
I admit that I am an obsessive people watcher. When I am in a public space you will never see me reading even though I love to read. You will never catch me texting or chatting on my smart phone and you will never see me with buds in my ears listening to music. I do these things in private but never in public. I love people watching because at heart I am an obsessive empiric scientist with an intense interest in neuroscience. When I observe human behavior, I always end up speculating about why people do what they do. As a “why guy” empiric scientist, over many decades I determined that human behavior falls into one of two categories:
- Evolutionary adaptive behavior: This type of behavior slowly evolved over time according to the rules of evolution. Performing this type of behavior increases your chance of success and survival in an often-hostile world.
- Pathological behavior: This type of behavior is abnormal and is caused by dysfunction or disease. Performing this behavior decreases your chance of success or survival in the world.
Examples might be helpful. The withdrawal reflex describes what happens when you touch a hot stove. Your hand immediately jerks away well before you feel any pain in your brain. The pain signals travel to your spinal cord and then back down your arm, causing your muscles to retract your arm away from the heat. Your brain isn’t involved in this process. The withdrawal reflex is clearly an example of Mother Nature’s handiwork.
An Interesting Plane Ride
I saw an example of pathological behavior yesterday when flying from Paris to our home in Athens. A gentleman who appeared to be in his mid-30s was sitting a few rows ahead of me. I almost immediately noticed something unusual—every few minutes his legs would start to rapidly jump up and down in a rhythmic pattern. After a minute or two the jumping would stop, but several minutes later it would start up again. He seemed to be totally unware of what was going on with his legs. The amplitude of his leg movements was less than an inch and the rate of movement was between 180 and 200.
Undoubtedly you have seen this type of relatively common leg movement. As a matter of fact, decades ago I used to do this myself, but I haven’t done so for many years. It’s wasn’t because of any conscience decision on my part—I simply used my empiric skills and logic to figure out what causes this phenomenon and I used this model to figure out how to eliminate it. This is empiric science at its finest! Jumping legs are clearly an outward sign of internal restlessness. Other related behaviors include hair twirling, knuckle cracking and nail biting. People often demonstrate some or all of these behaviors. Restless leg syndrome is a related disorder that involves feeling the internal restlessness without the jumping legs.
Science, Science Where Art Thou?
I also find it interesting that the medical and scientific communities have never seriously addressed these behaviors other than to label them “nervous habits” or they suggest they are related to obsessive compulsive disorder. In a way they are right, but not for the reasons they are relying on. To me it is clear that these signs of internal restlessness are pathological, and they are caused by long-term exposure to highly processed food. Over decades I noticed that certain brain dysfunction symptoms seemed to be connected to each other and all of them responded to changes in diet. An increased intake of highly processed food always triggered the symptoms or made them worse and eating a healthy whole-foods or Paleo style diet always suppressed them. Over time I recognized 22 such symptoms and internal restlessness is number 17. To me this fit the pattern of a disease that I decided to name Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome.
Physician, Heal Thyself
As I have already mentioned, years ago I experienced this internal restlessness and assumed it was normal. At the time I was eating the same diet as everyone else—one loaded with highly processed food. The toxic elements of this diet appear to be the deadly triad of excessive fructose mainly from added sugars, excessive high glycemic carbohydrates mainly from grains and excessive omega 6 fatty acids relative to omega 3 fatty acids. Once I unraveled the connection between diet and brain dysfunction, I figured out how to prevent, treat and reverse the disease. Your own physician likely won’t know anything about CARB syndrome and that’s something I’m trying to change but getting physicians to accept a radical new theory is like herding cats—good luck with that! That’s why I wrote a blog post teaching people to diagnose their own CARB syndrome and arrange for their own treatment.
A Window Into Your Brain
There is some good news when it comes to having jumping legs and other signs of internal restlessness. In essence, these symptoms reflect diffuse brain dysfunction and if you ignore them and don’t take corrective action, your overall brain function is likely to deteriorate over time. Trust me—that’s not a place you want to visit! I highly recommend that you take your brain with you as you grow older, and that simply ain’t gonna happen if you continue eating junk.