John J. Ratey - Go Wild: Eat Fat, Run Free, Be Social, and Follow Evolution’s Other Rules for Total Health and Well-being

On March 7, 2009, NASA launched the Kepler space observatory with the goal of discovering earthlike planets orbiting stars in our galaxy. Almost immediately, the data produced by this venture revealed the presence of planets orbiting stars in the Goldilocks zone, a term used to describe an ideal distance between a planet and its parent star that is neither too hot nor too coldwhat scientists have more formally termed the habitable zone. By November 2013, the mission scientists concluded that in our galaxy alone there may exist as many as forty billion planets that could support life.

Applying some clever mathematics to their observations of these planets, the Kepler team learned something surprising: They discovered that planets actually deform the orbits of the very stars around which they revolve. And the denser the planet, the more it affects the orbit of the parent star.

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the prevailing notion that the earth was the center of the universe. In his publication De Revolutionibus, he presented his observations concluding that the earth actually rotated around the sun. His rejection of geocentrism was ultimately denounced by religious leaders who held to the biblical proclamation of the primacy of the earth. What followed thereafter must surely have been a debate of great intensity, with both sides fervently digging in their heels.

We now know that these seemingly irreconcilable theories are actually both right and wrong. And this paradox is elegantly resolved by the Kepler observations of distant planets. Like the newly discovered planets, our earth distorts the orbit of a star, our sun. Thus the delineation of master and subordinate becomes blurred. In the mutually distorting dance of sun and earth, each participant influences the other.

In the pages that follow, you will be exploring the many dances that define our species. Through metaphor and anecdote, science and educated speculation, you will gain a deep understanding of the profound influence that our interactions with our environment have upon charting our destiny as well as our momentary well-being. And you will discover how, like our small planets tug on the sun, each of us in turn influences all that surrounds us.

We humans are a polarized lot. Whether were debating the center of celestial movement or the importance of genes versus environmental influence in human development, there is often little common ground. But now we are learning that, like planets and stars, genes and environment influence each other. It has become clear that our lifestyle choicesincluding food, sleep, exercise, relationships, and even acts of compassionfeed back a constant flow of information to our DNA and actually modify the expression of what had been considered an immutable code. As the science of epigenetics reconciles seemingly disparate theories about our health destiny, we are learning to embrace the notion of the dance and to accept that we must design our lives accordingly.