Thinking And Eating For Two: The Science of Using Systems 1 and 2 Thinking to Nourish Self and Symbionts

In his book of good news for how to maintain optimal health throughout a long life, including during the times of a viral Covid-19 outbreak. Prof. Dr. Greg Maguire explains in this illuminating book how to avoid being over diagnosed and over treated by our dangerous medical system and the illnesses that the system often causes. The book covers the many failures of our medical system and the scientific basis for eating a whole food plant-based diet that will prevent and even treat our chronic diseases. Because our exposome, including our diet, accounts for 70-90% of chronic diseases, nourishing ourselves with a whole plant based diet can drastically reduce our need for medical diagnosis and treatment. Eating plants nourishes the self (host) as well as the host’s microbiome (symbionts such as bacteria); hence we are always eating for two. Without a healthy microbiome, the self cannot be healthy. The book emphasizes the need to understand foods as a system, and not just understand food in a reductionist manner as simply how the single microcomponents of the food act in isolation, and in acting on one part of the body. Rather, the complex interaction of the nutrient components, working synergistically, and how these nutrients affect the whole body, is how we need to understand food. You’ll learn, for example, that a plant based diet can help reset your innate and adaptive immune systems to reduce chronic inflammation and help remediate autoimmune diseases, and even help to prevent and treat cancer. And those practicing a high fat keto diet will learn not to do so given the many negative effects and few positive effects of the fat laden diet that is poorly understood by many. This book is written for the scientifically-inclined lay public, and physicians and healthcare providers, and offers a new way of thinking about nutrition using critical analysis of relevant scientific and medical studies with their references. In order to understand health and practice a healthy lifestyle, two types of thinking are required, Systems 1 and 2 thinking; hence the “thinking for two.” Systems 1 thinking is reactionary, automatic thought and Systems 2 thinking is deep thought used to understand something. New ideas learned using Systems 2 thinking can be made into Systems 1 thinking so that the new things learned can become automatic. As such, when using Systems 1 and 2 thinking, this book is not simply a prescription for diet, lifestyle, and healthcare, rather this book is a prescription for how to think about and analyze diet, lifestyle, and healthcare, using our simian Systems 2 brains to think well, and to eat well like a plant consuming haplorhine (primates who lost the ability to make vitamin C) to nourish self and symbionts. This updated edition contains a special section on how to best prevent and mitigate a Covid-19 infection caused by the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.