The arts and aesthetics offer emotional connection to the full range of human experience. "The arts can be more than just sugar on the tongue," Anjan Chatterjee, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says. "In art, when there's something challenging, which can also be uncomfortable, this discomfort, if we're willing to engage with it, offers the possibility of some change, some transformation. That can also be a powerful aesthetic experience." The arts, in this way, become vehicles to contend with ideas and concepts that are difficult and uncomfortable otherwise. When Picasso painted his masterpiece Guernica in 1937, he captured the heartbreaking and cruel nature of war, and offered the world a way to consider the universal suffering caused by the Spanish Civil War. When Lorraine Hansberry wrote her play A Raisin in the Sun, she gave us a powerful story of people struggling with racism, discrimination, and the pursuit of the American dream while also offering a touching portrait of family life.

Lectins are large proteins that serve as a crucial weapon that plants use to defend themselves. The lectins in most plants bind to carbohydrates as we consume the plant. They also bind to sugar molecules found in the gut, in the brain, between nerve endings, in joints and in all bodily fluids. According to Dr. Steven Gundry, these sticky proteins can interrupt messaging between cells and cause toxic and inflammatory reactions. Brain fog is just one result of lectins interrupting communication between nerves. An upset stomach is another common symptom of lectin overload. Dr. Gundry lists a wide range of other health problems including aching joints, dementia, headaches and infertility that have been resolved in his patients once they eliminated lectins from their diets. Dr. Paul Saladino writes that the hypothesis that lectins are involved in Parkinson's disease is also gaining support, with animal studies showing that ‘lectins, once eaten, may be damaging the gut and travelling to the brain, where they appear to be toxic to dopaminergic neurons'.