Inflamed Quotes

“In the story of cancer and chemistry, the harm comes from exposure, and exposure inversely follows gradients of social power. Disproportionate harm is wrought on liberalism’s second-class citizens: the working class, women and children, the disabled, the colonized.”
― Rupa Marya, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

“In the Cheyenne language, the word for home is 'Enovo,' which means 'you are home.' Not 'your home.' 'You are home': which could mean falling asleep on the couch at your grandmother's or sitting at the table of your auntie while she cooks or returning to the land your family takes care of or speaking your community's language. 'You are home' defines a system of relationships between humans, and between humans and their built environment and the web of life. A sense of well-being comes with a shared language, shared purpose, and common cause, a political community that stretches beyond the concept of nation with its vocabulary of rights. It is a consciousness of balance and happiness that is reflected in the very chemistry of our bodies.”
― Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

“The built environment is designed, intentionally or not, to cause depression, cognitive decline, dementia, and other illnesses - all mediated by inflammatory cytokines.”
― Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

“the body is itself a kind of place—not a solid object but a terrain through which things pass, and in which they sometimes settle and sediment.”27 To wonder why some things settle in some bodies and not in others is to begin to ask questions about power, injustice, and inequity, questions that are bound in modern medicine with questions of colonialism.”
― Rupa Marya, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

“Human beings are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection. Saying that word is not the privilege of some few persons, but the right of everyone. Dialogue is the encounter in which the united reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s “depositing” ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideas to be “consumed” by the discussants. It is an act of creation; it must not serve as a crafty instrument for the domination of one person by another. Men and women who lack humility (or have lost it) cannot come to the people, cannot be their partners in naming the world. For the truly humanist educator and the authentic revolutionary, the object of action is the reality to be transformed by them together with other people. —PAOLO FREIRE1”
― Rupa Marya, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

“A full spectrum of products exploit the disruptions of modern life to help us cope with this stress, to make us temporarily less unhappy—and to hook us with a promised return to some imagined state of bliss. The physical environment drives us, through anxiety and opportunity, to the kinds of behaviors that generate more inflammation: overeating, drug use, and self-isolation.118 Chronic stress makes the body vulnerable to addiction,119 increasing levels of emotional stress cause decreased impulse control,120 and the more chronic the stress becomes, the more maladaptive the behavior becomes.121 Chronic stress dampens activity in the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for rational decision making and self-control—and heightens activity in the limbic system, which includes the amygdala, an ancient center of the brain that guides impulsive behavior.122 Global industries intuitively understand this connection between the endocrine and nervous systems, encouraging addiction and overconsumption as a path to happiness, a dynamic that David Courtwright calls “limbic capitalism.”123 As Facebook cofounder Sean Parker explained, social media are engineered to hijack our need for social connection, offering “a little dopamine hit” to the reward centers of the brain through likes and retweets and views.124 This is not exactly an accurate description of the complex neurobiology at play, but it is a fair assessment of how Facebook keeps us coming back for more.125”
― Rupa Marya, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

“Philanthropists traditionally use their money to project their visions onto foreign places, replacing Indigenous forms of knowledge with new Western categories and practices. Philanthrocapitalism is the latest in a long series of technologies for the social reproduction of colonial power.”
― Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

“The goal is repair and recovery—restoration of the body’s optimal working conditions, a state called homeostasis.4”
― Rupa Marya, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice