Dhru Purohit Show - The Connection Between Lack of Community, Dopamine, and Chronic Disease: Why Our Modern World Is Making Us Sick and Addicted

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Maui Nui, and Momentous. Our modern world is overflowing with stimulation from phones, social media, and endless choices, so it’s no wonder we feel distracted, anxious, and hooked on the things that drain our focus. But it’s not our fault. Our brains evolved for a world of scarcity, not the digital overload and excess we live in today. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we’re revisiting one of our most talked-about moments with Dr. Anders Hansen to explore how our modern world is hijacking our biology. Dr. Hansen shares insights from his time with a Kenyan hunter-gatherer tribe and the lifestyle habits that support their optimal health. He also explains why it’s essential to understand what our brains and instincts were initially designed to protect us from and why overcoming these challenges isn’t simply a matter of willpower. Dr. Anders Hansen is a psychiatrist, speaker, award-winning author, and TV host. His books, The Attention Fix, The Happiness Cure, and The Mind-Body Method, have sold several million copies and topped bestseller lists worldwide. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Hansen dive into: Dr. Hansen’s experience with a hunter-gatherer tribe in Kenya (1:48) The tribe’s key lifestyle habits for optimal health (4:30) The “comfort crisis” and how time with your community transforms the brain (10:03 Willpower, temptation, and the impact of ultra-processed foods (15:15) Why meaningful connection is vital and how loneliness impacts your health (18:55) The “Roseto Effect:” how strong relationships protect and extend your life (22:32) Final thoughts and key takeaways (30:23) Also mentioned: Full episode with Dr. Anders Hansen This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Maui Nui, and Momentous. Right now, Bon Charge is offering my community 15% off. Just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use code DHRU to save 15%. Right now, Maui Nui Venison is offering my listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products and a FREE 12-pack of venison jerky sticks with your first order of $79 or more! Just go to mauinuivenison.com/dhru to secure your access now, but hurry, supply is limited! Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine, made by and used by the best, now available in convenient and tasty lemon lime chews. Head to livemomentous.com and use code DHRU for 35% off your first subscription. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Brod here. Can you relate to the feeling of being addicted to your phone, social media, or junk food? You know, for most of us, the answer to at least one of those things is yes. And by the way, it's not your fault. Our brains were not, were not designed for our modern world. Our ancestors evolved to survive in a world of scarcity. But today, that same biology is being hijacked by a world of excess. And in today's episode, I'm sharing a really powerful portion of my,

conversation with Anders Hansen, all about how our modern life is rewiring our brains for unhappiness. Now, Dr. Hansen is a psychiatrist, speaker, an award-winning author, and TV host. His books, the attention fix, the happiness cure, and the mind-body method have sold several million copies and topped best-seller list worldwide. And in our conversation today, which is featuring a moment from our previous episode, something that we want to highlight on, zoom in on, just in case you missed it, or maybe you never heard the episode on the first. place, Dr. Hansen talks about his time living with a modern-day nobatic tribe in Kenya, a community that has no electricity, no social media, no processed foods, and yet almost no

depression, no diabetes, or no chronic disease. We explore Dr. Hansen's learnings about how dopamine one of the oldest molecules in the brain drives so much of our behavior. Why modern life, with its constant hits of sugar, notifications, novelty, tricks the brain into craving more but feeling less satisfied. And what we can do to reclaim control over our brain's reward system. This isn't just about going back to the Savannah. It's about understanding our biology

so that we can design a lifestyle that will work with our brains, not against them. Let's listen in. You know, you've shared before in your work that you spent some time with, you know, a modern day nomadic tribe. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what some of the lessons were and reflections that you got from them.

Yeah, I was fortunate enough to go to Kenya for a Swedish television program. And I spent some times with a group of hunters and gatherers. They lived, they had no running waters. They had no electricity. They were constantly moving. They were staying in one place for a couple of months. And then they were going on to the next place. They were constantly threatened by lions.

They were there just a couple of hours before I came. And it was just incredible experience. I had read a lot about these tribes and how they lived, but to see it in real life, that was just astonishing. And I asked them, how many of you have sleeping problems? And they said that, well, we did not sleep good last night because there was lions here. And then I said, well, if there was lion in my house in Stockholm, the whole of Stockholm would be awake, so that doesn't count.

But apart from that, how many of you have sleeping problems? And they didn't understand the question. They were like, well, if you don't have any lions, you sleep. And what is interesting with this group of hunters and gatherers also that they don't seem to have any type 2 diabetes at all, and this has been studied in many hunter-gatherers groups, cardiovascular disease, the main killer, or one of the main killers for Westerners is very, very rare.

Depression seems to be rare. It's hard to measure, but it seems to be rare. And you should remember that these are people who live, they don't have access to any medicine at all. They don't have any primary care physicians who prescribe them blood pressure lowering drugs or lipids or antidepressant medication. They don't have any therapist or anything like that. And it was suspected that maybe they have something in their genes,

maybe it's something about their genetics and that they are unique in some way. But researchers at the Karolinska studied a group of these hunters and gatherers who moved into Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and it turned out that they got Western disease exactly the same way that we do. So it comes from the lifestyle. They seem to be protected against these problems that we experience because of the lifestyle. And what is it in that lifestyle?

Well, first of all, they seem to take about 15 to 18,000 steps per day. So they are incredibly physically active compared to us. They never exercise. They would never dream of that. I asked them, do you ever go for a run? And they said, well, we run if there's a predator who's after us. But otherwise, why would we? They did not really understand the concept of exercise.

So they don't do that. And they live very closely to one another. Few of them live lonely or by themselves. And I think these two things exercise and being closely to one another. And they don't overeat. Their body mass index was around 18 to 20. So that's low. And they did not have any special diet.

They ate whatever they could find because they were threatened by starvation. But I think all these three things, not eating too much, being constantly physically active, not necessarily exercising, but walking and stuff like that and living closely to one another. These are also the factors that we have seen in what's called the blue zones. And the blue zones are parts of the world where people live until they become 100, a large portion of people live until they become 100 years old and very few suffer from dementia. There are a couple of those places. One is in Okinawa and one is in Sardinia and one is actually in southern Sweden. And these places are a bit legendary. I think there was a documentary on Netflix about them.

But one of the common things in all these blue zones is the fact that they all seem to exercise by daily exercise and not running. And they don't eat too much and they live closely to one another. And that's exactly what I saw with this tribe in Kenya. You know, one of the things that the individuals in the tribe told you when you had shared that there are so many people in my society, you know, you were talking about yourself, that they have everything, but yet they're struggling with depression, they're struggling with loneliness, they're struggling with all that. And one of the ideas, I can't remember if it was you that said that or if they're struggling. said that to you, but it's maybe because we have everything at our disposal and we don't have to work in the way that we do. We don't have to rely on each other the way that these nomadic communities do. Maybe that's one of the reasons why we have let our brains be hijacked. We have

everything. We have everything. We have the casino on our social media, on our phone. We have all that. And that might be one of the reasons why we are unhappy as we are. Sure. The holiday are about giving, but every so often, we can do something to give back to ourselves. That's why I love the Bond Charge red light face mask. It's the ultimate self-care gift, whether it's for you or someone you love. It uses red and near-infrared light to support collagen, elastin, and skin repair, helping your skin stay healthy, radiant, and strong, especially during the dry, darker winter months. What I love most about it is it's effortless, just 10 to 20 minutes in the evening while you're winding down or stretching, reading, journaling, or watching your

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I asked them that. How many of you have experienced sadness, longer periods of that? And they were like, it seems to be very few. And I said that in my country, one in eight adults are being prescribed medication. because they are sad or anxious. And they said, but you have everything. And then I said, yes, and maybe that's exactly why.

And when I got there, I had this feeling that, you know, they live in such a primitive way. They don't have schools. They don't have universities or hospitals. I felt, I'm going to feel sorry for them. I could not shake that feeling. And when I left, I had completely changed that. I thought that it's, I don't feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for us.

What are we doing to ourselves? I mean, we have everything. And I don't mean that we should go back to the Savannah. We wouldn't want to because for these people, about half of them die before they become teenagers as well. The child mortality is just astonishingly high. And almost all the adults had lost children. So we don't want to go back.

But there are certainly important things, conclusions that we could draw from their lifestyles when it comes to not just our physical but mental health. And I couldn't help of thinking of a guy called Thomas Insel. He's a psychiatrist and he led an organization called I think National Institute of Mental Health. And they distribute money for psychiatric and neurological research. And during his period as a boss there, they distributed, if I remember correctly, $17 billion to psychiatric research during a 10-year period or so. And he was asked a couple of years ago, what did that do? What was the effects? What did you get from that money?

And he said that, well, I think we got a lot of cool articles written by a lot of cool researchers. but I don't think we move the needle one bit when it came to reducing hospital admissions, when it comes to reducing suicide, when it comes to making people feel better. And by that, I don't want to say that every old research is bad. I want to say that we should not just focus on advanced molecules, but we should also look at our past, look at our brains and biology and how it evolved and try to learn things from that, because there's so much wisdom in that, I think. That's beautifully said.

You know, I was actually born in Nairobi. I was born in Nairobi, and I went back a few years ago to go spend some time with one of these modern day. They're the cousins of the Maasai. They're called the Samburu tribe. And it was such a powerful experience to spend time with them. And also, it was a very challenging experience because as modern, foods, especially white sugar, started to come into the societies. You saw a stark difference

between some of the younger people. You know, the older people that were there, you look at their teeth and you look at their jaw structure and they have perfect teeth and their jaw structure is square. It's, you know, it's beautiful. You know, similar to the work of Weston Price and a dentist who went to Africa to study a lot of, you know, why don't people in Africa in particular and these tribes. Why do they have perfect teeth? And they don't have any access to toothpaste and dental care and other things. But some of the younger individuals in their teens and early 20s who had been given this sugar.

And for the first time and it started coming in, you know, as naturally modernity starts to come into all these areas. One of the individuals who was our caretaker, he said, we said, do you want some coffee in the morning? He said, yeah, yeah, we'll have some coffee. You know, so we were pouring coffee, we were getting coffee to everybody. And then he went over to the sugar and he put in 14, I counted it, 14 tablespoons of sugar inside a very small cup. And it was a moment that I had where I said, you know, it's not that these groups, which you've talked about in your work, it's not that we had more willpower in the past.

It's just that these things didn't even exist. If our ancestors had exposure to the same candy, the same sugar, same other things, they would fall victim to the same things that many Americans and Europeans are falling into, which is our brains are being hijacked by these ultra-processed technologies, foods, and stimulus that we're around. Yeah, exactly. And then we go and then we feel bad about it because we feel that we don't have enough willpower. And that's not just, that's not the way to frame it. As someone said, that, you know, to protect yourself against the smog of Beijing, you can't just say to people wear masks. That's it. Well, it's part of the solution maybe, but you should also have regulation, of course.

Everyone realizes that. And I think that we will look back at this period in history and think it was very naive to, to, to, to use these digital technologies to spread them without any regulation. And I'm one of the ones who believe in taxing sugar. I think that we should do that and that we need to tilt people's behavior in a way to eat more healthy and sugar tax seems to work. It did in Norway at least. So nature's greatest hoax is to make us believe that if we just follow our instincts,

we will be happy. No, our instincts are not there to make us happy. They're there to help us survive in a world of scarcity, and we don't live in that world anymore. We follow these instincts and we build exercise of our lives. We have cookies and stuff that are just, you know, there's nothing like that in nature. And of course, it's tempting. And as a consequence, when we can't deal with it, we feel bad.

We feel morally broken. And that's just so sad. You know, you mentioned you about sugar. There's often this quote that people say, that you're just about sugar. you hear thrown around on social media, and it's this idea that sugar is more addictive than cocaine. And a lot of that was based on, for my research into this, mouse and mouse studies that were there, where they basically had the option of sugar and cocaine, and you had these mice that were in isolation. There were some follow-up studies that get talked about much less,

and we'll link to them in the show notes, which are when you take that same mice and you put them in what's called a mice playground, where there are other mice that are there. There's other stimulus. They can interact with other mice and they can have community. Now all of a sudden, sugar did not have as strong of a hold. And I think that this, if I would extrapolate from it, even though mice are not human beings, but we can look at other studies on human beings, we can see that being with people, as you mentioned earlier in the podcast and spending time in community, specifically face to face, is one of these

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That's D-H-R-U at Live, L-I-V-E, Momentus, M-O-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com to save 35% off your first order. Yeah, I mean, I agree. And what I think is you should remember about the reward system in the brain, there's a chemical called dopamine, and it's 600 million years old. old. And dopamine is basically one of the oldest molecules that's been around. All brains have dopamine, not just humans, but animals, even insects have dopamine. And what dopamine tells you is to get more stuff. It tells us what you should focus on. And dopamine basically, there's no end to how

much your brain wants. And that made a lot of sense in a world where we were constantly threatened by starvation. But the dopamine system is sort of, it's constantly active in our brains and it's active within rather limited parameters. And what was the best thing that could happen to our ancestors? Well, that was probably sex or if you found a beehive full of honey, you know, you smoked out the honey and then you could have that. That's wonderful. And then dopamine rose a bit and then it went back to normal. Now, if you put amphetamins or cocaine into this system, Dopamine levels rises way beyond anything natural. There's nothing in nature that makes dopamine rise so much as amphetamins, for instance.

And what that means that this drug is hijacking your brain, is telling you that focus on me, that's what is doing. And the brain also wants to remain in balance. It constantly, if it realizes that it gets dopamine from its surroundings, it stops producing its own. And then you're, since dopamine drives behavior, the engine that drives your behavior shuts off. So this is, it's, if take a step back, you realize that this reward system that health our ancestors survive in this world that wants to also to remain in balance. It gets completely knocked out in our modern society by drugs.

of course, but I think also by processed food and digital media and so on. Something that Anna Lemke at Stanford has written a lot about in Dopamination, which I recommend everyone to read. So my point here is that all these instincts that we have in us are being hijacked by super stimuli. And these superstimilies override the good things. As you said, human connection is being overridden by. by these powerful stimuli. We spend less, we meet less and less. And as I said, humans evolved to survive.

And to be part of a group was incredibly important for survival. So when we feel lonely, we feel that we are in immortal danger and we feel bad for that. Have you ever come across the term Rosetto effect in the town Rosetto in Pennsylvania? Have you heard about this? No, I haven't. No. So this is something that Malcolm Gladwell and a few other researchers have written about. This was a small town in Pennsylvania that during the 1950s and 60s, you had primarily

Italian immigrants living in this town, and they were living in these intergenerational households. You often had three to four generations all living in one household, taking care of each other the same way that they would when they were in these small towns in Italy. And there was a doctor that was servicing that local town. And he was a doctor. And he was a doctor. at a medical conference and he went to the bar to grab a drink. And he had told this other, you know, bigger researcher that, you know, it's crazy. I'm the doctor for this small town. Not one person in this town that I'm, you know, in charge of the doctor for has died of cardiovascular disease under the age of like 65, I think the number was. And the researchers got

curious and said, well, what the heck is going on in this town when at that point in time in America, in particular, cardiovascular disease was on the rise. And over the course of 50 years of watching this town and also seeing how this town that was very close-knit and these intergenerational households were living together, solely these Italian immigrants were no longer living in the way that they were. And by the 80s, their average rate of heart disease was the same as the rest of America. And this term was coined as the Rosetto effect. And it's this idea that how we live with one another and close-knit communities, in particular,

experienced a reduced risk of heart disease, even if their diets and water they were drinking and everything else was the same as everybody. So that's the protective effect of community influence on our longevity and in particular cardiovascular disease. That's very interesting. It makes – there's been lots of studies done into long. loneliness, as you perhaps know. And we know now that loneliness is not just increased, doesn't mean increased risk of depression

anxiety, but it actually means worse prognosis for all forms of cardiovascular disease. And long-term loneliness is also connected to increased risk for some forms of cancer. And by loneliness, it's very important to understand that our social needs differ. So you can't measure loneliness in any objective way if you feel. lonely, you are lonely. If you don't feel lonely, you're not lonely. It's as simple as that. And to have shorter periods of loneliness, that's not dangerous, that everyone has that. But long-term loneliness is dangerous. And that's a bit strange. I mean, why is that? And again, I think you get an understanding from an evolutionary perspective. Our ancestors did not survive by themselves.

In a group, they were safe and by themselves. They were, they were, they were, they were, they were basically. So to be part of a group was as important as having food. And that means that you, when you are isolated, you are in a state where no one can help you. And then your stress system is amped up, is increased. So you are in a state of low level stress constantly when you are lonely. And that's because you see the world, you start to see the world as more dangerous because you have to see the world as more dangerous. No one can help you. And we know, now, now, for instance, that people who are lonely, they sleep more super, sorry, if you sleep by easily, if you sleep by yourself and you haven't chosen it, then you sleep more shallow. You're easily, more easily awoken. And that's also strange. I mean, why should you wake up more if you sleep by yourself? You don't have anyone who is tossing and turning around in your bed.

And the answer is probably that if you slept by yourself, historically, you had no one there to warn you for danger. And then you have to sleep more. should be easier to interrupt. We also know that people who are experiencing a lot of loneliness, they start to view others as more hostile. Neutral faces becomes slightly aggressive if you are in a lonely state. And slightly aggressive faces become very aggressive if you are lonely.

That's the way you perceive them. And that's probably because your brain is starting to interpret your surrounding as more dangerous because, again, there's no one there to help you. So you are not damaged if you see the world that way, if you are lonely. And it's very important to spread that information to people who are lonely that you will see others as more threatening, but they are not more threatening. And that's not because you are broken, because that's because you're functioning. And if you have someone who is lonely in your surroundings and they are a bit standoffish,

That's not necessarily because they don't like you. It could be a symptom of loneliness. So, as you say, human connection, of course, is important. And I think the really interesting question is, why is it that way? Why is it so important for health and longevity and mental health? Well, that's because we would not survive by ourselves. And that means that we are constantly stressed if we are too isolated. There was a study done, there was during COVID, which was pretty interesting, and there was individuals who experienced a lot of loneliness.

They were between 25 to 100 years of age, so there was all walks of lives. And they had to fill out a questionnaire, and the loneliness score was calculated. After this, they were called three times a week, 10 minutes every time, and someone just chatted to them. about whatever they wanted to talk about. And after a couple of weeks, this loneliness score had been dropped by 20%. Now, then you might say that who were these callers? They must have been super psychologists who could give, you know, the best advice ever, the perfect one-liners.

And it turned out that there was just high school students. They had been trained for like an hour. And the advice they were given was that listen to the one you're talking to, let the person you're talking to decide the topic and be interested in what he or she is saying. And I think that's a beautiful example of how small things can make a lot of difference in terms of our perceived loneliness. And when you give your mom or dad or grandpa or whatever is a call or someone else who is lonely, you're basically sending a signal to them that you belong to the group. You are one of us.

Someone has your back. And deep down in the brain, that will be registered as you are not in such a danger anymore. And then the stress system gears down. And you don't just give them a happier life. You even give them a longer life. You know, loneliness was something that was, as you mentioned, a punishment for a lot of our ancestors. And really, no human beings could really survive. without having a baked-in family, tribe group.

Now today, we have to go out of our way to seek community because of the way that the world is often designed in our Western world. We have to be intentional about it. It's so powerful to remember that our brains haven't changed much in the last 200,000 years. Whereas our environment,

which obviously has come with a lot of really great things, our environment has changed more in the last 100 years. than in all of human history. And the same dopamine systems that once helped our ancestors survive now leaves many of us feeling anxious, distracted, and unfulfilled,

especially if we don't take charge against this modern environment. And as we heard today, there is a way out. Move more by living actively. Eat simply and intentionally. Spend more time face to face with people who matter to you and create moments of stillness where your brain can reset.

This is how we begin to undo the dopamine hijack by choosing behaviors that provide lasting fulfillment instead of quick hits of pleasure that hijack our brain, which we've all been guilty of, including myself. I hope this episode resonated with you. If it did and you want to go deeper, you can expand on this moment that we featured here and you can listen to the full-length conversation with Dr. Henson.

And in that conversation, we go deep. deeper into the topics of protecting your focus, handling stress, and taking action to protect our brains. I've included a link to that episode in the show notes below, as well as a link to this incredible newsletter that me and my team put together on a dopamine detox. If you wake up and look at your phone first thing in the morning, you want to check this out. And lastly, as always, if you enjoy today's episode, do me a favor. Share it with a friend or someone who's feeling overwhelmed by the pace of modern life. As always, thanks for tuning. in. I'll see you next week.