The Tipping Point - Applied to Nutrition and Health

Each of us, as individuals, has our nutritional tipping point. And societies as a whole also have their nutritional tipping points as well.

The term “tipping point” comes from the field of epidemiology. It originally referred to when epidemics rapidly accelerated, or reached a tipping point at which large numbers of people were affected. Malcolm Gladwell writes about such phenomena in his book, The Tipping Point.

Thirty years ago, when I first met with Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, one of the pioneers in nutritional medicine, we talked a little about how poor nutrition might set the stage for a societal catastrophe. With great foresight, he said that a tipping point would come when our society has more sick people than healthy people to take care of them. That situation would lead to social and economic collapse.

People often reach a tipping point in their moods, such as when they are overwhelmed by stress or explode in anger. There are also tipping points in the progression of diseases, such as when cardiovascular disease reaches a crescendo known as a heart attack or when a tumor becomes clinically recognizable, or terminal.

People seem to function – perhaps get by – even though their nutritional intake may be marginal. They may not feel their best, a sign of less than optimal nutritional biochemistry. Many studies refer to their subjects as being “apparently healthy” because they have no overt signs of serious disease. But “apparently healthy” often means that they have not yet reached their nutritional tipping point.

Fatigue, one of the most common of all symptoms, may be a sign that we’ve hit our tipping point for poor nutrition and too much stress. We end up having too many things to do, but without the nutritional support to fortify us. Prediabetes is another tipping point, as would be any fulminant disease. The question is: what is your tipping point, and what are you doing to avoid it?