How to use: Record this as a multi-voice audio drama with friends, family, or just yourself doing different voices. Play it back for revision. The soap-opera format makes energy allocation and system competition viscerally memorable.
Characters:
Duration: ~10 minutes
NARRATOR:
The human body. A marvel of cooperation. Or so they'd have you believe. In reality, it's more like a dysfunctional office where three department heads fight over a fixed energy budget. Welcome to... Selfish Systems.
(dramatic music sting)
NARRATOR:
It's Monday morning. Total energy budget: 2,000 kilocalories. The department heads have gathered for their weekly allocation meeting. Metabolism is chairing, as usual.
METABOLISM:
Right then, everyone. Same budget as always. Two thousand kcal. I've done the projections. Brain, you need —
BRAIN:
Four hundred. Minimum. Non-negotiable. I'm 2% of body weight and I consume 20% of all glucose. That's just physics. I mean, who's running this operation? Me. You're welcome.
METABOLISM:
Yes, yes, you always —
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
THREAT DETECTED.
METABOLISM:
What? Where?
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
The human ate a sandwich from a petrol station. I'm seeing bacterial fragments crossing the gut barrier. LPS in the bloodstream. I need to mount an acute response. I'm requisitioning 30% of the energy budget, effective immediately.
BRAIN:
Absolutely not. I have cognitive tasks to perform. The human has an exam in July.
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
And the human will be DEAD by July if I don't deal with this lipopolysaccharide breach! Do you know what sepsis looks like, Brain?
METABOLISM:
Please, both of you —
GUT:
(quietly) Excuse me. The breach wouldn't have happened if anyone had listened to me about the tight junctions. I've been requesting zinc and glutamine for weeks. My zonulin levels are through the roof.
BRAIN:
Who invited Gut?
GUT:
I house 70% of the immune system! I have more neurons than the spinal cord! I produce 90% of the body's serotonin! And yet I get NO respect at these meetings.
NARRATOR:
And so begins another day in the body. The selfish systems compete for a finite resource: energy. Tom Fox, in Module 7, calls this the Selfish Immune System — when the immune system activates, it commandeers glucose, amino acids, and micronutrients from every other system. The brain retaliates via the HPA axis. And metabolism tries to keep everyone alive.
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
Right, I'm activating. TNF-alpha is up. IL-6 is up. I'm inducing insulin resistance in skeletal muscle — sorry Muscles, you don't need glucose right now. I do.
METABOLISM:
You can't just — that's SYSTEMIC insulin resistance! The blood glucose will spike!
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
FEATURE, not bug. I need that glucose. My neutrophils run on glycolysis. Anaerobic. Fast. Warburg metabolism. You know the drill.
BRAIN:
Fine. But I'm activating the HPA axis. Cortisol is coming. CRH from hypothalamus, ACTH from anterior pituitary, cortisol from adrenals. And cortisol will SUPPRESS you, Immune System.
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
Ha! Cortisol. Your little glucocorticoid trick. Sure, it suppresses me... acutely. But guess what happens when you keep cortisol elevated chronically? Glucocorticoid resistance. My immune cells downregulate their cortisol receptors. Now your cortisol does NOTHING and I run unchecked. Low-grade. Persistent. Enjoy your low-grade inflammation.
BRAIN:
...
METABOLISM:
This is exactly what happened last month. Can we please talk about resolution? Where are the SPMs? Resolvins? Lipoxins?
GUT:
The human hasn't eaten oily fish in three weeks. EPA and DHA stores are low. I can't produce resolvins without substrate.
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
Not my problem. I work with what I've got. No resolution mediators? Then I just... keep going. Low-grade. Ticking. CRP at 2.5 mg/L. Not high enough for anyone to notice. High enough to slowly destroy the endothelium.
NARRATOR:
This is the evolutionary mismatch that Leo Pruimboom describes. Our immune system evolved for acute threats — infections, injuries, short-lived battles followed by complete resolution. But modern triggers — processed food, chronic stress, sedentary behaviour, barrier dysfunction — create a permanent low-grade activation with no off-switch. The immune system becomes selfish not by choice, but because it was never given the resources or the signals to stand down.
BRAIN:
I'm tired. I'm activating sickness behaviour. The human will feel fatigued, asocial, anhedonic. They'll want to sleep and not eat.
GUT:
Wait — sickness behaviour is MY domain too. I signal through the vagus nerve. I send immune status updates to you, Brain. Eighty percent of vagal fibres are AFFERENT — from me to you.
BRAIN:
I'm aware. And frankly, the news you send is always bad.
GUT:
Maybe if you funded my repair budget, the news would improve. I need butyrate from fibre. I need Akkermansia to maintain my mucus layer. I need intermittent fasting to trigger my migrating motor complex and sweep out bacterial overgrowth.
METABOLISM:
Intermittent fasting! Now we're talking. The human skips a meal, I activate AMPK, we get autophagy, the immune system recalibrates —
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
I do actually behave better after a fast. The evidence is clear. Pruimboom's intermittent living protocol works on me.
BRAIN:
Even I benefit. BDNF goes up. Neuroplasticity improves. Ketones from fatty acid oxidation feed me nicely.
GUT:
And I finally get my migrating motor complex cleaning cycle without food interrupting every 3 hours.
METABOLISM:
So... we agree? The human fasts tomorrow?
ALL:
Agreed.
NARRATOR:
A rare moment of cooperation. Until the human smells fresh bread at 10am, and the whole system falls apart again. Join us next time on... Selfish Systems.
(dramatic music sting)
| Scene | Concept | Module |
|---|---|---|
| Brain claims 20% of glucose | Brain's disproportionate energy demand | 7 |
| Immune system requisitions energy | Selfish immune system — immune activation commandeers resources | 7 |
| LPS breach via gut | Barrier dysfunction, endotoxemia | 6, 7 |
| Gut's complaints | Tight junctions, zonulin, gut-immune overlap | 6 |
| Immune-induced insulin resistance | Inflammation → metabolic dysfunction | 7 |
| Warburg metabolism in immune cells | Neutrophils use anaerobic glycolysis | 7 |
| HPA axis activation | Brain's cortisol response to immune activation | 3 |
| Glucocorticoid resistance | Chronic cortisol → receptor downregulation | 3, 7 |
| Missing SPMs | Omega-3 deficiency → failed resolution | 5, 10 |
| Sickness behaviour | Adaptive immune-driven behavioural syndrome | 7 |
| Vagus nerve (80% afferent) | Gut-brain communication | 6, 3 |
| Intermittent fasting benefits | AMPK, autophagy, MMC, immune recalibration | 10, 2 |
| BDNF from fasting | Neurotrophic factor upregulation | 3, 10 |