You may feel it too: we live in an era of informational oversaturation, where news, notifications, posts, and videos pour in through an endless stream,
bombarding our attention at every moment.
Screens, accounts, and platforms seem to constantly compete for our senses, and the sheer amount of information available exceeds the brain’s processing capacity.
We are caught in a whirlwind of data, opinions, images, and messages that overlap and blend together, turning even the simple attempt to understand reality into an overwhelming act.
This relentless influx doesn’t allow us to pause, reflect, digest, eliminate, or recycle what we take in; the mind ends up functioning in a state of constant hyperactivity, burning through internal resources without rest.
Even though healthy “pro-nutrition” education has made significant progress over the last decade, we’ve become an informationally obese society. And this obesity risks turning from benign to morbid, affecting not only mental health but also our ability to harmoniously manage our physiological and cognitive resources.
After the case of the young mother from Constanța who, out of distrust in the medical system, religious convictions, or because of information absorbed from social media, refused the emergency hysterectomy required in the context of severe postpartum hemorrhage, I began to wonder how the human body would react when an uncontrolled influx of nutrients or external stimuli threatens to trigger self-consumption and even death.
Since my early twenties I’ve been studying physiology, pathophysiology, neurophysiology, and adaptive processes under long- or short-term stress, and I won’t stop. Not because I’m hard-headed, but because I constantly change the lens, the angle, the perspective, the question with which I search for answers. A dear French professor of internal medicine once told me it took him more than eight years to understand a seemingly “insignificant” hormone, simply called prolactin.
Continuing my reflection, I discovered that, in a situation similar to postmodern society, biological intelligence uses a truly fascinating hormone: somatostatin (from the Greek soma = body and statin = to stop).
The somatotropic inhibition hormone — the hormone that temporarily halts certain processes in the body, preventing self-consumption caused by dysregulated growth.
I dare to give it my own interpretation today: the Hormone of Lucidity.
Somatostatin teaches us in physiology that a healthy act of sustaining life does not only mean growth, influx, or accumulation, but also pause, restriction, or inhibition.
It may seem paradoxical: how can a hormone that stops processes still be “pro-anabolic,” meaning conducive to building?
The meaning is unexpected: by closing the window through which new nutrients enter, the body is forced to use and repair what it already has, optimizing its internal resources.
This generates a necessary metabolic pause — a moment in which the organism stops accumulating from the outside and focuses on what already exists within.
This polypeptide does not stimulate stagnation, metabolic laziness, sleepiness, or immobility.
Just as Cicero spoke of otium cum dignitate, the hormone of lucidity speaks to us of active pause — the need for a time of reflection on oneself, not just on the world.
Metaphorically, it fosters creative idleness, a space in which the being knows and experiences itself from the inside.
It resembles what Mephisto told Faust: “I will teach you the nobility of idleness.”
Somatostatin is secreted at two complementary levels: centrally, in the hypothalamus, and peripherally, in the stomach, intestines, and pancreatic delta cells — showing how an inhibitory hormone can coordinate the entire organism to maintain balance.
In the anterior pituitary, it inhibits hormones that stimulate growth and reproduction — growth hormone (GH), TSH, and prolactin — regulating metabolic and hormonal cycles and preventing overactivation and self-consumption of resources.
In the periphery, the molecule of lucidity acts locally in the stomach, intestines, and pancreas, inhibiting the secretion of digestive hormones and enzymes — gastrin, CCK (cholecystokinin), secretin, motilin, glucagon, and insulin.
The result is an indirect reduction in the absorption of exogenous nutrients, limiting the influx of new materials and forcing cells to use, recycle, and rebuild the resources already stored.
A necessary metabolic pause emerges, during which the organism stops gathering from the outside and concentrates on internal optimization.
Growth hormones are the accelerator; somatostatin is the safety brake. It tells the body “enough” when the signals for expansion become too strong. Without it, we would burn through energy too fast, melt down our own reserves, and become victims of our own vitality.
Society, in turn, is not only comparable to, but truly is, a living collective organism, with its own cells, hormones, systems, and regulatory mechanisms.
It is sustained by a genuine metabolism. Its nourishment is no longer biological, but informational — connectivity.
Algorithms and connections are the new growth hormones: they accelerate, push, stimulate without pause.
But where is social somatostatin? Where is it secreted? Who says “enough”?
We hyper-consume constantly, generating obesity, confusion, anxiety, and polarization.
We live in an exhausting hypermetabolism. How do we stop?
With social somatostatin — “sociostatin.”
Without somatostatin, the body self-destructs.
Without sociostatin, the collective will suffocate in its own informational abundance.
We consume everything: news, emotions, opinions, viewpoints, relationships, until we end up consuming ourselves.
For now, the cofactor of lucidity is weak, the connections between its amino acids fragile, but I firmly believe it can be strengthened through education in fundamental themes, critical thinking on specific topics, awareness of one's relationship with information, and a concrete practice of self-work — all of which can help maintain the optimal metabolism of our social fabric.
What do you think?
How could we activate sociostatin?
What other steps can we take to prevent the social organism from exhausting itself through its own abundance?
Where does aspiration end and where does the destruction of the Faustian human begin?
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