The Quiet Collapse Outside Us : And the Quiet Collapse Inside Us
By Dr. Greg Fors
Pain and Brain Healing Center
There are moments in life when grief does not come as a shock. It comes quietly. It comes when you look out the window and realize the world does not sound the way it used to.
Where are the frogs that filled the summer nights? Where are the songbirds that seemed to be everywhere? Where are the monarch butterflies, the fireflies, the bees, the dragonflies, the turtles, and the wild pheasants? Where are all the small creatures that made the world feel alive?
If you are old enough to remember 50, 60, or 70 years ago, you feel this loss deeply. You feel it in your bones. The “soundtrack” of childhood has faded into a haunting silence. The ditches, ponds, fields, and woods that once pulsed with life now seem strangely empty.
You are not imagining it.
According to the 2024 World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Report, monitored wildlife populations have declined by an average of 73% between 1970 and 2020 [1]. That should stop us in our tracks. This is not just “environmental concern.” This is biological grief.
The Mirror of Collapse
The same forces breaking down the living world around us are breaking down the living world inside us. We are watching a collapse outside the body and a collapse inside the body: and somehow, we keep treating them as two separate stories.
They are not.
The frogs are disappearing from the ponds. The bees are disappearing from the fields. Simultaneously, the microbes are disappearing from our guts. The mitochondria inside our cells are struggling. Our immune systems are becoming overactive, exhausted, confused, and inflamed.
The human body is showing the same warning signs as nature: loss of diversity, loss of balance, loss of resilience, and loss of repair.
Shifting Baselines: Why We Don’t See the Fire
One of the saddest truths about environmental collapse is that it happens slowly enough for us to accept it as "normal." Scientists call this shifting baseline syndrome.
Each generation thinks the world they grew up in is the standard. If a child grows up without frogs in the ditch or birdsong in the morning, they don't feel the loss. To them, the silence is normal. But those of us who remember know something is missing. We remember when the air seemed more alive. We remember when a country road at dusk meant swarms of life.
Consider the "windshield effect." Years ago, a summer drive meant your windshield was covered with insects. Today, your car stays clean. While we might appreciate the lack of mess, the deeper question is painful: Where did the insects go?
Insects are the foundation. They feed the birds, bats, frogs, and fish. When they vanish, the entire web shakes. A 2020 meta-analysis in Science found massive declines in land-based insect abundance [2]. A later U.S. analysis reported a 22% decline in butterflies in just two decades [3].
Outer Ecology is Life-Support
The outer ecology: soil, water, insects, fungi: is not "scenery." It is our life-support system. When we poison the soil, we damage the microbial and mineral systems that grow our food. When we flood the world with plastics, pesticides, heavy metals, and "forever chemicals," those exposures do not stay "out there."
They come inside. They enter our lungs, our blood, our fat tissue, and the brains of our children. Researchers warn that synthetic chemicals are being produced faster than we can track or control them [4]. We are outrunning our own biology.
The Inner Ecology: A Forest in Flames
As a functional medicine doctor, I cannot look at the loss of wildlife and ignore the loss of health I see every day. The modern human body is becoming less resilient. We are witnessing a tidal wave of:
- Insulin resistance and obesity.
- Autoimmune disease and severe allergies.
- Chronic pain and fatigue.
- Cognitive decline and neurodegeneration.
- Infertility and hormone disruption.
The CDC reports that chronic diseases are now the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S. [5]. Even more alarming, a 2025 analysis showed that 6 in 10 young adults already report at least one chronic condition [6]. This is not normal aging. This is the collapse of the inner biological terrain.
Just as a pond loses strength when it loses biodiversity, your body loses strength when it loses microbial diversity. A forest can be dying long before the trees fall. Similarly, your body can look "normal" on basic labs for years while inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction silently build.
The Rise of Obesogens
We have to talk about why the "eat less, move more" mantra is failing so many people. It’s not just a lack of willpower; it’s a disruption of our internal signaling.
Dr. Bruce Blumberg, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, pioneered the concept of obesogens [9, 10]. These are environmental chemicals: found in plastics, pesticides, and food packaging: that interfere with hormone signaling. They don't just "toxicify" the body; they send active signals that tell the body to:
- Make more fat cells.
- Store more fat.
- Change the metabolic setpoint.
- Increase hunger and decrease fullness.
Dr. Blumberg’s work showed that chemicals like tributyltin can activate "master switches" (like PPAR-gamma) involved in fat storage [9, 10, 11]. We are asking the human body to stay healthy in an environment that is actively pushing it toward metabolic failure. The poisoned ecosystem becomes the inflamed, insulin-resistant human being.
Rebuilding the Inner Rainforest
At Pain and Brain Healing Center, we see the body as an ecosystem. Your gut affects your brain; your environment affects your genes. We don’t just ask, "What drug matches this diagnosis?" We ask: What is damaging the terrain?
We focus on the human microbiome: our "inner wildlife." This community of bacteria and fungi regulates your immune balance and brain chemistry. But modern life: sugar, antibiotics, pesticide residues, and chronic stress: strips this rainforest down to a desert. When the inner rainforest is gone, the body becomes less tolerant and less resilient.
What Can We Do?
We do not have the luxury of despair. Despair is not a treatment plan. The answer is to become awake and take radical responsibility for our own "inner acre."
At the personal level:
- Eat Real Food: Prioritize organic to avoid pesticide load.
- Filter Your Water: Protect yourself from "forever chemicals."
- Ditch the Plastic: Never heat food in plastic and reduce its use in your kitchen.
- Support Detoxification: Work with a clinician who understands how to support your body's natural systems.
- Test, Don't Guess: Check your fasting insulin, inflammatory markers, and nutrient status.
At the community level:
- Plant native species and stop using lawn chemicals.
- Teach children to notice the birds, the soil, and the stars. A child cannot protect what they never learned to love.
The Final Warning
The quieting of the natural world and the rise of chronic disease are not separate tragedies. They are signals from the same broken relationship. We have assumed we can poison the planet and remain healthy. We cannot.
But there is hope. Ecosystems recover when the pressure is removed. Your body wants to heal. It is time to listen to the whispers before they become screams. We must rebuild our inner ecology: our metabolism, our mitochondria, and our resilience: to weather the storm of the modern world.
Healing the body and healing the world are no longer separate conversations. They are the same conversation. And it is time we had it honestly.
Ready to stop guessing and get a real plan?
Call (763) 862-7100 or book your free consultation/intake here: https://painandbrainhealingcenter.com/free-consultation-intake/ … and start addressing the root cause.
REFERENCES
[1] World Wildlife Fund. Living Planet Report 2024.
[2] van Klink R, et al. Science. 2020;368(6489).
[3] Crossley MS, et al. Science. 2025.
[4] Persson L, et al. Environmental Science & Technology. 2022;56(3).
[5] CDC. About Chronic Diseases.
[6] Watson KB, et al. Preventing Chronic Disease. CDC, 2025.
[7] Endocrine Society. EDCs Position Statement, 2025.
[8] Fuller R, et al. The Lancet Planetary Health. 2022;6(6).
[9] Grün F, Blumberg B. Endocrinology. 2006;147(6 Suppl).
[10] Grün F, Blumberg B. Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology. 2009;304(1-2).
[11] Heindel JJ, et al. Reproductive Toxicology. 2017;68.
[12] Heindel JJ, et al. Biochemical Pharmacology. 2023;217.
[13] Amato AA, et al. Endocrine Connections. 2021;10(2).