ancestral health

The Ancestral Health movement is an effort to recover the lost or forgotten traditions in food, sleep, and movement that have been common and natural to all humans throughout our known history. These ways of life forged our human genome.

THE MODERN BACKDROP

Over the past several centuries, most profoundly in the 19th and 20th, technological progress snowballed like never before at history. Some might say we grew too fast as a species. Who could have foreseen it? With these massive leaps in technology came the inevitable problem of the interconnectivity of it all, as how these new inventions would find application and if, at all, compatibility with one another. 

One often repeated insight about "growing too quickly" as a species is the disparity of the speed of technological growth compared to the speed of our genetics. Humans have marvelous capacity for adaptation in some ways, but not others. The observation has been made that our genes can't keep pace on a metabolic level, for instance, with the impact of a plethora of food items that were never before available in our evolutionary history. Plainly stated, it takes time for the metabolic machinery to adapt to things we consume. We've been eating plants and animals of all varieties for eons of time.

But not doughnuts.

As well, with this new technology for manufacturing and supplying at large scale, we as a planet sought to tackle the problem of infectious diseases and world hunger. The efforts were well intentioned, and incredible successes resulted. But we overshot the goal, producing surplus with no real plan for managing it. And as with any other abundant resource, exploitation, economic upheavals, and societal inequities came along with it. 

So not only did we have foods that were foreign to our metabolism, but we had them in overabundance. And they were available at will. You could get them anytime, with little effort. None of this was familiar to the homo sapiens. We simply were not genetically nor metabolically ready.

Chronic diseases, on a scale unparalleled historically, were and are among the unintended outcomes.

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

Previously in human history a male of my age would already have passed due to war or infectious disease.  Now it is heart disease or complications of diabetes.

Along with many I propose it should not be like this.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

The shift back to Ancestral Health is the work of recovering the human traditions that characterized typical human life for millennia prior to the modern era. It is these ways of life that directly cause and compliment what we call good health.

The good news is that it's not rocket science. A growing number of sensible and curious healthcare professionals around the late 90s and early 2000s began the cycle of rediscovery, and the movement to return to our roots is growing.

It is a shift away from the overconsumption of refined carbohydrates, industrialized oils (fake foods), and other non-nutritious (and sometimes highly toxic) substances — and back to real food. It is a change from surfing on the sofa to surfing a real wave. It is going from standing in line at a convenience store to supporting your local farmer, or hunting and gardening yourself.

STOP MOVING, START DYING

It's not just about what we eat. Our bodies and minds were designed for movement, and then recovery through restorative sleep. That is how we thrive.