WHY A PRIMAL DIET FOR OPTIMAL HEALTH

“We are getting fatter and sicker every year!

• Diabetes and obesity (called “diabesity” by Dr. Mark Hyman of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, a functional medicine practitioner and medical doctor, is now a standard phase in the Paleo community) affects more than a billion people worldwide

• More than half of Americans are overweight and a third clinically obese

• Heart disease causes 4 out of 10 deaths in the U.S.

• ⅓ of Americans have high blood pressure which contributes to 800 thousand strokes every year leading to disability.

• More than 36 million people are living with dementia.

• Depression is now the leading cause of disability affecting more than 120 million people”

“The Paleo Cure,” Chris Kresser, author and practitioner of integrative and functional medicine

What if everyone had normal blood pressure and low insulin rates with no diabetes, alzheimers or cancer.  Anthropological evidence suggest that is how human beings lived for the vast majority of our species evolutionary history as lean and fit.  2 million years ago, we were free of the diseases that currently kill millions of people every year. 

“Why accept disease as normal?”, states Chris Kresser, “If everyone followed a paleo diet (i.e. primal diet), we would have no disease.”

WHAT IS A PRIMAL DIET?

A primal diet is a paleolithic diet.   Paleo for short. It is a lifestyle based on eating what primitive humans would have eaten as hunter-gatherers.  That is, eating the meat of the animals or fish they caught and the fruit, vegetables and tubers they picked and the honey they could acquire seasonally.  Summer was a time of abundance and a time to gorge on sweet fruit, nuts and honey. This turns on insulin to store up body fat for the winter. Then winter was the time to keep insulin levels low and burn off the accumulated body fat as energy. Basically it was our human survival mechanism to be in a fat burning, ketogenic state throughout winter and low food periods. This kept humans healthy, lean and fit. A cyclical keto/paleo diet is one where we stay in a high fat diet most often and then weekly or seasonally add in more high quality fiber rich tubers and sweet fruit.

Our biology and genes evolved in a particular environment and like all species we have a species-appropriate diet and way of life. Cats with short intestines have evolved to be carnivores.  When they eat kibble and cheap food they end up with kidney problems and early death. Cows are natural grass eaters with several stomachs. When they are forced to eat corn and soy they have to be fed antibiotics as well to maintain a semblance of health. Dogs as omnivores get the same diseases as humans when living on cheap grain-filled kibbles. When we eat and live in accordance with the environment to which we’ve adapted to–we thrive.   When we don’t we have dis-ease.

Our environment having changed faster than we could evolve has resulted in our modern epidemic of chronic disease. 

With the advent of the agricultural age, our species has flourished socially and intellectually but shifting from paleolithic diet and lifestyle has been disastrous for human health.

Studying bones have given scientists a window into the health of our paleolithic ancestors and offers insight into what an optimal human diet might be.  It is said that anthropologist and archaeologist have a better understanding of human nutrition than the overall health care doctor. 

Modern studies of hunter-gatherers who have little exposure to modern society and who follow a traditional diet and lifestyle are largely free of chronic diseases and have lower blood pressure as well as lower insulin levels.  They are lean and have strong bones and little dental caries. They don’t even have the language for modern-day diseases.

The Agricultural Revolution began our transition away from 66 thousand generations of good health, however, the shift wasn’t complete until 6 generations ago with the Industrial Revolution. 

Dietary effects became evident in the late 1800s.   With transportation and mass production foods like white flours, sugar, vegetable oils (which are highly inflammable switching on inflammatory genes) and dairy became a fixture in our diet–becoming more and more processed with less and less nutrients and fiber. Cardiology (heart and blood vessel health) was still being understood and wasn’t yet a disease in the early 1900s. Cardiologist was a new term as heart disease was still considered a syndrome and not yet a disease as it wasn’t prevalent.

Study after study shows that the more westernized people become and the more processed food that was consumed the more diseases they experience.  People moving to western civilizations from other countries take on these diets and over time develop the same diseases. 

One of my favorite and a famous example are the Pima Indians who have the highest rates of diabetes in the united states. Around the 1890s, The Pima Indians in Arizona lost their river and farming when overtaken by American settlers upstream.  They were subsidized by the government and put on reservations with white flour and sugar as their staples. By 1908 the Arizona Pima Indians had their first case of diabetes confirmed. Today, more than half of the adults have diabetes and high rates of depression.  At that same time in 1890, other Pima Indians had been relocated to the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico where they reestablished their standard farming practices eating lots of vegetables and their natural diet. They remained lean and disease free. Yet they are genetically similar.  There are many more examples. We may be predisposed to our genes, but it is not genetics that cause disease but our environment and the food we eat. This Is why we want to practice epigenetics and use food as medicine to turn off disease causing genes and have better health. That is the power of a primal diet.

Weston Price, a dentist in the early 1900s, noticed that the 2nd half of his practice had more disease and dental carriers.  Being a scientist at heart, he and his wife took several years off to explore indigenous societies outside of Western civilization that had no disease or dental caries.  He was a very good photographer and documentarian. He noticed and documented what they ate as their natural diets and took pictures. He also discovered something he called “Activator X.”  This was one of the nutrients that kept their teeth and bodies healthy. These societies were all essentially eating a paleolithic diet–their ancestral diet. When these people moved to a city and incorporated processed food into the diet they came down with the same diseases.  Weston Price took this information back to his dental practice. What did he suggest to his patients with great results and less inflammation? Butter oil–Ghee. That nutrient may have been lost for a few decades but that nutrient is K2. 

Another powerful story is about 10 full-blooded, diabetic aborigines in Australia were asked to revert back to their original lifestyle of foraging and living off the land.  They were tested before and after living for 7 weeks as hunter-gatherers in their traditional country. They were middle aged and overweight. After 7 weeks their diabetes was improved and normalized and they had lost weight. 

“While still mismatched with our environment, We are evolving through expression of our genes.  One example of this is milk and the enzyme lactase. Populations that domesticated cattle and relied on milk as a food source have a genetic mutation to digest lactase into adulthood.  Northern Europeans have 95% of this genetic switch. Populations with more starch in their diets produced more amylase in their saliva which increased carbohydrate tolerance in their populations..  Japanese have developed gut bacteria in their colon that helps them digest seaweed and more naturally have better hormonal balance and low incidence of breast cancer. These are selective adaptations to survival so that a population could consume the food in their natural environment as populations increased–natural selection.” Chris Kresser, “The Paleo Cure”

A PRIMAL DIET FOR HEALTH

There has been a quiet revolution behind the scenes of the Standard American Diet.  The acronym for this is “SAD.” It may sound like an uproar if you are part of it as I am.  It has been brewing for decades but suppressed by mainstream medicine. It is the Primal Diet. It is also a cyclical Ketogenic Diet. It is the best approach to health to date. It takes all the processed food out and:

 It is Getting Back to Food Basics.

That is:  making paleolithic foods part of your diet and lifestyle and personalizing it depending on genetics, your current health and your activity levels. 

If you want to be healthier, go back to your ancestry basics–reset your diet to feel better fast with a primal diet and lifestyle.  (Studies show that it only takes 30 days to reset your metabolism and 60 to 90 days to reestablish health with a healthier diet that resets hormonal balance and reduces inflammation.)   A primal diet consist of foods that are grass-fed animal proteins, wild fish, free-range eggs, organic vegetables and fruit, nuts and seeds, and good fats like butter, olive oil and natural fats that have been prized by ancient cultures for millennia.  These are good, satisfying foods that shut down fat storing genes by reducing insulin levels and is relatively easy to follow because you are naturally less hungry. Not being a slave to hunger is a powerful feeling to have!

The native Eskimos have a naturally high-fat diet that protects them. A story I like and recall often is about the Eskimos dipping their fish into fat before eating to increase their fat to protect themselves from protein poisoning—this was tradition and survival. We do not do well on protein only and need the fat for nutrition and balance. Prospectors often ate squirrel and rabbits which had very little fat in them. When they ate too many they ended up with protein poisoning and got sick.  Another interesting story is the prospector that had become blind and was crawling on the ground and was discovered by an American Indian. This Indian caught a fish for the prospector and had him eat the whole fish head. The prospector’s vision returned quickly. That’s the power of whole food, fat and nutrients.

You may have to “hunt” these more nutritious foods in our processed food environment.  These foods aren’t considered part of the food culture we live in. You’ll be eating “against the grain” so to speak.  This is voting with your pocketbook, educating yourself for empowerment and liberation from unhealthy food. Today our natural food industry is changing as more and more people want sugar-free food.  Keto food is being created to support this demand. More and more organic food and health conscious food choices are becoming available.

Why do Paleo foods work towards our human health?

“Paleo foods have a high density of nutrients that minimize toxins and anti-nutrients, a better balance of good essential fats, and have a beneficial effect on gut bacteria.  We are simply designed to live this way. We are hardwired to eat the foods that our ancestors ate. When we follow that 2 million-year-old genetic blueprint, we are naturally healthy and vital.  When we stray to modern processed food we suffer disease.” Chris Kresser, “The Paleo Cure.”

HOW DOES A PRIMAL DIET WORK TODAY

It helps you lose weight and regain health and vitality by relying less on being a sugar-burner to transitioning to more of a fat burner. It resets your metabolism. It is not about dieting, over-exercising and counting calories–it is about reprogramming your body to derive most of your energy from excess stored fat on the body not to unlimited access of sugar and simple carbs.  We want to alter the process of reliance on high insulin foods we have become dependent on which the body converts to fat storage.  The American diet doesn’t allow the body to burn stored fat. It just keeps accumulating more and turning disease on. America has become a fat, unhealthy nation that is based on sick care, not health care.  Its is up to each of us to turn disease off with our food choices. It’s up to us to let the food industry know we are fed up with this unhealthy lifestyle.

WHAT HAPPENS ON A PALEO/KETOGENIC DIET?

• Your body burns fat and builds muscle

• Energy is Increased as you absorb more nutrients (you become more active)

• Pain and inflammation is reduced (think arthritis) 

• Your immune system is strengthened (less colds, flu and allergies)

• You reduce your risk of chronic disease (longer life)

• food cravings are less so food no longer rules your life and is more manageable

• Reducing the need for drugs when a healthier diet is maintained 

• You feel better, more vibrant and happier. 

These are the results of reprogramming your genes with lifestyle strategies.  I love the study of Epigenetics. It’s evolution at play, signals to your genes to turn off disease by what we eat and the environment around us—Nutrigenomics. What can be more empowering than this!  We all have the control to implement this pathway for our health. “Let food be thy medicine.”

Its harnessing the power of your genes to work for you not against you.

With a paleo diet, movement and sunlight we have the power to become healthy and live with vitality.  This turns your brain back on and brings light back into your life with more healthy years to live. It brings more color to your life as you become more inclined to go outside under the sun and blue skies and bloom just like all other living plants and animals.

I have taken the Kresser Institute Functional Health Coach Program because I believe in this lifestyle and am excited to learn more and more on this subject. I fully incorporate and am healthier today because of the paleo diet; I have optimized my diet by following the ketogentic diet. If I can do it, so can you.  I hope this information empowers you. (Information from the “Paleo Cure” by Chris Kresser was used and cited in this blog.)

Age Successfully  Be Vibrant!

Lori Balue, Adapt Certified Functional Health and Coach

This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is being provided to you to educate you about functional health and nutrition and as a self-help tool for your own use. It is not medical advice. This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgement. For my full Disclaimer, please go to my website loribalue.com.