Rejecting our "Primal Blueprint": The Costs are High

Have you ever wondered how lions or tigers would manage if, instead of eating their “primal” diet of meat, they were fed funnel cakes and French fries. Instead of drinking water they were fed orange soda or root beer. What happens to an eagle that is confined to a cage and is no longer required to use its wings to fly and hunt?

“Primal Blueprint" isn't a term that I coined. I think it was first used by Malibu resident, Mark Sisson, who is a leader in the field of health and nutrition and fitness. It's a brilliant term and it has made me look at my own health specialty through a fundamental lens. Thanks to Mark for educating me on the physiology and dietary and exercise patterns of our ancient ancestors.

Some history:

The first human ancestors appeared between 5 and 7 million years ago. We were making tools about 2 million years ago. Although there is no consensus from that point on it is believed by most scientists that people who look like us anatomically evolved around 130,000 years ago. The modern homo sapien is quite old…The environment that those early humans lived and breathed in is remarkably different from what we have created now. If not the environment then the culture has certainly changed such that the lifestyle of “primal” man does not resemble the lifestyle of modern man in 2020. But, the physiology of the human body is very similar.

One of the most dramatic differences between now and then isn’t our physiology but the differences in our physical profiles. Obesity was not present in Primal man. We were very lean, had low body fat, and we were much less sedentary than the average man of 2020. In 2020, 38% of Americans are deemed “obese”. No other country comes close to that number. Japan has a 3.6% obesity and European counties have a range that goes as high as the low 20%, well below that of Americans. There is a reason that Americans are so obese. We are among the least active countries in the world according to a Stanford study in 2017 and we eat the highest carbohydrate and sugar comprised diet in the world by far.

Here in the United States, the average person consumes more than 126 grams of sugar per day, which is slightly more than three 12-ounce cans of Coca-Cola. That's more than twice the average sugar intake of all 54 countries observed by Euromonitor. It's also more than twice what the World Health Organization recommends for daily intake, which is roughly 50 grams of sugar for someone of normal weight. The country with the 2nd highest sugar intake is Germany at a distant 102 grams per day. India, by contrast, averages an intake of 5 grams of sugar per day.

The physiology of the body of the primal man was not much different from that of modern man but what we put in our bodies and how we utilize our bodies is colossally different.

The U.S. has the 5th highest rate of cancer per capita in the world. Yet, we routinely claim that we have the best health care in the world. We do have, by far, the most expensive health care in the world but whether we have the best health care delivery can be argued. I think it is safe to say from statistics alone that we certainly have one of the least preventative health models in the World—certainly in the developed world. Arguably we are the least adept at disease prevention. How can that be true of a country with the riches of the United States?

The United States has one of the highest diabetes rates among developed countries and it is on the rise. Nearly 10% of all Americans have diabetes (mostly type 2) and more than 1 in 3 Americans have Pre Diabetes. 1 in 4 Americans have type 2 diabetes and don’t realize they have the disease.

Primal Man (defined here as from 2.5 million years ago until 1200 B.C.) did not have diabetes. They didn’t have obesity. They didn’t contract cancer. They didn’t have heart disease. Primal man died of several causes, the most common being infections, starvation, childbirth, and accidents. Most scientists now say that prehistoric man lived much longer than previously thought in spite of a very harsh lifestyle and the absence of modern medicines, etc..

The human body is designed to function according to the model of early man. Evolution has not yet modified the human physiology so that it functions most efficiently on ice cream and cake. The human body is very adaptable but the diet of early man was very consistent with how the body functioned most optimally. The types of foods that were available (no Food Courts back then) were the exact foods that the human body could utilize best in order to have a healthy body with none of the maladies mentioned at the start of the paragraph: obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.. We are obese because our diet and lifestyle is not in sync with how the human physiology was designed to operate. The human body was not designed to eat prodigious amounts of carbohydrates, sodas, skittles, etc.. It is not the fuel that our body was designed to use, especially not in those high quantities. Would you feed your cat or dog candy and licorice and Mountain Dew and expect it to function at a normal level? For profit incentives we feed our livestock and poultry foods that they were not intended to eat. We do it because it makes them more marketable but it doesn't make them more healthy and disease resistant.

The heart operates best when it has periods when it is under load. Bones and muscles need to be under load in order to grow and be strong. Primal Man complied with that blueprint. Humans were not designed to be sedentary. Primal Man routinely lived and gained energy from their own fat supplies. Their diets were high in protein and fat (none of it processed) and the human body does not become obese with a high protein and low carbohydrate diet. “Primal” Man had a very limited supply of carbohydrates at their disposal. The carbs they did encounter were high in fiber and therefore much more slowly converted to glucose in the body creating a much more muted insulin response. So, we lived then primarily off of our own fat stores or from fat that we ingested. The body had to turn it’s own fat (or externally eaten fat) into glucose. Now, we have such a steady of flow of glucose into the body that our fat stores are never burned. We have gone from a highly efficient fat burning machine to a fat conserving, sugar burning machine. We can't keep up and much of the glucose is stored as fat on the body. The consequences are huge. Obesity, heart disease, inflammation, cancer, and quite possible cognitive decline which includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s which are linked with high sugar intake.

Imagine filling your car with an inferior gasoline and even after the tank is full continuing to fill the tank until the gas overflows into the front seat of the car. That’s the American dietary model. No other country in the world has this false sense of invincibility and this reluctance to obey natural laws.

Even many high endurance athletes, like the aforementioned Mark Sisson, have said that a high carb diet for the purpose of having abundant fuel sources turned him into an inflamed and arthritic mess. Even running 100 miles a week for 7 years couldn’t overcome the toxicity of his high carbohydrate diet that plagued him with debilitating IBS until his diet changed to low carb and high protein/fat. We are feasting on improper fuel and ridiculously high quantities of it as well. We can thank the unchecked levels of processed, overly sweetened and toxic foods for much of our dietary (and mental) maladies. America invented the Big Gulp. America invented Fruit Loops and the Twinkie and Coca Cola, and the Pop Tart and the Hot Pocket, and Fast food. Make it quick, make it easy, and make it cheaply. That is what Americans have learned to accept, and to crave. Nutrition is not even a consideration. With knowledge and education we can change this spiral. We can learn to turn on genes in our bodies so that we become fat burners as we were intended to be. We have to reprogram our genes to operate according to the "Primal blueprint".

Yes, there is a price to feeding our bodies with the wrong kinds and quantities of food. Just because it is marketed as “food” does not mean that it actually lives up to a reasonable standard of “food”.

It doesn’t stop there. There is another area of the human body that has strayed dramatically from it’s "Primal blueprint". The consequences are equally as damaging. Primal Man had much more developed jaws than we do now. They didn’t develop crowded teeth and they didn’t need orthodontics. They didn’t have sleep apnea and it is highly unlikely that they were snorers. They could fit all 32 teeth in their jaws without impaction and they had adequate room for their tongue to fit comfortably in their mouths. Their jaw structures were much more forward developed. They had stronger profiles and they didn’t have weak chins. Our jaws are shrinking and our faces are receding. We have deviated dramatically from our Primal Blueprint.

Archoeological studies have shown that our ancestral skulls were very different. And why? In ancestral times there was no industrialization or processed foods or high allergens or the resultant heightened immune responses. They likely had very few allergies and they didn’t have obstruction to their upper airways due to allergens and enlarged tonsils, adenoids, etc. How do we know that? Because if you have trouble breathing through your nose and instead resort to chronic mouth breathing your teeth will crowd, your lower jaw will recede, and you will, in most cases, become a snorer and/or develop sleep apnea. Primal Man breathed through his nose with his lips together (like all other animals) and when his lips were together his tongue was resting up against the roof of his mouth. Yes, the world’s greatest orthodontic appliance was positioned up against the roof of the mouth so that the archform was full and the teeth had room to all fit in that arch, without crowding. Yes, our ancestral skulls had straight teeth and well developed jaws and airways. Our bodies are getting bigger but our jaws and faces are getting smaller.

Our jaws have been shrinking for centuries due to modernization, industrialization, food processing and more. Another reason our jaws are shrinking is because many of us, unlike our ancestors, do not breastfeed our children. Breastfeeding, it turns out, is very foundational to facial development. Breastfeeding trains the tongue to posture properly in the mouth and it trains for proper swallowing. It teaches proper oral posture. Only about 70% of Americans breastfeed according to recent studies. Surely all Primal mothers breastfed. There were no marketing campaigns to get them to abandon breastfeeding for processed alternatives delivered through plastic bottles and a fake nipple design. We also, by virtue of the baby food marketing have delayed the start of solid foods into our babies diets. With all of the softened and mushed baby foods we see it as common that a baby will not actually chew it’s food for a year or longer. When you don’t chew your food and you don’t use your jaw muscles they do not develop and strengthen and the bones that support them don’t grow and they become smaller. Muscles and bones in the jaw don’t grow and so the jaws and facial bones becomes less developed and retarded in growth. That, plus the open mouth breathing can make it very difficult for the designated 32 teeth to fit into the jaw. We are rebuking our Primal Blueprint and we don’t even know the consequences. The medical and dental institutions don't acknowledge this Primal Blueprint. It's true.

And, when our jaws are smaller and they retrude it contributes to reduced tongue space and a reduced airway. A reduced airway causes sleep disordered breathing and sleep apnea which are associated with many health and behavioral issues and, with adults, sleep apnea leads to early death and a greatly reduced quality of living. Sleep Apnea affects over 10% of the American population and 90% of those who have it go undiagnosed. Yes, in the country that claims to have the best health care system we don't diagnose 90% of those with sleep apnea. No one should leave a doctors office without being screened for sleep apnea.

With sleep disordered breathing and sleep apnea we restrict the intake of oxygen by having jaws that are too small and retruded to allow for optimal oxygen intake. With children sleep disordered breathing has been scientifically linked to behavioral issues such as ADD/ADHD, depression and anxiety. We violate that Primal blueprint.

Oxygen is the key nutrient to all life. We should never compromise it. Not even for a second. Our genetics doesn’t make our teeth crowd and our jaws underdeveloped. It is the lack of important Primal information that causes the disfigurement of the jaws and the crowding of teeth. When you see someone with crowded teeth then you are looking at a health problem. It is not a superficial or cosmetic issue. It is a systemic issue disguised as a cosmetic issue. The other main contributing factor to sleep apnea is obesity. We’ve already spoken about obesity….

If you are not convinced that oxygen is that important then look at how the human body functions when under reduced oxygen levels. Ask the mountaineers who travel at high altitudes where oxygen levels are lower and ask them how their cognitive skills are affected by lower levels of oxygen. Ask them how their energy levels are affected by lower oxygen levels. Then, ask them how beneficial it is to have an oxygen tank that they can use which restores proper oxygen levels to their bodies and brains.

Ignoring the Primal blueprint causes a great deal of disease, pain, and suffering, and premature death. Having the iphone won’t save us. Netflix probably won't save us. Neither will Twitter. The electric car won’t save us if we violate our Primal Blueprint. And, we know that modern medicine won’t save us from a rejection of the primal blueprint. For now we are left to pass out medication to treat ailments that are caused by violating the "Primal Blueprint". Our business model is to treat the symptoms: Hand out drugs which profit a huge industry and send out kids with crowded teeth to orthodontists to straighten teeth without (in the vast number of cases) understanding the underlying health issues that are crying out for more than straight teeth.

It's going to take a major paradigm shift that a country that is in love with monetization above all else is going to find challenging.

"We are stardust. We are golden..and we got to get ourselves...back to the garden"- Joni

my opinions

Food for thought....