Diets like carnivore and paleo have contributed to the rise in popularity of “ancestral” style health. Ancestral style health is doing the things that our ancestors did for hundreds and thousands of years before us in an attempt to return to a time when chronic disease was less prevalent and when humans appeared to be living the “good life”.
Ancestral health no doubt provide a ton of health benefits. Eating real whole foods, exposing ourselves to the sun, moving our bodies, syncing up our sleep with the region we are living in, all can make a massive difference in how we feel day-to-day and our health long-term.
While there is a lot we can take from the way our ancestors lived their lives, we should also be careful not to assume that older is necessarily better. We see this a lot when the topic of ancestral health comes up, “Our ancestors ate like this or did this for X number of years, and they had very low rates of chronic disease, this must be the best way to live.” “Or I don't need to do that or use that supplement, humans lived for hundreds of years without it.” In many cases, this leads to the oversimplification of health and what we should do to improve ours.
Yesterday I posted a picture of an electrolyte powder on Instagram that I take before exercise. I received a comment saying, “or you could just drink water, no need for all that extra crap. Our ancestors never used it.” This is true, but who said our ancestors had it all right? And who said we are living under the same conditions as our ancestors? In this case, our ancestors didn’t need electrolyte powders because they drank the blood of animals they killed which is rich in electrolytes. How many of ya’ll are doing that?
Our ancestors lived wildly different lives from us. They didn’t have to sit at desks to earn a living. They didn’t have a computer in their pocket that allowed them to order food delivered straight to their mouth. They weren’t able to pick which cut of meat they had a taste for this day. They weren’t able to go to the store to the store and purchase foods that are out of season regionally but shipped in from other parts of the world. Our ancestors experienced famine, lack of shelter, dangers in the wild, and for a long time….no coffee. How did they do it?!
There are a couple of key points here:
The first is that we are living under much different conditions than our ancestors did which means we may have to do things a little different sometimes.
The second is that human innovation has provided us with new resources that our ancestors didn’t have to help us on our health journey.
Should we not use MCT oil because our ancestors weren’t able to extract this beneficial fat from coconut? Should we not use infrared saunas because our ancestors only used the sun? Should you not have a Peloton next to our work desks because our ancestors got their exercise while out hunting for their food? Should we not drink electrolyte powders when most of the population is deficient in them and they play a role in nearly every bodily function?
We can all benefit from living a little more like our ancestors. Eating real food, exposing ourselves to sun, etc will no doubt help improve our health. But there is a point where we can accept some of the innovations that humans have developed over the years that allow us to get a little more out of our health efforts and help combat the things we are exposed to that our ancestors were not. Take what is good about the the old and mix it in with what is good about the new.
Thanks for reading,
Chris Irvin
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