Is Older Better?

How to consider ancestral health strategies

How many times have you heard a health influencer say things like, “Our ancestors did x,y,z for thousands of years and had no chronic diseases.” Or vice versa, “our ancestors didn’t need x,y, or z to be healthy, so why do we?”

Diets like paleo and carnivore have contributed to the rise in popularity of “ancestral” style health. Ancestral-style health is operating like 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 strategies no doubt provide a ton of health benefits. While there is a lot we can take away from the way our ancestors lived their lives, we should also be careful not to assume that the way they lived is necessarily better or even possible in the world we live in today.

For starters, it is important to consider that up until recently, our ancestors lived very challenging lives experiencing seasonal famine, tough living conditions, exposure to natural disasters and natural threats (including being hunted), and lacking the resources to fight basic sicknesses and infections. All things that we take for granted today.

Thus the life expectancy of our ancestors is much less than the expectency we experience today which means many of our ancestors died long before they could develop chronic disease, especially those related to aging.

Regardless, our ancestors did generally appear to live with better health than we do and chronic disease is starting to affect our society at younger and younger ages. There are plenty of good things we could take away from the way our ancestors lived like eating real whole foods, exposing ourselves to sun, moving our bodies, syncing up our sleep with the region we are living in, etc. All things that can make a massive difference in our long-term health and how we feel day-to-day.

We also see many endorsers of primal living scoff at new-age health inventions and supplements because our ancestors didn’t have them. I think this is silly because it operates under the premise that humans aren’t good at making new things which I don’t think is true.

Being able to track calories, measure body fat, block blue light, expose yourself to red light, and take high concentrations of beneficial nutrients that couldn’t be consumed in such amounts in nature do offer benefits. Some of which are especially beneficial in our modern-day society.

Which is also important to remember. We are living in a society much different from the one our ancestors lived in. We have new problems that they didn’t have like late night exposure to blue light, the mental impact of social media exposure, the sedentary way of many 9-5 jobs, the anxiety produced by being exposed to news from around the world at all times, and the unnatural way of living in crowded cities on top of each other. These modern problems create opportunity and sometimes necessity for modern solutions. Many of which humans are doing a great job of creating.

Generally speaking, I do agree that there is a lot we can take from the ancestral way of living. The closer we can live like them, generally the better our health will be. But we should be hesitant to let this turn us into ancestral zealots that ignore the beauty of human health innovation and the demand for modern solutions to modern problems.

What do you think?

Thanks for reading,

Chris Irvin

Speaking of modern solutions, one of my favorites is CBD MCT Oil, a beneficial combo that our ancestors would not have had access to but we do! Santa Cruz medicinals has a ton of other great CBD products like Calm Caps and Deep Sleep Caps that can make for a great solution to many of our modern-day problems.