Looking at me seven years ago, you wouldn’t imagine what you see now. I was a blue-haired drummer with an emotional vendetta against my family and the world at large. I wasn’t a grounded human being with anything to offer the world. Back then, I would not have thought twice about any of my habits, or how lifestyle choices could have any real effect on my ability to live. I didn’t realize how our food choices, for instance, affected my ability to survive and thrive in the modern world.
How could I know how much damage I was doing to my body, or how my limited worldviews were impacting my future, and current, well-being? Mine was not the path of health and endurance. Nobody taught me those things, but life is a firm teacher.
Around fifth grade I had the following dream: I was floating alone in space, far from the world, with a deep sensation of loneliness. I was lost and afraid. And as if that were not enough, I suddenly found myself inside of a giant floating intestine, just large enough to squeeze around my body. I was suffocating. As I tried for breath, I watched molten magma pour towards my head until it covered me, burning and torturing me in breathless horror.
Pimples, and hating life.
It was decades before I would understand that my dream was a sign of gluten intolerance. You see, despite the fact that my parents took care to feed us well, which included fresh vegetables in most dinner meals, limited our sweets and tried to balance our diets, I was not a healthy boy. I had some of the worst hay fever (allergies to near-everything) of anyone I knew, except my father, who I thought I had inherited it from. I looked at each coming year as if it had three seasons: fall, winter and allergies; this was like having a nasty cold for two-thirds of each year. I even developed an ego complex around them, thinking my allergies made me unique (I earned attention for my misery).
Around puberty, I started to get intestinal cramps up to three times a week, so bad I would sweat and want to vomit and wish I were dead. It didn’t matter if I was in the middle of camp, school or visiting relatives. These pressures lasted about three hours, with constipation leading up to major diarrhea, stinging and wet. I was told these were merely “growing pains.” Nevermind acute acne, growing violent thoughts, emotional instability, and waxing wanderlust.
Catching rainbows with the family.
I had a good life, so why wouldn’t anyone think otherwise? Why complain and want for something better? I started to hate the outdoors because of my allergies, and got angrier and angrier. Something was wrong; I felt it. But I knew I’d have to leave home to find what. So, travel I did. They say the journey of enlightenment doesn’t begin until you’re 1,000 miles from home, and I went at least that far. As I traveled, I read. As I read, I experimented. And as I experimented I learned, but what I learned was not always what I expected.
I guess I thought you could learn to be healthy by reading a book. I wish it were simply so. But there are so many books on health right now, and the information is conflicting. How is a person to make heads or tails of which study validates this or what school of thought actually solves our problems? It’s easy to give up and wrap up a loose end of personal cosmology with vague justifications like: “maybe it’s just genetics” or “that’s just part of life.” But if we aren’t going to just dismiss the problem, which scientists are we supposed to listen to anyways?
Skip ahead with me a few years and I’ll spare you everything that didn’t work for me: vegetarian, high-carb/low-fat, supplements, lots of exercise, yadda yadda. During that time, fixing one problem usually meant having another, and I was the test-tube for my own self-exploration. I experienced adrenal fatigue, joint problems, more mental health maladies, continued intestinal duress and a lot of other troubles. Not delightful years for my body. Not until I started to dig my teeth into the works of some people whose theories weren’t based on isolated science, people who weren’t just watching chemicals react or sucking up to the FDA. Instead, they were researching the origins of human beings as a species, and the traditional roots of human society through studies like anthropology and archeology. They were researching human history.
One of these, Weston A. Price, was the former head of the American Dental Association. In the 1930’s the ADA commissioned him to travel the world and study the teeth of people living by traditional lifestyles and diets. His landmark research in a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration7 provided case evidence that human beings living by traditional diets demonstrate 99-100% immunity to dental decay, including stronger physics, mental acumen and even greater spirituality. Crime was lower, tradition more valued and despite their primitivism, they were better off as people.7
The diet he observed was loaded with high nutrient fats, especially in the form of organ meats; dairy products from free-range animals (especially those consuming fast-growing green grass in the spring); sea-foods; and even blood. Humans were designed to live on animal parts, alongside carefully preserved traditions of fermentation, hunting, fishing and domestication. Sadly, where western diets meet primitive racial stock, Weston Price observed rampant tooth decay and all other degenerative diseases from deformities to mental health disorders within the first generation, demonstrating that most disease is not merely genetic.7
The Paleo diet community has made enormous recent strides confirming this within the context of the scientific world, focusing on anthropological and archeological studies of early humans. In terms of evidence, they seem to be a decade or more ahead of mainstream science, which is still pouring millions of dollars towards isolated solutions to modern epidemics like diabetes and cancer. Follow the growing phenomenon of the Paleo movement far, and you’ll see what they’re discovering: the destructive trends of sugars and carbohydrates in modern diets, the ruinous results of supplementing chemicals into our foods, the benefits of eating traditionally, and even theory on why humans were never made to cultivate and eat grain – the hallmark of the agricultural revolution, if not modern society.1, 5
Finally, health began to snap into place in my mind and body, with a constructive paradigm accounting for our suffering, regardless of cosmology. Humans were made to eat naturally, according to a specific ecological niche we were designed for: no matter your worldview.
I threw all my other books away. No more Atkins; no more supplement this, supplement that. One diet for humans everywhere: any blood-type, any body. No balance this or fret about that. In fact, it’s not really even about diet; rather, a way of living demonstrated by our ancient ancestors, lost.
Naturally, this isn’t instinctive, or if it was, we’ve been out of touch too long. Obtaining the highest quality food took up an enormous amount early man’s time, consuming his efforts to the point of ritual. But we don’t live in the open Kalahari like our supposed Sans ancestors did8; most of us live in a big old city. Could there be a way to reconcile these worlds, those of modern life and our natural heritage?
Thankfully yes, there are some good bridges being gaped, like Sally Fallon’s excellent cookbook based on the research of Weston A. Price3, or Ramiel Nagel’s6 modern solutions based on the same research. The Paleo diet community is growing rapidly and new books are released constantly by reputed authors like Loren Cordain2 and Robb Wolfe9. All of these provide resources and means for re-acquiring the nutrition our bodies are designed to need. It’s worth more than good teeth, and my experience is testament. I no longer have allergies, or intestinal cramps, psychotic symptoms or any of those chronic conditions I suffered. It may sound a little “grass is green”, but when the body is supplied with the nutrients it requires, it really self-corrects these maladies! My knees have improved, mental clarity has multiplied, emotional stability has been enhanced and even spiritual well being has grown.
Traditional foods can be appealing. In this picture: venison burgers with local, organic produce.
Healing the body restores the whole being, and the whole of us is always affected by its parts. My fiancé, now wife, lost thirty pounds within months of meeting me, switching from things like white-flour products and commercial foods to nourishing meats, vegetables and animal fats; we devour butter. We live in Montana again, so we get connected to the process of obtaining our foods as naturally as possible, and note the difference we feel and taste when we eat the foods provided by relatives from commercial grocery stores, from what we hunt and fish and eat at home every day. It’s a better life!
My wife, Ashley, catches a Rainbow Trout through the ice – a new tradition for us. Wild-caught means high quality nutrition.
That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, or that it isn’t work to set these neo-traditions into place in the modern world. It requires creative solutions. We face money hungry industries promoting their products for consumption, rigid traditions from previous generations, and a flood of information that makes finding the good stuff hard. The best advice I can give is to take it seriously, as health affects everything we do, and ask yourself how diet fits into your worldview. Does it account for man’s condition, or is it the result of some lab experiment, a marketing trend or popular fad? Does it really reach back to the roots of the human condition and bring wholeness? Does the way you acquire food lead you towards a better, more sustainable lifestyle? Could you even get by without a grocery store?
Stay tuned and let’s continue exploring these questions, and don’t forget to also visit my blog on natural movement, traditional diet and wellbeing at www.kinnat.org.
References
1.) Barker, G. (2006). The Agricultural Revolution in PreHistory: Why did Foragers Become Farmers? Oxford,
NY: Oxford University Press.
2.) Cordain, L. (2011). The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to
Eat. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
3.) Fallon, S., & Enig, Ph.D., M. G. (2001). Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC: NewTrends Publishing.
4.) Louv, R. (n.d.). Nature Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
5.) Manning, R. (2004). Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization. New York, NY: North
Point Press.
6.) Nagel, R. (2012). Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition. Ashland, OR: Golden Child
Publishing.
7.) Price, W. A. (2012, April). Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. In Project Gutenberg Australia. Retrieved
January 31, 2013, from http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html
8.) Thomas, E. M. (2006). The Old Way: A Story of the First People. New York, NY: Picador.
9.) Wolf, R. (n.d.). The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet. N.p.: Victory Belt Publishing.