The Primal Blueprint (7 page)
Read The Primal Blueprint Online
Authors: Mark Sisson
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The development of agriculture and civilization caused humans to become smaller and sicker, leading to a dramatic decline in life expectancy
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While our primal ancestors made the most of their genes (remember, they had no choice; the alternative was to starve or become some other creature’s dinner!), we have
fallen far short. The development of agriculture and civilization caused humans to become smaller (including our brain size) and sicker (originally due to contagious diseases and other repercussions of civilization). Today, our inferior diet, exercise and lifestyle behaviors are what diminish our quality and span of life.
Human life expectancy 10,000 years ago was about 33 years. While not too impressive by 21st-century standards, primal man actually lived longer than his civilized successors all the way into the early 20th century! Average life expectancy reached a low of 18 during the Bronze Age (~3300–1200 B.C., Ancient Egypt, etc.), rose only slightly to a range of 20-30 through Classical Greek (~500-300 B.C.) times, the Roman Empire (~0-500 A.D.), and the Middle Ages (~700-1500), and was still only between 30 and 40 as late as the early 20
th
Century. Around that time, medical advancements (antibiotics, hospital and community sanitation, decreased infant mortality rates, etc.) helped life expectancy skyrocket.
What’s more, fossil records show that primal humans who could steer clear of fatal misfortune could enjoy long lives of excellent health and fitness (that’s cool for us; for them it was a necessity). Remarkably, some could live to be as old as 94!
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Among present-day hunter-gatherers (e.g., Ache, Hadza, Hiwi, and !Kung—groups that have almost no modern conveniences or medical care) it is not uncommon to see strong, healthy folks living well into their 80s. More than a quarter of the Ache people of Paraguay make it to 70. Moreover, 73 percent of Ache adults die from accidents and only 17 percent from illness. Think about the extraordinary implications of hunter-gatherer longevity: with no medications or medical care of any kind, a massive lifelong struggle for food, clothing, and shelter completely devoid of any modern comforts, primal humans (and modern humans living primally) can still live to what even us softies consider old age. Obviously, they’re doing a lot of things right!
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The human species reached its evolutionary pinnacle about 10,000 years ago. After that, we started to take it easy and get soft.… Hence, the Ultimate Human award goes to
Grok
,
my nickname for the prototypical preagricultural human being
.
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Of course, the civilization-driven decline in life expectancy didn’t matter in a pure evolutionary context. As long as civilized humans made it to reproductive age and had children, they could pass their genes along to the next generation without penalty. No one will argue that moving beyond survival of the fittest is a bad thing, but the sober reality is that today’s technological age is enjoyed by the fattest, laziest humans in the history of humanity. Hence, the Ultimate Human award goes to
Grok
, my nickname for the prototypical preagricultural human being. Grok
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is the central character of both this book and my blog. He’s a lean, strong, healthy, character whom you will grow to love.
Unlike Grok, who ruled the planet with little more than a spear and a thatched hut in his portfolio, even the most impoverished humans of the last several thousand years, extending up to the present day’s Third World inhabitants, have not really “competed” genetically. The presence of the most rudimentary modern influences, such as grain consumption, food storage, permanent shelters, and basic firearms and other weapons, all suppress the true Darwinian survival of the fittest playing field that allowed Grok to thrive. Sure, being a math whiz or a natural athlete may significantly influence your path through life and give you a competitive edge in pursuits to which you are inclined, but these genetic attributes no longer provide a survival advantage in the evolutionary sense. Tour de France legend Lance Armstrong has a genetically superior cardiovascular system, but he could have easily cruised through life as a candy-chomping, video-gaming fat kid and still have reproduced successfully (although he would have had much less chance of flying in private jets or palling around with rock stars and world leaders…) due to lack of selection pressure for human endurance in the modern world.
In fact, considering all the comforts and medical advancements of modern life, we could easily argue that we currently exist in a state of
devolution
. For the most part, this is great (many of us have suffered illnesses or traumas over the course of our lives that would have killed us a century ago, let alone 1,000 or 10,000 years ago). However, we must be vigilant not to let the advantages of modern life compromise our health (e.g., hitting the pharmacy instead of the gym to address your back pain).
The virtual halting of evolution means that each and every human living today is still subject to the same evolutionary-based laws for healthy living that drove the original design process of Grok. The challenge is in applying the
Primal Blueprint
laws to modern life. How do we leverage the lessons and benefits of natural selection against the pressures of a complex modern society bent on promoting consumerism and quick fixes over the pursuit of health? How do we reprogram our ancient genes to recapture excellent health? We simply have to ask ourselves, “What would Grok do?”
A SNiPpet About Evolution
Contrary to the
Primal Blueprint
assumptions, you might have read articles suggesting that humans are continuing to evolve. It appears from all the research that, yes, based on sheer population numbers and cultural interbreeding, there have been far more random mutations (what scientists call
genetic drift
) in the human race over the past several thousand years than in equivalent years prior. Almost all of these minor differences (adult lactose tolerance in direct descendants of herders being one arguable exception) have had no impact on the basic ways we all metabolize food, respond to exercise, or otherwise deal with challenges of our environment. Obviously, when any animal population goes from a million worldwide 10,000 years ago to six and a half billion as we have today, the range of small nonlethal genetic differences will be significant. However, these differences are largely an artifact of an exploding population—not of natural selection or functional adaptations.
In fact, there are now thousands of documented traceable single nucleotide polymorphisms—SNPs (pronounced “snips”)—proving how “different” we all are. SNPs are like minor spelling errors within the written instructions (nucleotides) of genes that quite often have little or no effect on the final protein product for which the gene encodes. But the mere existence of all those differences within our vast population doesn’t mean we are “evolving” in the sense of moving in a better direction vis-à-vis either health or natural selection.
Part of what we are dealing with here is a semantic issue: how is the term
evolved
best used in the context of the
Primal Blueprint?
On the one hand,
evolution
can mean “the changes seen in the inherited traits from one generation to the next”—pretty simple. On the other hand, most anthropologists discuss evolution in the more Darwinian context of “favorable heritable traits that become more common in successive generations of a population while unfavorable traits are selected out.” I look at evolution in terms of how natural selection acted on our ancestors to favor the strong and healthy and weed out the sick, weak, or unfit. But as mentioned earlier, when you remove the primary selection pressures (with unlimited calories, shelter, vaccines, and antibiotics), suddenly anyone who can reach puberty and procreate has “evolved” successfully, even if later years are full of discomforts and disease. This is important, for it means that any and almost all nonfatal products of random mutation or genetic drift (i.e., SNPs) are incorporated into the genome without penalty—and passed on to the next generation.
Many of the recent reports on so-called accelerated evolution suggest that more harmful SNPs than beneficial ones are appearing. As a result, we have a litany of documented SNPs that predict greater risk for certain diseases. You can even spend $3,000 and have a test that identifies many of your risky SNPs. But having these slight genetic “misspellings” doesn’t guarantee that the possessor will get a particular disease. All that happens is that the possibility increases somewhat that if you don’t play your cards
right, you might develop the condition. Worse yet, some geneticists have suggested recently that your lifestyle behaviors could adversely affect future generations (e.g., transferring a predisposition for obesity to your offspring thanks to a maladaptive grain-based diet).
I suppose one could argue that we are in a midadaptation phase in our evolution toward withstanding processed carbohydrate intake or inactivity. However, because we haven’t fully adapted, we still suffer from the ill effects (some people are affected far more than others, but all are affected negatively in some way). Presumably, we could wait another thousand generations to see if we fully adapt to overemphasizing sugars and grains, but I don’t wish to be sick and fat in the meanwhile. I say, when in doubt, adhere to the same type of diet and lifestyle (environment) that surrounded the original design process of Grok—the
Primal Blueprint!
In order to begin to understand the concept of reprogramming your genes, it will help to understand what they actually are and how they work. Each of your 50 or 60 trillion cells contains a nucleus with a complete set of DNA instructions divided into handy subsets called genes. There are approximately 20,000 different genes located on the long strands of DNA in each cell. These DNA strands are further organized into 23 pairs of chromosomes with which you may be familiar. In any given cell, only a small fraction of the total number of genes is actively involved in carrying out the main “business” of that particular type of cell. Depending on environmental signals, genes trigger the manufacture of certain specific proteins and enzymes to perform the various tasks required of them. For example, the beta cells in your pancreas manufacture insulin but don’t grow bigger when you lift weights, and liver cells can synthesize nutrients, but they don’t grow new bone tissue. And yet each cell has the entire “recipe” for a human residing on the DNA.
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Genes don’t know—or care—whether these environmental signals promote or compromise your health; they simply react to each stimulus in an effort to promote your immediate survival
.
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Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that genes are not self-determining. They do not turn on or off by themselves but do so only in response to signals they receive from their immediate environment. It’s as if they are programmed by the environment to respond accordingly. As we begin to talk about reprogramming your genes, you will begin to understand the power you have to influence certain genes to turn on and others to turn off.
Genes actively control cell function all the time, so the overall health and survival of your body is primarily dependent on which genes get turned on or off in response to their immediate environment. Genes don’t know—or care—whether these environmental signals promote or compromise your long-term health; they simply react to each stimulus in an effort to sustain your short-term survival, as they have been designed to do by evolution and molded by the precise behaviors of our ancestors. Sprint or lift weights, and the biochemical “by-products” from that specific activity turn on certain genes that repair and strengthen the exercised muscle. Do too much exercise, and other genes promote excessive production of catabolic hormones, leading to prolonged inflammation and hindered recovery. An allergic reaction represents your body’s (misdirected) genetic response to a perceived airborne or ingested threat. An autoimmune disease is often a genetic overreaction of that same system caused by unfamiliar foods (see
Chapter 5
). Type 2 diabetes typically develops after prolonged periods when your genes are trying to protect you from the dangers of eating too many carbohydrates.
In a profound example our genes’ ability to switch on and off, researchers studying the link between smoking and lung cancer have discovered that tobacco smoking causes
hypermethylation
(a complete or partial deactivation) of a single gene known as MTHFR. Turning off MTHFR triggers an opposite effect—
hypomethylation
(systemic dysfunction)—in many other genes, setting the stage for further cancer development.
The idea that the environment influences whether genes are turned on or off is not a new one. In 1942 geneticist and evolutionary biologist C. H. Waddington first coined the term
epigenetics
to describe how genes might interact with their surroundings to create a unique individual. Today the study of epigenetics is one of the fastest growing subdisciplines of genetics. Moreover, the burgeoning field of
nutrigenomics
has identified hundreds of ways that nutrients (foods or supplements) impact gene expression. You may be familiar with the direct influence folic acid has on reducing neural tube birth defects, which is why all pregnant women are advised to take supplemental folic acid. This is but one small example of the powerful influence diet can have on reprogramming genes.
An Australian study suggested that human genes are adversely affected by sugar ingestion for two weeks (genetic controls designed to protect the body against diabetes and heart disease are switched off as an acute reaction to eating sugar) and that prolonged poor eating can cause genetic damage that can potentially be passed through blood-lines! On an even grander scale, research shows that certain cells within the body called mesenchymal stem cells can become bone cells, fat cells, muscle cells, or even cancer cells in adults, depending upon the environmental signals they receive.
