| What does it really feel like to be a healthy human? | | By Lane Sebring | | The ancient gravesite revealed the bones of a man six foot six. The bones were of a density so as to be stronger then those of any known human living today. The attachment sites where the muscle attached to the bone were so robust as to denote a strength that calculates to be 4 to 5 times greater than the average human today. The brain casing housed a brain that was not only larger than ours but was proportionately larger. His face was wider and his teeth were perfectly straight including plenty of room for his wisdom teeth and no evidence of tooth decay. This was truly a remarkable human being. Beside him lay an equally impressive skeleton of a woman, more gracile, but who stood six-foot tall. The skeletons were of a couple who walked on the earth 22,000 years ago. They were hunter gatherers who lived in Europe. There are many that believe they may well have been more intelligent. It is certainly possible. We, however, have the advantage of the accumulation of vast knowledge in the form of writing. What were they capable of?
It is hard to know for certain but if you study present day hunter gatherers we can get some idea. Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist from Harvard, who lived with 15 different groups of indigenous people, reports that it is typical for tribal hunters of the Amazon to be able to smell the urine of the animal from 40 paces and be ale to tell you what it is, even male or female. They can feel the heat of another human being on their skin from 25 feet away. A paleontologist, who is also a triathlete, was allowed to go hunting with hunter gatherers. He reported they began their morning hunt in a run, jog, run, jog fashion. When found the trail of an animal they wanted to hunt there was no more jogging only running because they had to catch up. When they caught up with the animal it sprinted off for its life. The men continued running after it until it could run no longer and then they killed it. He was able to keep up with them but not without considerable effort of his part. He said the most impressive thing to him was the fact the men never opened their mouths to breathe. To them the nose was not a restriction. What has happened to us civilized humans?
We can now draw a line and it leads straight across the dinner table. Realize we have lived as hunter gatherers for 99% of our history. If you study the diet of hunter gatherers you find, an average, 70% of their calories come from wild game. The rest is from wild fruits, nuts and vegetables. Hunter gatherers do not eat grains or beans or potatoes except under starvation conditions. They do not eat dairy after three years old. We are not designed for these foods. We now know that the foods a mother eats during her pregnancy can permanently turn on or off parts of her child’s DNA.
Serious changes with our health began in the Middle East 10,000 years ago. There wereclimactic changes, a drought and we soon wiped out all the big game. We had to do something to survive. We found we could grow grains on the river banks. We chose grains because you can store them. Why can we store them? Because nothing can live off of them. As a result of this major dietary change there was a loss of an average of 6 inches in height, infant mortality went up and life expectancy was cut in half. Osteoporosis began with the introduction of grains into the diet and the sphenoid bone that buttresses the sides of the skull and supports the brain was no longer strong enough to span the original distance so we ended up with narrowed faces, smaller brains, a nose you can hardly breathe out of and a jaw that is no longer wide enough to hold all of our teeth. This is the reason we need our wisdom teeth removed. These changes follow the introduction of grains into the diet all around the world; 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, 7000 years ago in the Far East and 5000 years ago in Europe.
Perhaps what it is like to be a truly healthy human being may be best described by the earlier explorers and chroniclers.
George Catlin in the 1830s describes the crow tribe.” They are really a handsome and well formed a set of men as can be seen in any part of the world. There is a sort of ease and grace added to their dignity of manners, which give them the air of gentlemen at once. I observe the other day, that most of them were over 6 feet high. It is but to paint a vast country of green fields where the men are all red—where meat is the staff of life.” The French explorer Rene Laudonniere in his explorations of Florida in 1564 noted”, the agility of the women is so great that they can swim over great rivers bearing their children upon one of their arms. They climb up, also, very nimbly upon the highest trees in the country --- even the most ancient women of the country dance with the others.” Captain Cook wrote of the Maori in New Zealand in 1772, “It cannot be thought strange that these people enjoy perfect and uninterrupted health. In all our visits to their towns, where young and old, men and women come crowded about us, prompted by the same curiosity that carried us to look at them, we never saw a single person who appeared to have any bodily compliant, nor among the numbers that we have seen naked did we perceive the slightest eruption upon the skin, or any marks that an eruption has been left behind... a further proof that human nature is here untainted with disease is the great number of old men that we saw ... appeared to be very ancient, yet none of them were decrepit, and though not equal to the young in muscular strength, were not a whit behind them in cheerfulness and vivacity.” So what does it feel like to be a healthy human?
Ask any 10 year old boy if he could have any super power he wanted, chances are he would wish for super strength. I think it is ironic he would wish exactly that which we once were. Lane Sebring, M.D.
Lane Sebring MD
What Does It Really Feel like to Be a Healthy Human
Patient Blood Glucose Graph | |
|
|