Outside the Box

Most of you don't know that I'm an archaeology nut. I was going to be an archaeologist out of high school but the state archaeologist who took me under his wing talked me out of it. He knew what the future would be like for archaeologists and I am forever indebted to him. This has led me to think in different directions than most people and I'd thought I'd mention one thing.

10,000 years ago, people ate what they could. With a mostly plant based diet, they ate meat or protein when the could get it. It wasn't easy to kill animals with a stick, bows and arrows wouldn't come along for almost 9,000 years. It was much easier to eat shellfish and catch fish, so this was a part of their diet. The bacteria on the items they ate was much different than what we eat today. Think about this for a second, what bacteria did you eat with your last meal? Every meal contains bacteria, but the quantity and diversity differ today verses what they ate thousands of years ago. They didn't eat too much protein and have to deal with excessive carnitine levels. They didn't eat fried, processed, or bromylated foods that are mostly void of any beneficial bacteria. They didn't eat yeast in bread and they did quickly learn which mushrooms could be eaten. Most of the food they ate was raw and their meat was dried or fire cooked.

So what is the point of all of this? We're sick and most if not all of us have an improper balance of bacteria in our GI tract. What are we doing to correct this? Kefir, probiotics, prebiotics, what are we doing on a daily basis? You can take a truckload of probiotics and drink a swimming pool of Kefir and it's not going to change the diversity of bacteria in your GI tract. We must eat foods that have the bacterial diversity that we need. Baked chicken doesn't have them, whole wheat bread doesn't have them, just about any food that has multiple ingredients or is cooked isn't going to have the bacteria that we need. When you eat something, ask yourself what bacteria are you eating? Of course we don't know the answer to that, but if it's cooked or processed, you can almost guarantee it doesn't have the bacteria we need.

Shellfish is high in nutrients like copper, iodine, magnesium, zinc, etc. The problem for us now is that they are bottom feeders and most likely ingest any toxins or pollutants that are in their environment. If you like to eat shellfish, you may be low on iodine, copper, or some of its other ingredients. You also have to worry about heavy metals like cadmium and thallium. A lot of things to think about, but always try to eat bacteria that can help. They come from raw foods (although many parasites come from raw meat and fish)

What gets me is I go to Mexico and drink the water and I get sicker than heck. But all those people living there don't.

I cringe when I see people eating sushi. I guess I know too much about worms and fish, ocean or fresh.

Trav, sometimes I'm on Mars and you're on Venus. I'm not advocating eating raw meat, I'm advocating doing something to increase your bacterial assortment during every meal and that comes through eating raw foods and vegetables. I mentioned parasites in raw meat and you know I don't recommend eating meat but once or twice a week.

Some people on this forum are so sick that they can't eat a lot of raw vegetables, but we should try with every meal to introduce the proper bacteria into our GI tracts. I'm not sure what nutrients people eating this way would not get as there is some protein in greens and vegetables.

Project brings up a good point about genetic variation over time. For that matter, we are not the same genetically as we were when we were younger. Epigenetic changes occur due to our pathogens that can greatly affect how we function and feel. The epigenetic shifts that can occur to our methylation pathway can really make it difficult to treat multiple pathogenic infections. This is where your acidic, cytokine laden environment comes into play and these infections cause changes to our system.

Mister Mike said...

Our ancestors also ate a much larger selection of plants they we do today, which exposed them to many more phytochemicals and nutritional benefits. As an example a typical American diet consumes approximately 30 plant species a year. Compare this to the Cherokee who ate at least 80 species of plants (and perhaps many more).

Great point Mike. I think the more diverse the better. In addition to tubers, Native Americans ate a lot of seasonal food like acorns, hickory nuts, cucurbits, greens, and vegetables.

Georgia.. Good point on the diet of our ancestors. Also sometimes it's not always about just taking in probiotics or having a diversity of bacteria, but sometimes it's about the prebiotics that we should be having to help feed beneficial bacteria and allow them to thrive in our digestive tract.

I am doing the Bulletproof Diet now... Although I am side tracked sometimes and have yet to be on it following it 100%. I think it is the best bet for me to regain my health. Also limiting protein intake for a day or so... (I know even veggies have protein, but avoiding the meat or fish, or eggs, or whey protein, or whatever you consider the protein source of your meal) ... Helps induce autophagy (according to Mr. Bulletproof). This is a cleansing and detoxification of the cells, cleaning them out and removing what is not needed. It can also help regenerate mitochondria.

I'm going to try protein fasting once per week to start out. But then I think I will go 3 and 1. As in I will go 3 days with protein and then 1 day without protein. On that 1 day without protein I will instead replace the protein with carbs like rice or berries. It is suggested that this also helps boost the immune system.

We eat a lot of salmon in our house. Actually a lot of different varieties of fish. Red meat maybe 1 a month. I always do organic chicken and we had organic turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now it is soup. Talk about expensive - check out an organic turkey! Our fish are always wild caught. Hubby says no farmed fish in our house. I abide. All our vegetables are organic and have been for years. As for the eating part of getting healthy with lyme I have been doing it for a long time.

Now my indulgence is wine. Not ice cream, cookies, I hate cake, not a fan of sugar, BUT, I love wine and even having lyme I have a glass of wine with my evening meal.

Always have been a vitamin taker. I was always getting hurt with strains, sprains, and exposed to all kinds of bad germs so herbs and homeopathics were not foreign in my home.

Hubby is a fitness freak and so we have all kinds of health products. I always tell him it is better to get it from foods than a pill. JMO.

Mike, I like how you said it and by the way, I am Cherokee. LOL!!

Mister Mike said...

I respectfully don’t buy this premise that all paleo or primal diets rest on an intellectual fallacy. While I’m not a pure paleo follower by any means, it appears to me that there is nothing false or antiquated about assuming that if we put “purer” materials into our bodies, such as wild game and grass fed meats, a very wide variety of organic greens and vegetables similar to what our ancestors did and avoid “foods” that are engineered in factories by chemists, that we will live healthier and longer lives.

Well my point is just that the primal diets are often justified by their promoters based on the idea that we're essentially cavemen in a modern world, which is being found to be false. We've actually changed a lot genetically since the advent of agriculture (and epigenetically during our lives as Georgia Hunter points out). I don't think it's necessary to rewind the clock back to the stone age to eat a healthy diet. Instead why not just eat like the pre-industrialized villagers who we know live long healthy lives.

www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html

In my own case I've been doing really well since the addition of A2 milk to my diet this summer. I had been unable to drink regular milk for many years and had thought that I was lactose intolerant. It turns out I was just reacting to the A1 milk protein that is found in commercial milk in most western countries. But now that milk is back in my diet I have more energy and it feels like my immune system is taking on Lyme and cos more effectively. Based on this success I've just started using colostrum, will have to see how it goes. But you wouldn't find milk in any caveman's stone cellar.

fedup.com.au/factsheets/additive-and-natural-chemical-factsheets/a2-milk

astroman said...

Milk is not for adults. The digestive tract of adult mammals is not designed for ANY real milk. Only infants digest it properly. Thats why mammals (all) produce milk, for infants.

I guess my whole argument in this thread is that we're not cavemen and we're certainly not just mammals. We've adapted over 10 millennia to diets based on agriculture and animal domestication.

"They proposed that the trait of lactase persistence, dubbed the LP allele, emerged about 7,500 years ago in the broad, fertile plains of Hungary.

Powerful gene
Once the LP allele appeared, it offered a major selective advantage. In a 2004 study, researchers estimated that people with the mutation would have produced up to 19% more fertile offspring than those who lacked it. The researchers called that degree of selection “among the strongest yet seen for any gene in the genome”.
"

www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471

www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471 :

"[Young children almost universally produce lactase and can digest the lactose in their mother's milk. But as they mature, most switch off the lactase gene. Only 35% of the human population can digest lactose beyond the age of about seven or eight (ref. 2)."]

- pretty much what I previously mentioned. If you dont have the gene (65% probability you dont), good luck with real milk.

gkamom said...
GH, how do you eat acorns? They are a pretty hard nut. What is cucurbits?

They would crush them and remove the hull and then make it into a soup. The tannic acid would separate out and they could easily remove it. Cucurbits is a gourd-like squash that was easy to grow and edible.

Georgia Hunter

I have been enjoying your posts ever since you joined the forum. Almost everything that you post resonates with truth. You are definitely tightening up some of the discretionary variables of your life to improve the percentages. Here a little, there a little.... . I wish you the best in the coming year!!!

May all of the forum members find the health that they are seeking this year!!!

Don

Heathersdad said...
Here a little, there a little.... .

I believe this is how things go with healing.....it's not one thing that brings us to the finish line. It's the sum of the small, positive changes we make.

Step by step we climb the mountain.

And, yes, I, too, appreciate Georgia Hunter's posts. Thanks and Happy New Year!!!