Skip to main content

New Paleo / EvFit blogs

Well they are new to me but I just came across these  excellent blogs.   They have gone straight into the RSS reader!

Robert Paterson's Weblog - has a lot of paleo material on it as Robert charts his discoveries.  He is finding much of the same material that I am, and presenting it well.

His paleo discoveries have prompted him to found another site  The Missing Human Manual

Do you want to age well? Most of us do. If you are my age, 60, this is more important a question that if you are 30. But most of us would not wish to have heart disease, cancer, dementia when we get old.

Most of us think it is normal that we will get ill like this.

But science today tells us that this is not "Normal". Our evolutionary past designed us to be active and fit until we drop dead. Why? Because raising human children takes so long. Mature adults had to do most of the hard work enable us to invest up to 25 years in our kids.

We are designed by our evolution to reach a plateau of fitness in mid life. So why do most of us not live like this?

We don't because, we have strayed away from the best way of living that fits our evolution best. Our culture has got too far ahead of our biology. We eat foods that make us ill. We have lost our social identity and power and that makes us ill. And we have lost touch with the circadian rhythms of the Natural World, and that has made us ill too.

We have lost our fit with our true nature.

This site will be a Manual. It will show you what the best fit is. It will show you the science behind this. It will share with you some methods for getting your fit back with your true human nature.

A lot of his writings are prompted by the superb Michael Rose's 55 Theses   His propositions remind me of Wittgenstein....

Here are the last 3:


  • Young people with significant agricultural ancestry can sustain their health with agricultural patterns of nutrition and activity, but not with an evolutionarily novel industrial lifestyle.

  • Older adults with significant agricultural ancestry cannot sustain their health with either agricultural or industrial patterns of nutrition and activity, and should instead switch to hunter-gatherer patterns of nutrition and activity in order to slow their later aging and possibly hasten its cessation.

  • Once this switch to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle among older adults has become widespread, further changes that would enhance human health at later ages can be discovered using evolutionary research tools, such as experimental evolution with model organisms and the molecular genetic analysis of human evolutionary history.
Labels:

Comments

Amy said…
Thanks for the blog ideas. As I make decisions on how to make it a lifestyle vs. diet I love reading more and more on it. Your piece on kids really hit home too.
May 25, 2011 at 9:40 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dry January

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was taking part in "Dry January".  I didn't make a big song and dance about it, but I decided to go for a calendar month or so with no alcohol.  A few people have asked me about my experience, so here are a few points. Why take a break from drinking? Alcohol is an interesting topic.  As a drug it is widely accepted in society, central to so much of our socialising and leisure.  There seem to be lots of health benefits - so we are told - yet there are also a lot of problems in terms of health, relationships and lifestyle that come from drinking. Over a few years I'd begun to become aware and then concerned that I was drinking too much and too regularly.  I am in a busy and stressful job and sometimes a glass of wine after work to relax is really helpful.  But over time, one glass became two.  Two glasses became ....I might as well finish the bottle.  A habit got established....and was starting to get too e...
7 comments
Read more

So where have I been?

You will have noticed that this blog has been quiet for a while....  There are a few reasons for that, reasons that I thought I'd list here: WORK -  my day job has been incredibly busy and stressful this year. Working 10-14 hour days the last thing on my mind when I got home was putting something on here.  FACEBOOK/TWITTER - I suppose I've been using other channels to do some of what I used to do here. Quick fire posts pointing to interesting studies or news etc tend to get posted to Twitter (@chrishighcock) or to the Facebook Hillfit group http://www.facebook.com/groups/263083947097000/  REASSESSMENT - I've found myself less comfortable with some of the positions I've taken in the past. Sometimes I'm embarrassed by some of the things I've promoted. I'm not Paleo or low carb. I think Tabata and intervals are misunderstood and misapplied. I cannot really claim to be HIT.   I find myselfunable  honestly to post things on here and pretend that I am some sort o...
12 comments
Read more

Taking up space for a brief update

I've a couple of posts in draft that I will get up soon -  an update / reflection on Dry January and some thoughts on the scheduling benefits of short workouts if your life is busy.  Before that though, I am pointing to something else. However, I wanted to highlight something that is coming this weekend that I've been involved in.   Amber Rogers (Gokaleo and author of Taking Up Space ) has been pulling together a bundle of books from various authors with a common theme, one that I've been pushing here recently.   Keep it simple, avoid the hype, be patient, be consistent and flee the gurus.   I've talked before about how we get obsessed with pushing for more and more, when enough is OK.  I've given my view that so much of the health and fitness internet world is more like a gnostic religion than something that will benefit your life. There are other voices out there saying similar things and I'll be pointing to a bundle of books later this week ...
1 comment
Read more