Could eating like our ancestors make us healthier? Hi Brenda, My name is Kinsey and I’m one of the nutritionists here at Paleo Plan. I came to the Paleo diet after eating a vegetarian/vegan diet for nearly 25 years. The diet’s basic tenet is that our. Here at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating we do NOT endorse or promote any particular diet or nutritional lifestyle. We do highly encourage that each person. The Paleo diet – 7 reasons why you should eat like a caveman Our ancestors might have been smarter than us when it comes to food? Find out why. Eat like a caveman? If you’re plugged into the gym circuit, you’ve probably heard of — or experimented with — the Paleo Diet. Popular with everyone from.
Early human ancestors made a drastic shift in their diet, from eating exclusively fruits and leaves to including grasses and succulents about 3.5 million years ago. Forget willpower: Brain signals drive what, how, and when we eat. If you’re eating too much, here’s how to take back control. Many times I have heard people say how crazy it sounds to be eating one meal a day. It may sound crazy to them, because they have no experienced how truely amazing it is!
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Why Paleo? So why go Paleo? To start things off, here’s a little Paleolithic timeline for you. We started eating the Paleo way about 2. That’s not much time for evolution to catch up with us, meaning our bodies are still most adept at eating the way we used to eat: meat, vegetables, fruits, and some nuts and seeds. When I say not a lot of time, think of it like this: 1. Switching from our evolutionary diet of animal products, veggies and fruit to a diet full of grains and legumes is like that movie Super Size Me where Morgan Spurlock goes from eating his normal diet to eating only Mc. Donald’s food for 3.
The all-or-nothing mentality prevails in our society. Here at SparkPeople though, we know better. Moderation is our mantra, and we repeat it so often that most of us.
His health plummets – he gets fat and depressed, and he develops fatty liver and sexual dysfunction. That’s basically what’s happened on a grand scale over the last 1. We’ve replaced wholesome, clean plant matter and animal foods with a high carbohydrate, low nutrient, high toxic chemical diet and we’ve gotten sick. We’ve shrunken in size, our bones are osteoporotic, we have more cancer, obesity and diabetes, an alarming incidence of heart disease, inflammation of all kinds, skin problems and the list goes on.
We are sick. But our Paleolithic ancestors were not and the hunter gatherer tribes that still exist are not. So, what do you eat on this diet? There are tons and tons of nutrients in there and no fillers. It does take some getting used to – more for some than others. Most people go through a detoxification period (see the post on detoxing here) where your body is learning how to efficiently use fats instead of carbohydrates as a major source of energy. It took me almost 3 weeks to not feel like I was walking through oatmeal all the time when I first started eating Paleo.
And then one day, I just felt better. I felt great, actually. Some people’s transition period lasts only a few days, though. It depends on how much your body dislikes grains, legumes, refined sugars, and dairy; the more it dislikes those things, the harder you detoxify and the worse you feel.
Here’s a post explaining the do’s and don’t’s of the diet in more detail. Think that looks too hard? Lectins Lectins are found in large amounts in grains, legumes (especially soy), and nightshades (potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, tobacco, eggplant).
So we choose to make up the bulk of our diets with plants that evolved to thwart us – and then we wonder why we feel like crap. Phytic acid. Along with lectins, phytic acid is considered an anti- nutrient. Phytic acid is not digestible by non- ruminants (read: non- cud- chewers) because we lack the enzyme phytase. Phytic acid actually binds to the magnesium, calcium, zinc and iron in foods and takes those crucial nutrients OUT of our bodies. We do not want that to happen.
Cordain and others believe that this alone is greatly contributing to the worldwide epidemic of iron- deficiency anemia. And why would we not want to be stripped of our zinc? I didn’t get to calcium yet – I’m saving that for number 3. You don’t need dairy (gasp!). Calcium – let’s go there, shall we?
I believe it’s another ploy by Dairy Management Inc to get us to buy America’s surplus of factory farmed cheese. I repeat, your bones are not just sticks of calcium.
You need a lot of minerals to build them, plus protein and a bunch of other nutrient co- factors that you find in nutrient dense foods like meat, vegetables and fruits. Here’s the funny part – dairy is HIGHLY acid forming in your body, and when you have a net acid diet (lots of grains, dairy, and meat, and few fruits and veggies), calcium gets leached from your bones to try to neutralize the acid. Yes, dairy can contribute to osteoporosis. The Paleo diet is satisfying. Have you ever gone on a low- fat diet? Do you have low- fat products in your kitchen right now?
I thought so. There are groups of Inuits who live predominantly on fatty fish, seal oil and fish eggs who have no signs of heart disease, obesity or cancer. Fat carries flavors and it makes us feel full and satiated. It gives us the sensation that we’ve eaten something hearty (because we have), so we don’t need to eat again for a while. Dense protein (meat) has a similar effect on us. An ample amount of protein and fat together create balanced blood sugar levels so we don’t crash and burn all day, all week, forever. Their skin clears up, they have more energy, and they find that muscles start appearing where there had only been flab for years. This way of eating can literally reverse diabetes, reduce your chances of getting cancer, and reduce inflammation in your joints.
It can help you avoid heart disease. People’s digestive systems thank them for this diet, and many people even get to come off of their antidepressants and other medications.
I am a nutrition therapist and I’ve seen all of these effects first hand in people. In my opinion, if you’re struggling with health issues, this diet is well worth a shot. You have nothing to lose by trying it out.
If you want a little extra help with meal planning, that’s what we’re here for. To subscribe to the Paleo Plan and receive weekly menus and grocery lists, go here.
Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You. Ok, maybe your grandparents probably slept like you.
And your great, great- grandparents. But once you go back before the 1. Your ancestors slept in a way that modern sleepers would find bizarre – they slept twice. And so can you. The History. The existence of our sleeping twice per night was first uncovered by Roger Ekirch, professor of History at Virginia Tech. His research found that we didn’t always sleep in one eight hour chunk.
We used to sleep in two shorter periods, over a longer range of night. This range was about 1. References are scattered throughout literature, court documents, personal papers, and the ephemera of the past. What is surprising is not that people slept in two sessions, but that the concept was so incredibly common.
Two- piece sleeping was the standard, accepted way to sleep.“It’s not just the number of references – it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge,” Ekirch says. An English doctor wrote, for example, that the ideal time for study and contemplation was between “first sleep” and “second sleep.” Chaucer tells of a character in the Canterbury Tales that goes to bed following her “firste sleep.” And, explaining the reason why working class conceived more children, a doctor from the 1. Ekirch’s book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past is replete with such examples. But just what did people do with these extra twilight hours? Pretty much what you might expect.
Most stayed in their beds and bedrooms, sometimes reading, and often they would use the time to pray. Religious manuals included special prayers to be said in the mid- sleep hours.
Others might smoke, talk with co- sleepers, or have sex. Some were more active and would leave to visit with neighbours. As we know, this practice eventually died out. Ekirch attributes the change to the advent of street lighting and eventually electric indoor light, as well as the popularity of coffee houses. Author Craig Koslofsky offers a further theory in his book Evening’s Empire.
With the rise of more street lighting, night stopped being the domain of criminals and sub- classes and became a time for work or socializing. Two sleeps were eventually considered a wasteful way to spend these hours.
No matter why the change happened, shortly after the turn of the 2. Until about 1. 99.
The Science. Two sleeps per night may have been the method of antiquity, but tendencies towards it still linger in modern man. There could be an innate biological preference for two sleeps, given the right circumstances.
In the early . Rather than staying up and active the usual sixteen hours per day, they would stay up only ten. The other fourteen hours they would be in a closed, dark room, where they would rest or sleep as much as possible. This mimics the days in mid- winter, with short daylight and long nights. At first, the participants would sleep huge stretches of time, likely making up for sleep debt that’s common among modern people.
Once they had caught up on their sleep though, a strange thing started to happen. They began to have two sleeps. Over a twelve hour period, the participants would typically sleep for about four or five hours initially, then wake for several hours, then sleep again until morning. They slept not more than eight hours total. The middle hours of the night, between two sleeps, was characterized by unusual calmness, likened to meditation.
This was not the middle- of- the- night toss- and- turn that many of us experienced. The individuals did not stress about falling back asleep, but used the time to relax. Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford, points out that even with standard sleep patterns, this night waking isn’t always cause for concern. Very cool person J. Moyer did just that. He and his family intentionally went an entire month with no electric light. In the winter months, this meant a lot of darkness and a lot of sleep.
Moyer writes “. Two sleeps may leave you feeling more rested, but this could simply be because you are intentionally giving yourself more time to rest, relax, and sleep. Giving the same respect to the single, eight- hour sleep should be just as effective. Note too that two sleeping needs a lot of darkness – darkness that is only possible naturally during the winter months.
The greater levels of daylight during summer and other seasons would make two sleeping difficult, or even impossible. Perhaps two sleeping is merely a coping mechanism to get through the long, cold, boring nights of the winter. Today, we don’t need to cope. So long as we give our sleep the time and respect it needs, getting the “standard” eight hours of sleep should be fine.
But next time you wake up at 2 AM and can’t sleep, just remember your great, great, great, great, great grandfather. He did the same thing every night. Update. Well this article proved exceedingly popular!
Thank you to everyone who visited, or took the time to leave a comment. I would encourage new visitors to have a read through the comments below for some interesting ideas and perspectives.
I learned two things in particular: 1. This is far more common that I thought. A lot of commenters either practice, or used to practice this kind of sleep. Another possible reason for two sleeps is tending the fire during the night.
Several clever readers noted that in order to keep a fire running through the night, we would need to get up and tend it. Commenters also raised questions regarding non- European and non- Western cultures, which we’ll be digging into in future articles. For anyone who wants to learn more about this kind of sleep, I’ve linked below to two books referenced in the writing of this article, available on Amazon.