Tap into Your Inner Aborigine

In this article:

What they didn’t teach you in school about health! I talk about the root of dynamism, which is tapping into your inner aborigine. The do’s and don’ts of choosing nutrition and why many experts have fallen prey.

I discuss:

• Why nutrition science is like surgery in the year 1650.
• How a trusted nutrition guru can off the deep end.
• Where chronic diseases really come from and how to defeat them with food.

In this training, I’m going to transcend all of that discussion and find the things that everybody agrees on and I want to make a special note of the fact that as Michael Pollan says about the science of nutrition. He says, “nutrition science is very, very young to put it charitably”. He says, “it’s kind of like surgery in the year 1650. Surgery in 1650, had a lot of potential- very interesting, but you wouldn’t want them working on you quite yet; they have some more work to do”. In other words, modern nutrition science is very similar to surgery in the year 1650.

Tap into your inner aborigine by eating real food. Don’t let cherry-picking science distract you! What am I talking about? Find out next.

Now…I want you to take that statement in…I know what your thinking, but the experts say this and that. Yeah, and they never agree, do they?

1650…You see, It is easy to cherry-pick in science, which basically means you pick the data that supports your perspective. This issue seems to be the new fad filling the online blog world. For nutrition science, it’s even easier to cherry-pick the data and twists it toward a certain interest, to push a new nutraceutical product. Kind of like they did with krill oil. Have you seen my video on the fish oils buyers guide? Check that one out. You don’t want to eat krill, it is poisonous to us. If you eat in the wild, it could kill you.

Watch that video, it will blow you away, it serves as a great example of cherry-picking science by well-meaning individuals, some of these experts are my personal friends.  Quite honestly, they mean well. They just don’t realize what they're doing. That's what happens when a push for a new product gets released; we forget to question the validity of the science or ask the common senses questions in science. That’s how a trusted guru can go off the deep end. It happens a ton in this world. 

At any rate, dynamic people start with that awareness when they hear about nutrition science proving this or proving that; well they know that that it’s kind of like surgery in 1650. They don’t just jump in the boat. In my experience, the more traditional, the better. I don’t jump at the latest fad, because beneath all those promises and so-called new secrets; this is marketing at its best. Just ask yourself, does great, great grandma recognize it? If not, I’m slow to accept it, let alone put it in my body.

The truth is, the more I study nutrition, the easier and the simpler it becomes. Caged people who go with the flow in society think it’s super complicated because popular culture has made nutrition to be super complicated. Actually, it’s rather simple.

There are two facts you can boil down this whole science into seven words. Those seven words are what Michael Pollan says, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. He jokingly says, “There you go”.

That is what you should do eat food- real food, not fake food. There are at least two facts about nutrition that everyone agrees on. Western diet creates chronic diseases anywhere that Western diet has penetrated an area or a culture.

You’re going to find chronic diseases with the Western diet, our diet in America. Chronic diseases like heart disease diabetes, depression, autoimmune, hormonal issues, etc. That’s the first fact. It’s an indisputable fact when the Western diet is present you will find chronic diseases.

The second fact is those chronic diseases do not exist in traditional diets and in environments that have preserved the traditional nutritional approach. Yes, the traditional diet varies greatly, but none of them have been associated with chronic diseases.

In other words, looking at the various researches, we can look at the Inuit, who are living on basically fat from seals and other wildlife in the ocean who have no chronic diseases. They get their nutrients in their traditional diet primarily from fat, but they have no chronic diseases. 

Again, their traditional diet has no chronic diseases. The data from South American Indians almost live exclusively on carbohydrates with no chronic diseases. The point that the data demonstrates, there is no one perfect human diet. Aborigine cultures can exist on a very high-fat diet on a very high protein diet on a very high carbohydrate diet as long as you don’t have from a traditional diet perspective, the influence of Western diet elements.

If you do not adopt the Western diet elements, you do not get a chronic disease. There is no one perfect human diet but very importantly there is one perfect horrible diet...and that is the Western diet.

So, the focus of the eat pillar, a metaphor I like to use, that our health is how well we eat, move, think, connect and cope with stressors. These are the five pillars of dynamic health and the root of dynamism in life. Because if you don’t have your health, what do you have? So, the major focus of the eat pillar as I like to call it is to get off the Western diet as much as we can. To do that, we need to define what I mean by the Western diet. 

I've learned over these years, I have to define my definition of the Western diet. Because we all have our own definition. So, that leads us to the first dynamism biohack of the Eat Pillar: Your Inner Aborigine. The Australian outback is where Aborigines live in a very traditional environment like hunting and gathering.

They did an interesting research study on this particular group. They went into the western environment and started eating the foods that we eat in a western environment. They began eating a lot more sugar, a lot more flour, and wheat. And what happened.

Well, what happened is they got chronic Western diseases, their diabetes levels went up, their heart disease went up, etc. They asked an interesting question. What would happen if we took these Aborigines who just got these diseases and put them back into their native environment? 

Well, they still had the skills needed to hunt and gather; Long story short, they went back into that environment they hunted and gathered in; just seven weeks they reversed nearly all of the symptoms of that Western diet. No more chronic disease, no more heart disease, no more diabetes, and on and on. The point with this is we all have our Inner Aborigine.

We all have a body that wants to heal itself and when we get off of the traditional Western diet it’s actually surprisingly easy to eliminate our risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, depression, auto-immune, hormonal challenges, etc. So, next time you reach for a meal, do it with dynamism and tap into your Inner Aborigine. I’m Dr. Matt Hammett inviting you to lighten up, move better and live fuller. 

See ya next dynamism biohack!