Over the past five weeks, I’ve given you my perspective on the biohacking and longevity scene. I’ve noted the emptiness and time-wasting that can result from the vain pursuit of immortality so often seen in the “advanced” health optimization world (if you missed any of my newsletters, you can read them here).
So…
…does that mean you and I should all just walk away from the notion of stem cells, red light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, peptides, or other so-called anti-aging modalities? Not necessarily, but it does mean that we should focus on what gives us the most bang for our buck from a health standpoint—namely (WARNING: the biohacking and health optimization industry doesn’t really like the term I’m about to use): the basics.
Yes, the basics.
Wait. Don’t quit paying attention because you suspect I’m about to tell you to start eating fewer Twinkies and Little Debbie’s Snack Cakes, and to hit the gym occasionally.
I’m going to instead tell you about a few basic concepts that are slightly lesser known than “don’t eat junk” and “move more” mantras—concepts founded upon the idea of an ancestral mismatch.
What’s an ancestral mismatch?
Think about it this way: we live in a comfy, post-industrial, technology-infused era that looks and operates nothing like the environment our ancestors lived in for most of history, yet our biology is still remarkably similar to our ancestors.
Rather than experiencing the pressure involved with hunting, foraging, farming, and gardening, most of us do not have to burn significant calories to find, make, or grow calories.
Instead, we have 24/7 access to hyperpalatable foods. Yet we retain robust calorie conservation mechanisms that in previous eras might have bestowed us with extra storage fat for surviving a time of famine, but now just make us overweight, obese, or inflamed.
Rather than experiencing the beneficial thermal stress of working outdoors in the winter or sweating outdoors in the summer, we largely live, work, sleep, drive, and fly in comfortable temperature-controlled boxes. Rather than hauling rocks, building fences, planting crops, and chasing prey, we now mostly Zoom and thumb-type. Rather than eating seasonally with significant plant-based dietary diversity, we now eat iceberg lettuce salads with tomatoes and mini-carrots, drowned in Ranch dressing that we didn’t even have to personally ranch.
Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t think a time-machine reversion to pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, or pre-technological living is a palatable idea. Ancient humans would probably have drooled at the prospect of having the world’s entire library of information on their desktop, a thousand digital servants in a small black pocket rectangle, and ceaseless access to a pint of Chunky Monkey in the nearby freezer.
Yet in our privileged first-world existence, we’ve traded the acute “struggles of the caveman”—like wild animals, famine, pestilence, and Viking invaders—with the chronic diseases of modernity—like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and microplastic invaders.
In that respect, we’re a bit like zoo animals, which die of an entirely different set of diseases (metabolic disorders, depression, cardiovascular complications, etc.) than their wild counterparts. We humans, aren’t much different.
So now that you know you’re surrounded by a mismatch of ample overprocessed calories, and, (unless you’re lucky enough to have a side job in construction, painting or farming), probably not engaged in a lifestyle for which you are adequately loading your joints, stressing your bones or moving your muscles in a primal fashion, how do you fight the uphill battle against the biological entropy that contributes to frailty and chronic disease?
You can start by understanding that comfort gradually kills (or, as biologist Gary Brecka says, “aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort”), and based on that, choose to embrace short, consistent, strategically timed bouts of discomfort. These bouts, also called “hormetic stressors”, are based on the idea that what would harm or kill you in large amounts induces cellular resilience in small amounts.
For example, after you lift heavy things repeatedly, your muscles look a little like World War II inside. Too much of that intense damage, like three hours at the gym, can cause organ stress and excess soreness, but small bouts of it induce muscle growth and bone density.
Cardiovascular stress, in excess, strains the heart and stiffens the arteries, but in consistent, moderate doses induces a stronger heart and better blood flow. Your body handles a single thirty-mile run far differently than, say, ten three-mile runs adequately spaced out.
Getting too hot for too long can cause electrolyte depletion and damaged brain cells, but short, frequent bouts of sauna have been shown to reduce all-cause risk of mortality (reduced risk of dying from anything, except maybe your sauna collapsing on you).
Treading water in a frigid river in December or hiking Mt. Everest in your underwear could cause hypothermia and nervous system strain, but short, frequent bouts of cold exposure may improve metabolism, burn fat, and maintain cognitive sharpness. Massive doses of UVA and UVB radiation from too much sunlight could cause skin cancer, but regular, reasonable sunlight exposure is one of the best things you can do for cellular energy production.
Unlike animals, plants don’t have hoofs, teeth, nails, claws, or antlers, so they instead defend themselves with toxic compounds like gluten, lectin and soaplike irritants called saponins that, if consumed in high amounts, will cause a mammal to poop out the plant seeds elsewhere (or at least not return to the plant and eat it into blivion). You know this if you’ve ever witnessed undigested corn kernels, kale shreds, potato skins, or quinoa in your toilet bowl. But those same toxins consumed in small amounts can make your immune system more resilient and your gut bacteria more diverse.
If you fast with no food for days or weeks on end, you’ll get weak, experience muscle atrophy and run out of energy to accomplish anything meaningful, yet going for 10–16 hours without food regularly, such as implementing a daily dinner-to-breakfast 12 hour fast, can give your gut a much-needed rest, and accelerate your body’s own cellular cleanup processes.
Once you understand this concept of “hormesis,” it becomes simple to weave small bouts of hormetic stress into your average day. Lift heavy stuff sometimes. Get breathless each day by tackling stairs and hills. Don’t stuff your face 24/7. Sweat regularly. Finish the last thirty seconds of your shower with cold water, or do the whole thing cold. Eat a wide variety of plants. Get outside in the sunlight, even on a cloudy day, for an hour or two.
In summary: end every day having subjected yourself to mild amounts of discomfort throughout.
But battling the ancestral mismatch doesn’t stop there, so next week I’ll explain how to tweak specific environmental variables to “build your own blue zone” of health and longevity in your home and office.
In the meantime, leave your questions, comments, and feedback below, including specific questions about this whole concept of an “ancestral mismatch.”
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One Response
Cool info. Thanks for sharing.