There's a lot of talk about “paleo” right now, and I welcome it. It’s a positive change and it’s a great thing because paleo is so much better for you.
Still, I don’t use the word paleo very much.
This may be just a nuance, but I prefer to talk about it another way.
“Paleo” is a great buzzword, but it focuses on the wrong period in history.
You see, Paleolithic is the old stone age, and Neolithic is the new stone age.
Why is that important?
It’s important because that change was a significant advance in technology. It allowed us to become better hunters.
We invented better spears and spearheads, hatchets with handles, and figured out how to poke holes in leather to make warmer clothes.
We made better tools and taught each other about them, so we started to have a shared culture. Everything got better, and our health didn’t get worse.
So I don’t like using the word paleo because it implies that the technological advance to Neolithic was negative. It implies that we were healthy in Paleolithic times and haven’t been healthy since.
So Neolithic is better than Paleo.
We were still healthy at that point. Even better than before.
It was the next advance that got us in trouble — planting seed crops. That happened only a few thousand years ago. It did not happen during “paleo” times, and it only occurred in a few places. Most other areas continued with a very healthy Neolithic culture.
During the Gallic wars, Caesar wrote that one of the reasons the barbarians were so hard to conquer was that they had not yet started eating grains. The Roman Ruler thought grains weakened the Romans. That was only 2000 years ago. The rest of Europe was still hunter-gatherer!
So there’s a big time problem with saying that paleo was healthy and that’s what we have to go back to. We don’t need to go back that far.
We only need to go back before the agrarian revolution. That’s when people started to use technology to harvest grains. This gave us very low-fat, low- protein, low-nutrient diet. We could feed many more people and outcompete Neolithic cultures by sheer numbers. But people got smaller, and people got sick.
Did you know that the Egyptians started getting arthritis just a short time after they started to rely on grains?
When man switched to a grain-based diet, we became shorter and lost muscle and brain size, too. It happened to the Greeks, who became shrunken and diseased after they switched to farming. And when the American Indians switched to grains instead of hunting meat, they got shrunken jaws, became shorter, and now suffer from diabetes and obesity.
You don’t have to go all the way back to Paleolithic times to regain good health and a lean strong body. You only have to focus on doing what is natural to you.
When you return to a natural way of eating, shedding extra weight and staying healthy is effortless. That’s the reason paleo is popular.
It’s not really that it’s “paleo” because it’s not. But a step in the direction of doing what is natural to us is a much healthier way of eating.
I discuss this more in depth in another article I’ve written. If you would like to read it, visit: http://www.alsearsmd.com/2014/04/whats-wrong-with-paleo-craze/
Uniquely Qualified to Keep You Healthier for Life!
Al Sears, M.D., is a medical doctor and one of the nation's first board-certified anti-aging physicians.
As a board-certified clinical nutritionist, strength coach, ACE-certified fitness trainer and author, Dr. Sears enjoys a worldwide readership and has appeared on more than 50 national radio programs, ABC News, CNN and ESPN.
In 2010, Dr. Sears unveiled his proven anti-aging strategies in Reset Your Biological Clock. As the first U.S. doctor licensed to administer a groundbreaking DNA therapy that activates the gene that regulates telomerase, Dr. Sears made history by bringing telomere biology to the general public.
In 2006, Dr. Sears shocked the fitness world by revealing the dangers of aerobics, "cardio" and long-distance running in his book, PACE: The 12-Minute Fitness Revolution.
In 2004, Dr. Sears was one of the first doctors to document the true cause of heart disease and expose the misguided and often fatal drugs-and-surgery approach to heart health.
In The Doctor's Heart Cure, Dr. Sears outlines the easy-to-follow solution that effectively eliminates your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.
An avid lecturer, Dr. Sears regularly speaks at conferences sponsored by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), the American College for the Advancement of Medicine (ACAM) and the Age Management Medicine Group (AMMG)