Can we repair our bio-machine?

What if the human body had a warranty? Well, it may actually have one, but you are probably voiding it right at this moment. Mental stress and overly abundant food may two of the major culprits to our societies’ collective decline in health.

Ever wonder why stress is a killer, and why it plagues our civilization? What about why the foods that we crave are the worst for us? Our original blueprint for human survival may be a key to some of life’s ultimate questions. This blueprint for our bodies was designed by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution (unless you believe God created us just as we are right now, then your answer would be God didn’t think us through very well or is simply a cruel being). So we need to think back to the environment and lifestyle that triggered the evolutionary changes that made us what we are.

Evolution — the filtering process by which genetic mutations/reconfigurations causes specific attributes to have an advantage in survival or reproduction, thus edging out the competition — has created a kind of warranty for our design that helped us survive throughout life. But have these warranties been voided by our new industrialized and technologically advanced lifestyle? It’s kind of like reconfiguring your luxury car for off-road sports causing your manufacture’s warranty to be voided.

First, let’s look at one of our invisible killers, STRESS. At the center of it all is our “fight or flight” response. Our sympathetic nervous system, run by neurotransmitters responding from the central nervous system, was designed to handle the responsibility of how our body and its functions respond to situations that threaten our survival (ie. running into a bear, tigers, snakes, etc.). These situations were almost always caused by some physical threat. Remove the physical threat and there is no reason for “fight or flight”.

[The science:

Stimulated by fear, the central nervous system stimulates the sympathetic system presynaptically via acetylcholine. Once outside the central nervous system (postsynaptic), norepinephrine/noradrenaline is utilized to carry the neural-communication throughout the body. After norepinephrine production is higher and/or longer than a certain threshold, adrenaline is produced by the adrenal medulla. The adrenaline and norepinephrine then combines and bind to the peripheral tissues causing everything from vasoconstriction (raising blood pressure), pupil dilation, rapid heart rate, water conservation by the kidneys and many other sympathetic responses which does not completely subside until the norepinephrine is returned to its basal level.]




But what if these “fight or flight situations” start manifesting in the mind with no real physical presence (irrational cause)? In other words, what if we start to perceive the loss of a job, relationship woes, being in debt or lacking enough funds for “keeping up with the Joneses” as a source of fear (threatening) triggering the sympathetic nervous system forcing our body to function outside of its designed parameters — aka voiding the warranty. The problem is that what is now deemed threatening to our survival is basically irrational/invisible/perceptually manifested and with these perceptual, non-physical threats, you can never escape them. Or perhaps they are a long term manifestation causing your body to respond not just for a minute or two but for days, weeks, months or years flooding the body with neurotransmitters and hormones that are meant to be used for short, temporary reactions. This persistent flood of biochemicals cause all kinds of damage to tissues and organs and can actually cause addictions to such states.

Here is a flow chart of how cortisol, a type of stress hormone produced by our adrenal medulla, can cause a negative cascading effect on our normal endocrine functions.

Please click on thumbnail for larger view.

Now, if you are the kind of individual who lives their daily life under stress, you could permanently alter your body chemistry causing all kinds of side effects because humans were not designed to handle a 24/7 “fight or flight” state. So, you may be asking, “Now that I know this, what do I do about it?” Well, it can be the easiest thing to do, or the hardest. Just change how you perceive the world around you. Unless your life is in danger of ending at that moment (rational), then do not react with fear. It’s the fear that triggers your sympathetic nervous system, and fear is just a perception. Change that, and you may be able to start “un-voiding” your warranty.

The second aspect of our evolutionary warranty up for discussion is our dietary cravings. For years I have heard people complaining about why we crave this or that, and thought to myself why such a conundrum exists. After some serious thought and some research, one of the most sensical answers revealed itself. Again, it can be blamed on evolution.

Evolution, through simple survival of the fittest, designed us to crave what is most important for our survival — energy for living. This energy comes in two forms in our environment, fat and carbohydrates, and without it, we will perish. Since humans started out as a very primitive animal with no real knowledge of macro and micro-nutrients, we had to be hard-wired to be attracted to eat such sustenance. This attraction was to the most energy rich foods we could find. These fats and carbohydrates would increase not only the instant energy for actions in the now, but allow us to store this energy internally (fat) for use in the future.




The early humans that sought out these calorie rich foods had a higher likelihood of survival through the droughts, winters or anything else that may limit the amount of available food because of its higher body fat.

[The science:

When we consume carbohydrates or lipids (fats), we convert the macro-nutrient into smaller units by way of digestion. These smaller units, monosacchurides (glucose, a simple sugar) and triglycerides (small fat unit for energy), are either stored as glycogen in the liver (carbohydrates) or as neutral fat in adipose tissue (fat), or utilized for cellular respiration (energy). What determines the nutrient’s destiny is the level of blood insulin. Insulin is one of the main endocrine hormones responsible for regulating cellular respiration and energy storage. When insulin is high, say after a carbohydrate rich meal, it triggers the body to uptake glucose on a cellular level for ATP production and store fat. When it is low, say after fasting or a low carbohydrate meal, it triggers the body to release triglycerides from adipose tissue into the blood for energy allowing the liver to convert the triglycerides into glucose. Bottom line, high insulin, store fat; low insulin; burn fat.]

Now the problem arises because humans were not designed to have these calorie rich foods within a multitude of easily accessible locations 24/7 … 365 days a year. This craving that allowed us to evolve and survive for so long, is our biggest weakness, now that we live in an environment where these calorie rich foods are not only over-abundant but cheaper (thanks to the farm bill) as well. This causes all kinds of undesirable results through the imbalance it creates — obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes and many other metabolic disorders. And don’t forget the mental anguish of having to pass on dessert.

How do we correct this problem? Well, try to make as much of your life parallel with how we were designed as possible. As far as food goes, 90% of humans’ time on this planet was spent eating as a hunter-gatherer. They only ate what they could collect or kill. Starches were rarely utilized as they needed cooking or processing. So it was mainly vegetables, fruits and meats that were consumed. Calorie rich foods were either non-existant, rare or hard to find. Personally, I recommend my original nutritional program called the RGB diet (which will be an e-book sometime soon for your reading pleasure).

Live like a caveman I say. Simple. Free. Active. Don’t let our society’s complexities distract you from what life is really about, and I will let you figure that one out.