Skip to main content

Paleolithic Style Diet

Nutrition is highly individualized and often a philosophical debate among friends and family. What's important with nutrition is to find your right approach that your body responds to.  One of the more recent, yet ancient, approaches is a return to the Paleolithic Diet which mimics the diet of the hunter/gather society.  There are many different subtypes of the paleolithic diet but the commonality is elimination of grains and most sugar from the diet.  The diet emphasizes ample non-starchy vegetable intake, mild-moderate fruit intake, moderate to high animal protein intake , and mild/moderate healthy fat intake. Mark Sissom who wrote Primal Blueprint is one of the leaders behind the movement toward a paleolithic diet and he publishes a blog called Mark's Daily Apple. Sissom state that this approach when combined with short duration intense cardiovascular exercise and strength training reduces the likelihood of developing the triad of obesity, diabetes, and some risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

More at the core of the paleolithic lifestyle is reducing dietary/environmental sources of inflammation which are considered the underlying root cause of many adult chronic disease and certainly inflammaging.

Sissom bases a lot of his philosophy on the Weston Price Foundation which is a respected resource in nutrition.  Some paleolithic diets do not include dairy or legumes in their diet, however Sissom discusses incorporating some small amounts of dairy in the diet including fermented dairy products in the diet like yogurt .

My take is  that when we eliminate grains (including corn) and sugar from the diet, we are taking out a big portion of problematic foods in the standard American diet.  By problematic I mean those that are over-consumed.  Yet, if  grain reduction is not met with an increase in vegetable intake we will be losing a great source of vitamins and mineral in the diet and creating another problem.  And, a paleolithic diet is not appropriate for someone who has philosophical or religious beliefs against eating animals.  When trying a paleolithic diet, please make sure  you are ready to replace your absence of grains with more vegetables. In lieu of human tendency to under eat vegetables I always recommend a quality mineral supplement for anyone on a paleo diet. My favorite these days is Biomins II by Thorne Research.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plateauing

Plateauing in the process of change. I have experienced and you have experienced it. Things are going well and then we hit a flat point of progress. The typical  response to the plateau that  I have seen is to "do more" ,"add more", and "be more". It makes sense,right? Or does it? You're climbing a mountain after learning, growing, acquiring skills, and carrying  more responsibility, motivation, and discipline. It  seems worth it because you're seeing your health improve, relationships improve, mental health improve, and  spiritual health improve. Then you suddenly you're at a flat point. Things are not quite where they need to be and you have acquired new things, skills, tools that require maintenance and nurturing. If you don't continue them you would... well....fall back down the mountain. Or would you? So we add more stuff, more noise, more ideas, more skills, and suddenly we look like a pack mule climbing to our asc...
2 comments
Read more

HPA Management: How to decrease anxiety?

This post is about Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal gland Axis (HPA) management. Specifically how to decrease anxiety. How do we decrease anxiety? Ask people to be clear of what is expected of us. And upon hearing what's expected be honest with ourselves and others about what is possible. If we you have expectations from others and for ourselves that have no boundaries; then we are likely going to experience an arousal state in the brain. This trickles down to anxiety related symptoms. Vice versa by not setting expectations we can reak havoc on our inner self relationships and outer self relationships. Of course I could write all day about lifestyle changes and herbal interventions that might help but the inner game of anxiety is so much more.
2 comments
Read more

Will antibiotics help For IBS If I have been diagnosed with SIBO?

Using patterns of the Lactulose Hydrogen Breath Test to Make Decisions regarding antibiotic therapy in IBS with Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) is an increasingly diagnosed pathophysiologic process that involves normal bacterial flora of the colon being irregularly and excessively translocated to the small intestine. In additions some will acquire SIBO by breakdown in mechanisms that normally clear bacteria from the small intestine such as the migrating motor complex. Once this bacteria has set up in the small intestine it can cause bowel transit dysregulation (diarrhea, constipation, or both), bloating, excess wind, and abdominal discomfort. Many top researchers feel it might be the underlying component of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It is diagnosed by clinical symptoms combined with the Lactulose Hydrogen Breath Test (LHBT) which measures the production of Methane and Hydrogen case being emitted from the small intestine after ...
Post a Comment
Read more