Go Wild

If we want to go wild, we start by looking at what we ate when we were wild.

Hint: It wasn’t sugar.

It also wasn’t wheat and other grains in any significant quantity.

Here’s how David Perlmutter, MD, puts it in Grain Brain (see Notes): “There is little doubt that one of the largest and most wide-reaching events in the ultimate decline of brain health in modern society has been the introduction of wheat grain into the human diet. While it’s true that our Neolithic ancestors consumed minuscule amounts of this grain, what we now call wheat bears little resemblance to the wild einkorn variety that our forebears consumed on rare occasions. With modern hybridization and gene-modifying technology, the 133 pounds of wheat that the average American consumes each year shares almost no genetic, structural, or chemical likeness to what hunter-gatherers might have stumbled upon. And therein lies the problem: We are increasingly challenging our physiology with ingredients for which we are not genetically prepared.”

So, quick re-cap: We had basically no sugar when we were wild and now have 152 (!!!) pounds of sugar today. And, we had equally tiny amounts of wheat when we were wild and now we have 133 (!!!) pounds of wheat today.

Hmmmmm…

I wonder if that might have an impact on our overall well-being?

What do you think?

Nutrition experts disagree on a lot of things, but overconsuming sugar isn’t one of them.

Here’s how Gary Taubes describes the effects of introducing sugar and flour into non-Western cultures in Why We Get Fat (see Notes): “… when isolated populations start eating Western foods, sugar and white flour are inevitably first, because these foods could be transported around the world as items of trade without spoiling or being devoured on the way by rodents and insects. The Inuits, for example, living on seals, caribou, and whale meat, begin eating sugar and flour (crackers and bread). Western diseases follow. The agrarian Kikuyu, living in Kenya, start eating sugar and flour, and these diseases appear. The Maasai add sugar and flour to their diet or move into the cities and begin eating these foods, and the diseases appear. Even the vegetarian Hindus in India, to whom the fleshpot was an abomination, ate sugar and flour. Doesn’t it seem a good idea to consider sugar and flour likely causes of these diseases?”

All this begs the question: How’s your sugar and flour intake?

Did you know the American Psychiatric Association now includes exercise as a PROVEN TREATMENT for depression? Yep. In Spark, Ratey tells us: “If everyone knew that exercise worked as well as Zoloft, I think we could put a real dent in the disease.” Unfortunately, exercise doesn’t have quite the same marketing budget as pharmaceuticals.

Ratey also puts it this way in Spark: “I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, like the drugs, exercise elevates these neurotransmitters. It’s a handy metaphor to get the point across, but the deeper explanation is that exercise balances neurotransmitters — along with the rest of the neurochemicals in the brain. And as you’ll see, keeping your brain in balance can change your life.”

A little bit of Ritalin and a little bit of Prozac. I’ll take it!

And, gotta love Hippocrates’s wisdom.

In a bad mood? Go for a walk! Still in a bad mood? Keep on walking! :)

John Robbins echoes this wisdom in his great book Healthy at 100 (see Notes) where he tells us: “In the modern world, when people are feeling down they are often told to ‘take it easy,’ to simply lie in bed and relax. In both Vilcabamba and Abkhasia, however, people experiencing ‘the blues’ typically respond by becoming active and involved with others. Rather than withdrawing and becoming sedentary, they will walk great distances for the joy of visiting one another. So great is the recognition of the healing power of walking to visit a friend that there is a saying in Vilcabamba that each of us has two ‘doctors’—the left and the right leg.”

Let’s bring it back to you. How can you put your two doctors to work and optimize your exercise?

Let’s repeat that: “Everybody needs eight and a half hours of sleep out of every twenty-four. Everybody.”

Note: You and I would fall into that “everybody” category. (Hah! :)

How’s YOUR sleep? How many hours did you get last night? The night before that? On average over the last week? The last month?

As much as we might like to convince ourselves we can get by on less than eight hours of sleep, leading sleep gurus tell us we’re ultimately short-changing our potential (and health, etc.) by trying to get by on less.

Remember: “It’s almost as simple as this: if you are sleepy, sleep.”

And, if you’re depressed, know that’s connected to your sleep as well. Get this: “This idea takes on a new dimension in the results of further research that appears at first to be a simple test of recall. Researchers showed subjects lists of images and then tested both people who were sleep-deprived and those who weren’t on recall of the images. But these were images with clear emotional content, like a soft little puppy or an image of war, images sortable as negative, positive, or neutral emotionally. Of course, as we’ve already discussed, sleep-deprived people had some difficulty with recall, true enough, but not with the negative images. Those they could remember.

This finding is a slam-dunk link to depression. Almost by definition, depressed people are those who can remember only the negative aspects of their lives.”

Wow.

So, sleep-deprived people have problems with recall in general. Nothing particularly new or surprising about that, eh?

But get this: Sleep-deprived people have no problem recalling the NEGATIVE stuff.

*rubs eyes*

That’s nuts.

Note: If you’re committed to feeling depressed, definitely make sure you get inadequate sleep! :)

With that, here’s one super practical way to optimize your sleep:

Melatonin.

If we want to honor our circadians and get a good night of sleep (research says this is a very good idea!), we want to be nice to this hormone.

(Did you know researchers have discovered that nurses who work night shifts are more likely to develop breast cancer? Aligning with our circadian rhythms is *really* important.)

Back in our wild days, that was pretty easy to do. The sun went down and so did we.

Of course, we’ve had artificial light via fires for a long time and the famous cave painters used fat-fueled lamps to work their magic 40,000 years ago. But those sources of light produced very different wavelengths than electric lights do. They were way dimmer and came nowhere near the power of the light we now bathe in.

Simple solution: Turn off the TV + electronics a few hours before bedtime.

As I’ve mentioned before, we call that a “digital sunset” here at the Johnson household. Sun goes down and all of our electronics go off—computers + iPhones (+ TV if we had one!). We even use these mellow, melatonin-friendly nightlights for brushing our teeth and getting ready for sleep.

When Alexandra reads a little on her Kindle or iPhone, she wears blue-light blocking glasses. Like these. If you decide going dark so early isn’t quite for you (yet! :), you might dig those.

Here’s to doing the little things that help us attune to the natural cycles of day and night!

What’s your lever?

What new habit can you create that will have the most positive benefit in your life and that, once you integrate it, will ripple out to other areas of your life?!

In The Power of Habit (see Notes), Charles Duhigg calls this a “keystone habit.”

Just as a keystone is the critical stone that locks in and strengthens an arch, we want to identify the key habit that’ll most powerfully catalyze change in our lives.

Here’s how Duhigg puts it: “It wasn’t the trip to Cairo that had caused the shift, scientists were convinced, or the divorce or desert trek. It was that Lisa had focused on changing just one habit—smoking—at first. Everyone in the study had gone through a similar process. By focusing on one pattern—what is known as a ‘keystone habit’—Lisa had taught herself how to reprogram the other routines in her life, as well.”

Plus: “Where should a would-be habit master start? Understanding keystone habits holds the answer to that question: The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.”

Duhigg also agrees with Ratey and Manning that EXERCISE is a wise place to start. He tells us: “When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. ‘Exercise spills over,’ said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. ‘There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.’”

So…

Back to you.

What’s your lever? What’s your keystone habit?

This is the lever I will pull that will have the most positive impact in my life: ______________________________________________________________________________.

Fantastic.

ROCK IT!

I love that.

We’re not endlessly whacking moles or trudging through a long list of boxes to check.

We are EXPLORING POTENTIAL!!!

Step by step we’re running little experiments with ourselves—iteratively testing how we feel after a week of consistent, great nights of sleep. Or no refined sugar. Or daily exercise we enjoy. Or…

We want to put on our lab coats (with a smile!) and have fun testing as we engage in the process of discovery!!

What are you going to test next in your little re-wilding experiment?!