You are a superorganism! Your body is home to trillions of microorganisms (the human microbiota) that co-exist side by side with your human self. The collective genome of these microorganisms – the human microbiome – can be thought of as an extension of our own genome, in the sense that our microbial inhabitants carry out […]
General health
The Indoor Microbiome and Toxic Mold: Is Your House Making You Sick?
The ancestral health movement is built on the premise that there’s a mismatch between the human genome and our current milieu. Humans evolved to live as hunter-gatherers in natural environments, not as office workers in large, polluted cities. This mismatch theory underlies pretty much everything we talk about in the evolutionary health community, and a […]
10 Science-Backed Ways to Combat Chronic Inflammation
Scientific research over the past several decades has made it clear that systemic, low-grade chronic inflammation, a condition characterized by two- to threefold elevated levels of several pro-inflammatory mediators such as C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and interleukin 6 in systemic circulation, is linked to many – if not most – of the chronic […]
What Captive Gorillas Can Teach Us About Health & Medicine
Imagine standing in the middle of a rainforest taking in all of the stimuli around you; the sound of birds singing, the rustling of leaves in the light wind, and the sight of a monkey high up in one of the many trees around you. The immediate impression of such a scene might be that […]
Chronic Inflammation: The Internal Fire That’s Making You Sick, Fat, and Unhappy
Chronic low-grade inflammation, a condition characterized by elevated concentrations of inflammatory markers in systemic circulation and activated inflammatory cells, is at the root of a multitude of chronic diseases and health disorders. Chances are, even if you feel “pretty good”, your health condition is still poor when compared to that of your preagricultural, hunter-gatherer ancestors, […]
Paleo: The Key to Good Health or Just Another Fad?
Anything “new” and unconventional that gains a lot of popularity in a short period of time tends to attract criticism and opponents, and Paleo is no exception.”Paleo” has now become a buzzword that is used to sell everything from protein bars and meal replacement shakes to clothes and fitness gadgets, something that has probably contributed […]
8 Lifestyle Changes That Will Take Your Health to a New Level
Few, if any, people in contemporary industrialized societies are truly healthy. If you ask a dozen people on the street to answer honestly about their current health condition, the majority will probably tell you that they are struggling with one or more chronic health problems, whether it’s lower back pain, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, acne […]
How I Train to Build a Healthy and Fit Body
In Wednesday’s post I talked about how my approach to diet and physical activity has changed over the years. Up until about a decade ago, I mostly did aerobic training, and in particular, a lot of running as part of participating in many different sports. I also did some occasional bodyweight exercises and other types […]
How to Achieve Better Health
I’ve always felt a need to figure out what it takes to achieve perfect health. When I first started getting serious with the whole health & fitness thing more than a decade ago, I designed my lifestyle according to what mainstream medicine, public dietary guidelines, and conventional wisdom told me was healthy. As for my […]