Health Beyond Civilization

Welcome to our new contributing author, Pathfinder. See a short bio of Pathfinder on the About page.

Being a modern alternative medicine practitioner in modern day America, one of the biggest challenges you face is that ultimately what is at the root of what is wrong with almost all of your patients is that they are overworked, over-stressed, over-tired, have a poor diet, and under exercise. And worst of all it’s not their fault. Essentially, most people’s bodies are falling apart in one way or another because of one simple thing: MODERN CIVILIZATION.

What we are facing is that ultimately, we as a species have spent tens of thousands of years as bipedal hunter-gatherers and perhaps ten-thousand years as an agrarian based civilization. It is only in the last 100 years, that our society has transformed to such a degree that what our bodies do every day is completely different from what we are designed to do. Consider what most of us do every day: We sit. We sit in front of computers, we sit in vehicles, we sit in front of televisions, we sit in vehicles. Even manual labor jobs, such as construction or farming involve heavy machinery that requires sitting, and even if they don’t they require a repetitive action over and over that ultimately damages the body.

Compare this with the fact that in most of our history, we spend most of our time walking. We also gardened, hunted, made things, farmed, took care animals, etc. But fundamentally we used our bodies in a completely different way. Our range of motion was totally different. Ultimately, we are coming to resemble our machines and technologies more and more. We have started to become square and hard and have become much less fluid and round.

Here’s a simple example: think about how your body feels after two weeks of vacation with adequate rest every day, moderate healthy eating, and some variety of light to vigorous activity that might involve walking, swimming, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, and some form of movement work (dance, yoga, taichi). Almost everyone who imagines this experiences a deep, visceral change in how they feel. Now, imagine if this was the norm instead of the exception for two weeks out of the year. Anthropological evidence shows that the average hunter-gatherer group spends an average of 15 to 20 hours a week meeting all of their survival needs. What do they do with the rest of their time: rest, relax, make music, make art, make love, develop culture.

Now many might argue that are life-expectancies are going up and clearly modern nutrition is allowing us to live longer and longer. The problem with this theory is that all of the data collected on longevity from around the world always includes the infant mortality rate. It is clear that the infant mortality rate is generally better in the first world than the third world (though America’s infant mortality rate keeps going up) and that our emergency medicine tends to prolong lifespan by keeping those alive who might normally perish from trauma. What is not reported very regularly is that there are lots and lots of stories of people in indigenous cultures and third world countries who do live very long, healthy lives. In fact, there are reports from Native American tribes stating that before the Europeans showed up and forced them to stop eating their traditional diets that their elders regularly lived to 120. There are similar stories from China and Japan, and currently the country with the greatest longevity is Okinawa which has a culture that is basically a mix of Japanese and Pacific Islander with a great deal of emphasis on wild foods, moderate exercise, community, and especially relaxation!

So, what are we to do with such a situation. Well, perhaps there are ways we can change how we eat, how we move, and how we are that will allow us to be healthier in the face of modern civilization. More on this in Part Two: Body Beyond Civilization: The Wild Body.