Evolution and Why You’re Fat, Tired and Unhappy

by Vin Miller

Caveman Despite incredible advances in technology and medicine, people are dying at an alarming rate from preventable diseases and are having significant problems with obesity, fatigue and depression. Anyone with half a brain would figure that the advances we’ve achieved should help us live longer, healthier and happier lives, but they haven’t. How can this be?

Our health and well being are dictated by requirements that have resulted from millions of years of evolution. No matter how smart we are, we’ll never be able to change this fact, at least not for another few hundred thousand years. That’s about how long it would take us to start adapting genetically to the unhealthy lifestyle habits that are so common today. Many of us have lost site of the evolutionary factors that brought us to where we are now and have let modern society entice us into a lifestyle that we’re simply not equipped to handle.

Where Did We Go Wrong?

It all started about 10,000 years ago when humans began farming and consuming grains. While this may sound like a long time, it’s nothing in comparison to the millions of years that we relied on meat, fruit and vegetables. Today, grain based foods are such a ubiquitous part of our diet that it shouldn’t take much effort to realize how far we’ve deviated from the diets of our ancestors.

Within just the past century, the invention of synthetic chemicals and food processing techniques has caused us to deviate even further by encouraging us to eat foods that are full of sugar, refined carbohydrates and chemical additives. Not only do these foods damage and burden our bodies, they also lack the nutrients we need to support tissue repair and basic function.

Even the invention of the light bulb has caused significant change. We’re sleeping much less than we were just a century ago and are pushing ourselves much harder than ever. As we’re imposing more damage on our bodies with chemicals, unhealthy foods and excessive stress, the amount of rest and nutrition we need to recover from it increases, but instead of getting more, we’re getting less! Much less.

In conjunction with the dramatic lifestyle changes that have occurred over the past century, there’s been a significant increase in the incidence of serious diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. The prevalence of other potentially debilitating conditions such as obesity, exhaustion and depression have increased dramatically as well. It doesn’t take a statistician to recognize the strong correlation between these problems and the extreme changes of the past one hundred years.

To make matters worse, the amazingly sophisticated medical system we’ve developed is highly influenced by the drug industry and is designed to resolve disease by chasing symptoms instead of identifying and addressing it’s root cause. While these tactics increase our lifespan, they leave us only half alive and living a marginal life.

Back to the Basics

Anyone who embraces the importance of nature and evolution should realize that a healthy lifestyle is based on simple and straight forward concepts. After all, just a century ago, we had little choice but to live a healthy lifestyle, and before 10,000 years ago, it was the only choice we had. It’s the overwhelming influence of technological advancement and big industry that make the simple concepts of healthy living difficult to uncover and implement.

The following video from Pay Now Live Later does a great job of explaining the influence that nature and evolution have on our health. It’s also presented in an entertaining manner that’s very easy to follow. I hope you’re as inspired by it as I am!

Exercise: A Different Chapter of the Same Story

Based on the enormous amount of unhealthy food that we’re exposed to and encouraged to eat, it’s not surprising that so many people are overweight. Because most people don’t realize how bad the food is that they’re eating, they continue to eat it and fall into the trap of overexercising to lose weight. The many hours they spend on cardio machines often fails to bring them results. It can even compromise their health by weakening their immune system and wearing down their adrenal glands.

Seemingly healthy people are prone to overexercising as well. I have nothing against endurance athletes or extreme bodybuilders, but the overwhelming popularity of these activities shows just how far we’ve drifted from our true need for exercise. If you want to support your health and your resistance to pain and injury, then your exercise habits should be focused on improving your physical function rather than testing the threshold of how far you can push yourself. While doing so may be mentally satisfying, it’s a tremendous burden to your body and your health.

As with nutrition and sleep, our exercise habits have little to no resemblance of the physical activities that our ancestors engaged in. They didn’t jog for miles, and they didn’t do bicep curls all day either. Instead, they ran in bursts and exercised their agility and athleticism while hunting, and they maintained their strength by carrying heavy objects based on need. The point here is not to hunt and carry heavy objects, but to exercise with short bursts of intensity and to perform strength building exercises that train functional movement patterns.

The following video is a sequel to the previous one and does a great job of applying the principles of evolution to exercise and movement.