We inherited our genes from our ancestors. In turn, our genes control most everything in our bodies. Our ancestors gave us our eye color, our hair color, our crooked teeth, and much more. They also gave us a predisposition to diabetes, cancer, obesity, and other diseases. Now a fitness expert says that we can reprogram many of those genes and do so in a pleasant manner.
Mark Sisson says that we need to throw out many of our beliefs about fitness and diet and go back to the diets of our ancestors in order to improve our health. In this case, he says to ignore the diets of our recent ancestors and return to those of millions of years ago - diets that defined our genes and shaped who we are and what foods our bodies need. Sisson suggests we seek the robust health of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. He also points out that the diet he advocates is much more enjoyable for most of us than the diets we have been told to follow in the past fifty years or so.
"Many of these primal laws fly in the face of what we've been told," says Sisson, who throughout his book attacks conventional healthcare "wisdom" with both fists flying. According to Sisson, we all should:
- Eat plenty of saturated animal fat
- Shun whole grains (and all grains) like the plague (after all, our ancestors didn't eat grains millions of years ago)
- Get plenty of sun to avoid cancer
- Don't worry about size of meals or the frequency of meals
- Don't drink 8 glasses of water daily!
- Refrain from strenuous, lengthy daily workouts, as they will keep you fat
Sisson says your genes desperately want you to be healthy. Your best chance for attaining optimum health and long life comes from properly managing the genes your parents gave you, using the tried and true blueprint for living evolved over millions of years.
These suggestions obviously are the opposite of what other diet gurus have been telling us for years. So, is Mark Sisson a diet expert or a diet crackpot? Should we really return to diets of saturated animal fat and fruits and nuts?
You decide. You can watch an interview of Mark Sisson on abc15 in Phoenix at http://www.abc15.com/content/living/yourhealth/story/Do-your-genes-make-you-look-fat/K-wQ7zkm1UOVn03bSG9cdQ.cspx.
