To be paleo or not to be paleo - that is the question by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

Oh we do love a reductionist! Or do we? Sitting having a burger, without the bun, with a huge plate of veg and some might say "Paleo". And from a dietary perspective, yes they would be correct, that's as close to paleo as one gets to appease the reductionist as the bigger picture or larger pill is too big for most to swallow. Even if they know better, most would agree. But if it were really paleo I certainly wouldn't be sitting on my arse at a table with EM waves washing over me, no natural light, not absorbing the food properly due to the lack of stomach acid and suffering chronic stress from my life in the human zoo.

The subject of paleo is vast due to the paleo "diet" that has filtered into the mainstream, but unfortunately the bigger picture is much, much bigger than the average biped can handle. Paleo diet books, paleo supplements and paleo greens are all flying off the shelves like hot paleo cakes by the uneducated consumer.

The bigger picture!

If the organism is stressed, it simply won't absorb food groups so you can forget your paleo diet if your digestive system is compromised - you won't be absorbing any nutrients. But what is stress?

Most people perceive stress as psychological and do not consider all elements such as: processed foods, inappropriate movement, electromagnetic waves, lack of natural light, correct sleep wake cycles and social disconnection.

All of the above are stresses, stresses that were not Paleolithic stresses. Paleolithic man had acute stress to deal with unlike the chronic stress of today's not so healthy biped. Acute stress response is designed to deal with the immediate threat: I will call this the lion in the room. If the lion is in the room with you, your survival brain will make one of two decisions:

1) fight
2) flight

I'm going to choose number 2 and I really do mean number 2 as that's exactly what would happen! I will mess my paleo loin cloth and my gut will stop producing stomach acid. No point in digesting anything as digestion uses up a huge amount of energy and that needs to be fed to my legs to get my paleo arse out of here. Then my gonads would shrivel up as there's no need for them as reproduction is definitely out of the equation, not the appropriate time to bring Bam Bam into the world! And finally my immune system will shut down...no point in fighting off a cold while the lion's breathing down my neck.

The same can be said for most species when in the acute phase of stress. But what if the lion is constantly in the room with us? Well simple -  this is chronic stress!

The zoo we're in

Take an animal from its natural surroundings and place it into captivity - it will first have an acute stress response but sadly this will stay switched on and on and on and soon it will become chronically stressed. Its natural habitat no longer exists, its world is now shattered and the animal will develop auto immune disorders, psychological disorders, obesity, diabetes, reproductive issues and finally die off from cancer.

Sound familiar? Yes that's life in the zoo; take Paleolithic man/woman and stick them in the zoo and they too will suffer. Just because this has happened over 10,000 years doesn't mean our hardwiring has changed so remarkably.

Obesity, chronic pain, IBS, polycystic ovaries, endometriosis, infertility, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol - a long list of conditions that the modern human has to contend with, and they tell us that something is very wrong and has been very wrong for a long time. Is it that we have not had long enough to cope with the extremes of the modern world or is that we just haven't valued our paleo past? Of course, it's impossible to return to Paleolithic times, but not so impossible to get your fundamental needs met on a spiritual,  mental,  psycho, social and physical level.