Chris Kresser - Your Personal Paleo Code

We live in extraordinary times. Human ingenuity has given us flight, space travel, lasers, the Internet, and amazing medical technologies that can help the deaf hear and the blind see. Biohackers and tech folks talk of uploading the consciousness before death, allowing the mind a second (and presumably very lengthy) existence as a program. So much is possible. Yet the highly modern Homo sapiens is struggling with debilitating and chronic health conditions: obesity, depression, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and cancer, among others.

A number of doctors, laypeople, and scientists have come to accept the mismatch hypothesis to explain much of modern chronic disease. Our species, having had only a few hundred generations to adapt to agricultureand only decades to adjust to the lightbulb and the digital ageis simply not equipped to handle industrial processed food, endless artificial light, and a sedentary modern life. As a psychiatrist, a medical doctor specializing in mental illness, I deal with the emotional and neurological consequences of this mismatch all the time in my clinical practice. We might call the low mood, crying spells, anxiety, and insomnia depressive disorder, but in truth, it is a breakdown of resiliency. Members of our hardy species can take only so much stress before we begin to experience anxiety, depression, and other consequences of our frenetic lives. To go forward into the future, we have to come to terms with our biology and its limitations. We must rebuild our resiliency to recover our health.

The prescription seems simple enough: Eat wholesome, real foods. Get plenty of sleep along with appropriate play and activity. But as a physician and working mother, I know far too well how difficult it can be to handle the pace of modern life, meet the needs of your family, and find the time and patience to keep yourself truly healthy and functioning at your best. In addition, despite the fact that we are all members of the same species, we each have very individual needs based on current health conditions and activity.

Chris Kresser struggled with serious, disabling health problems that modern medicine seemed to have no solution for. He used science, wisdom, and trial and error to heal himself, and due to that experience, he decided to pursue integrative medicine. He chose a masters program in California that combined Western and Chinese medicine, because he felt the holistic model it offered gave him a better way to understand and help the ill than the fragmented, specialty model of conventional medicine. His clinical experience, curiosity, and scientific savvy helped him to become enormously successful. His private practice has thrived, and his website and podcasts reach hundreds of thousands of eager readers and listeners around the world.

With Your Personal Paleo Code, Chris sets out the basic prescription for health and resiliency and then offers techniques so you can tailor the program for your needs and make it work on a personal level. His three-step program steers you to diet and lifestyle changes that will have you feeling better than you have in yearsperhaps better than youve ever felt. Chris gives you everything you neednot just recipes but a recipe for livingto achieve that improvement in health and functioning, but then he takes that a step further and addresses the complexities of your personal situation. Everything is spelled out in this book, and in addition, his website offers bonus chapters, more details on the science behind the Paleo movement, and copious online tools to ease your transition to good health.

By uncovering your own Personal Paleo Code, you can benefit from Chriss experience, clinical acumen, wisdom, and common sense to find that state of lasting health that can be so elusive in the modern world. Recover your natural human resiliency and thrive.

Emily Deans, MD

Board-Certified Psychiatrist

Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School