Brett L. Markham - Modern Caveman: The Complete Paleo Lifestyle Handbook

Copyright 2014 Brett L. Markham

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-62873-715-8
eISBN: 978-1-62914-061-2

Printed in China

Contents

Acknowledgments

This is no ordinary book. It tells you how to cure acne, improve your fertility, avoid premature wrinkles, take control of your genetic expression, keep your kids from ever getting multiple sclerosis, and stop most metastatic cancer. This book explains why practically everything most people take for granted about diet is not merely wrong but dangerously so.

When I was a kid, my father and paternal grandfather always made time to teach. They would discuss any topic I wanted, ranging from the nature of God to what happens if you throw a baseball at 60 mph while standing on the front of a train traveling at the speed of light? They taught me how to think critically and how to recognize my own implicit premises and subject them to critique.

This book questions everything from the wisdom of eating whole grains to the role of saturated fat and cholesterol in heart disease. It shows you that the very recommendations we get from doctors serve to make us sick. Without the influence of my father and grandfather, I cant be sure Id have the confidence to write a book subjecting authority to such serious critique.

I need to thank my friend Adrianne Priest for planting the seeds that ultimately led not just to the ideas in this book but also to the full recovery of my health. My friend Lynn Pina kept telling me that I had to write this book because people needed it. My editor at Skyhorse Publishing, Jenn McCartney, convinced me to write this book sooner rather than later. My wife, Francine, did the editing and pointed out areas in which I was assuming common knowledge that wasnt common. My friend Rob Freeman contributed the Swiss ball stretches and continues to break new ground in the fields of balance, proprioception, and back health.

This is the first book for which I needed to take pictures of other people because its hard for me to be on both sides of the lens at once. Consequently, I show up only in a few photographs. All of the other pictures are courtesy of three wonderful people.

I owe thanks (and a bottle of homemade wine) to my friend, coworker, and political debate partner Ruth Slater. Ruth is a fitness enthusiast who teaches rock climbing. She has an infectious smile and a positive attitude that really comes through in her back extensions. Thank you, Ruth!

Joel Bergeron graciously demonstrated a number of exercises. Joel is a fitness expert and real athlete with impressive credentials. It was a real joy to work with him because he understood exactly what I was trying to demonstrate, the proper form and the proper angles. The photo of kettlebell swings was taken with him holding the kettlebell straight out in front, still in proper form, so the picture wouldnt be blurred. This takes a lot of strength. Thank you, Joel!

Just before this book was due, I discovered I was missing some pictures I needed. Chaunty Spillane is a model, actress, and yoga enthusiast. Her experience with yoga was perfect because she already knew every exercise I needed her to demonstrate, and she did it perfectly the first time. She held the flying pose with perfect balance while I properly framed the shot. Chaunty was great to work with and brought a lot of fun to the track. Thank you, Chaunty!

Chapter 1

Why Question the Status Quo?

William Dampier, Walter Raleigh, Abel Tasman, and James Cook are not exactly household names today, but they were explorers who chronicled their experiences in meeting people from hunter-gatherer cultures. One thing that stands out in their writings is that they uniformly described the hunter-gatherers they encountered all over the world as being healthy, strong, and well muscled.

In his A New Voyage Round the World , Dampier describes the Moskito people he encountered in the following manner: They are tall, well made, raw-boned, lusty, strong, and nimble of foot. Abel Tasmans description of the Maori people of New Zealand gives one the impression of Olympic gymnasts or high-level mixed martial arts fighters. Joseph Banks description of Australians encountered on James Cooks journey notes that they were of a common size, lean and seemed active and nimble.

This is hardly a fluke. Prior to the dawn of agriculture, humans had brains 20 percent larger on average than we do today. Considering that hunter-gatherers were the original inventors who laid the groundwork for language and art that we have inherited, it might not be surprising they had larger brains.

Though there are a number of theories for our decreased cranial capacity, and scientists like everyone else are often constrained to protect peoples feelings, the predominant theory is that the grain-based civilization enabled larger population densities and a specialized world in which average people didnt have to be as smart to survive.

One very common objection to caveman diets is that the diets were fine for cavemen in the short run because cavemen only lived to be twenty-five to thirty-five years old. This line of reasoning reveals a misunderstanding of both statistics and causality. In hunter-gatherer cultures without access to medical care, child mortality is very high, with about half of children dying before age fifteen. This is what youd expect in a relatively primitive environment without access to vaccines or modern medicine. How many of our children (and mothers) would have died except for modern surgery and the Caesarian section? How many of our children would have perished from whooping cough, tetanus, or smallpox without vaccines? How many of our children would have died from ear infections or infections from a compound fracture were it not for modern antibiotics? Yes, the average lifespan of a caveman was twenty-five to thirty-five years but only because of infant and child mortality in primitive medical conditions.

Though this isnt exactly ancient by modern standards, its also a lot older than stereotypes would lead us to believe and plenty old enough to indicate that their diet didnt kill them off by age thirty-five. This is especially true given their lack of access to medical care. If you take away antibiotics, life-saving surgeries following accidents, vaccinations, antivenin for snakebites, and similar innovations, its doubtful our average lifespan would be very long either.

In fact, the results of a comprehensive archeological symposium on the health of Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans concluded, Taken as a whole, these indicators fairly clearly suggest an overall decline in the qualityand probably in the lengthof human life associated with the adoption of agriculture.

The aforementioned archaeological symposium took place in the 1980s, long before anyone put forward the idea of paleo, ancestral, or caveman diets or seriously considered that a hunter-gatherer diet might be ideal for our nutritional needs, yet the book compiled from that symposium sounds like an advertisement for such diets. For example: