On Sun, 9 May 1999 19:37:25 EDT, "Anna L. Abrante" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>How old do we live?  How old *can* we live?
>How healthy can we expect to be?
>How old do we have to be to be considered a success at eating well?
>
>Maybe someone can give me an age to shoot for that we all think is old enough
>to have actually beat the monkey (no pun) on our backs, that's trying to kill
>us, by making us eat badly...pick an age..then check current cultures that reach
>that age healthy..then perhaps immulate it if you can...This is a serious
>question I am going to pose, I am *not* trying to be difficult here.  Do we
>reaaaalllly have to go back 40,000 yrs to find a diet that will achieve the
>above?

This is all covered in Barry Sears, PhD - "The Anti-Aging Zone" - if it is not
available in your local library, you can have them request it through
"Inter-Library Loan" (which works for virtually ANY book if you're patient
enough).

The connection to Paleo is that Sears starts from the viewpoint of physiology
and comes to similar conclusions about the diet - he just doesn't use the "naked
with a sharpened stick" principle as the *method* of choosing the diet.

Instead, his goal is to normalize the balance of hormones in the body, and
increase effectiveness of "hormonal communications".

His conclusions are that the two major factors causing the diseases of modern
civilization are excess insulin and insufficient Omega-3 fatty acids.

Of course, excess insulin is caused primarily by consumption of grains.

And, Sears specifically takes his optimal Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio from what we
believe about ancient man's diet, and thus acknowledges that the problems have
been caused by the subsequent dietary deviations of modern man.

So, even from the viewpoint of using the Paleo Diet method, the book is
interesting in terms of looking at which modern ailments are caused by which
modern dietary deviations.

PS

Ray: " I don't think a life can be judged by lenth but if I had to pick a number
I'd go with one million hours. "  This is 114 years.   Sears picks 120 years, a
round number.

Ray: " We can never duplicate the diet of 40,000 years ago.  Most of the animals
we ate are long extinct... "

Sears: " The meat from wild game contains nearly six times more long-chain
omega-3 fatty acids than today's grain-fed beef. "


--
Cheers,

Ken                         <*>
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