To Shed Your Extra Cushioning, Shed Your Extra Cushioning

Once only the rich had shoes and chairs and excess fat.

- Deborah Gordon, MD

HERE’S A SURPRISING FACT: Although ancestral humans often died young as a result of childbirth, trauma, or infection, those who lived to 70 showed little if any evidence of modern chronic ailments ranging from obesity and diabetes to calcified arteries and heart disease. As a physician over 60, learning about these unexpectedly healthy elders inspired the question, “What can we adopt from the ancestral lifestyle that might reduce our burden of chronic illness in the modern world?”

Physicians with the same question gather from all corners of the globe once a year for new answers at the annual Ancestral Health Symposium (AHS), held last summer in Boulder, Colorado. Impossible to ignore were the sessions that asked a different question, namely, “What have modern humans universally adopted that has added to our burden of chronic illness?” Two simple answers to think about are the shoe and the chair.