Once only the rich had shoes and chairs and excess fat.
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.
This story is from the November/December 2016 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the November/December 2016 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.