Dear youngsters,
You’re going through some difficult times, no doubt. I’ve been in your shoes before. I’ve been a kid dealing with basically all the same stuff you have to contend with. I’ve been there.
Your hormones are probably (depending on age, gender, and exposure to attractive members of opposite/same sex) either raging, simmering, fomenting, budding, and/or swelling.
Your legs and arms may be growing at disproportionate rates, leaving you feeling like a stranger in your own body.
Posted By: Mark Sisson
We in the Primal community talk a lot about the modern medical situation – the growing prevalence of lifestyle disease and the misguided, costly paths conventional health wisdom too often prescribes. Still, some conditions seem less – well, conditional – than others. Take eyesight, for example. If we wear glasses or contacts, we look to our families or age. While genetics and years certainly have their influence, is that the entire story for everyone? Is vision a wholly “closed” process – set in motion and then untouched by overall health and physiologic interaction, or is it more dynamic and systemic than that?
I get a fair number of emails from folks who wonder about their eye health in a Primal context. A while back I looked at the potential role of sunlight in preventing myopia, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The post got people thinking. What are the other factors and theories behind the myopia surge? And as for readers’ individual circumstances, were they really destined to wear glasses? Is there anything they can do once they’re already living with a vision prescription? Glasses or no, what can we do to support the well-being of our eyes throughout our lifetimes?
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Height has historically been regarded as a marker of health and robustness. We seem to implicitly accept that bigger is indeed better, even if we don’t want to admit it. On average, tall people attain more professional success and make more money, the taller presidential candidate almost always wins, and women are more attracted to tall men. On a very visceral level, the taller person is more physically imposing. After all, who would you rather fight – the dude with a long reach raining punches from up high or the shorter guy with stubby arms who has to work his way inside your guard (although Mike Tyson did pretty well for himself with such “limitations”)? And on that note, who would you prefer as a mate – the physically imposing specimen or the shorter, presumably weaker male?
We in the Primal health community are quick to point out that agriculture reduced physical stature. Generally speaking, bone records indicate that Paleolithic (and, to a lesser extent, Mesolithic) humans were taller than humans living immediately after the advent of agriculture. Multiple sources exist, so let’s take a look at a couple of them before moving on:
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Everyone ready for the holiday weekend yet? It’s a good time, I think, to cover a relaxing, if not inspiring, topic I’ve been meaning to get to. In all seriousness, I get a couple emails every week from folks who are wondering about their waxing or waning sexual drive and how it relates to their lifestyle. Some are folks celebrating the return of their mojo after losing weight and and gaining energy on the Primal Blueprint. Others are from readers concerned about their partners’ unhealthy habits and what they see as the coital repercussions. Still more are from folks transitioning to Primal living and going through a period of energy “adjustment” as they find the right balance in their workout regimens, calorie intakes, and overall lifestyle picture. In all, the questions revolve around a central point: what lifestyle measures support optimum sexual drive?
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Hi folks! I’m Emily Deans, M.D., a psychiatrist who normally blogs over at Evolutionary Psychiatry and at Psychology Today. However, Mark Sisson was kind enough to ask me to do a guest blog for Mark’s Daily Apple, and of course I am thrilled to oblige. My main interest is to explore how the differences in our modern lives and diets compared to a traditional/evolutionary experience may influence how our brains work and leave us more vulnerable to mental illness. If modern diets and lifestyle do leave us ragged in brain as well as body, The Primal Blueprint, being a practical diet and lifestyle that specifically emulates evolutionary conditions, would then theoretically be part of an antidote to modern mental health problems.
Posted By: Mark Sisson
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