The Big Problem - A Broken Lifestyle
The Dan's Plan chapters are writen to help you understand our high-level perspective on the root causes of poor health and our general approach to solving these issues. To understand how we can be healthy, we need to understand the origins of human beings and the natural forces that shaped our biology over millenea. We also need to understand the fundamental changes to our world that coincide with the increased incidence of health-impairing conditions that are now normal in todays world.
Dan's Plan is based on a two part theory: 1) modern illnes is due to a broken lifestyle - or, a lifestyle in discordance with our biology; 2) a healthy lifestyle is the foundation of both health and healing. We emphasize food, physical activity, sleep and circadian rhythms as cardinal aspects of lifestyle critical in determining the objective state of a person's health. These are not the only domains of health that matter, but we consider them foundational. Therefore, while our guidance at times touches upon other areas, we mostly focus our attention and tools to optimize your habits for these activities.
Humans came into existence approximately 2.5 million years ago.1 For over 100,000 generations, natural forces shaped our biology2 establishing an intimate relationship between lifestyle (pattern of living) and health (proper biological functioning). During the course of this timespan, humans developed a unique ability to - as the philosopher Daniel Dennett has described, humans can "off load" aspects of our thinking tasks into the environment by creating tools or devices that think or work for us. This trait enabled major technological revolutions (agriculture, industrial, digital) allowing us to manipulate our environment to increasingly greater degrees.5,6 Accordingly, lifestyle has undergone massive shifts. Now, we have the luxury to focus less on basic survival needs and to use our time in distinctively modern ways.
Techology has enabled our lifestyles to evolve faster than our biology. While, the ancestral lifestyle stimulated proper biological functioning through survival behaviors, we now need to find time to "be healthy" since these healthy behaviors don't automatically happen. In fact, technological advancements have led to alterations in what we eat, how we eat, and when we eat; our technologies entertain us late into the evening curtainling sleep time, elongating the amount of time we spend in light vs. dark conditions, wreaking havoc on 24-hour biological rhythms. Our technologies also facilitate an indoor, sedentary existence. There are many advantages to living during this time, but the new ‘typical’ lifestyle pattern is vastly different than how our ancestors lived for millions of years before us. Unfortunately, this pattern of daily living predictably leads to increased risk for disease, disorders, disability, and decreased quality of life, lifespan, and daily performance. Therefore, we are all in need of a personal daily health practice to provide the stimulation needed for our bodies to be healthy and perform at our best. The purpose of Dan's Plan is to tie together the areas of lifstyle that matter, and then use technology to help you make your daily health practice efficent, effective, and sustainable.
In Westernized societies, chronic diseases are commonplace. In fact, most of us know someone suffering from one of the 'Diseases of Western Civilization' - heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, or hypertension. Sadly, many of us have even lost someone we love to one of these diseases. It is believed that inhabitants of many non-Westernized cultures do not experience these mortal conditions with the same frequency, if at all. While the lack of Western technology and medicine has its own health risks and issues, it is notable that these societies often avoid many diseases currently plaguing more technologically advanced cultures.
As members of the last few remaining hunter and gatherer tribes emigrate to urbanized, Western societies, many develop diseases just like other Westerners. In Australia in the early 1980’s, Professor Kerin O’Dea performed seminal research on groups of Aborigines. Her work showed the significant impact lifestyle has on health. In one of her studies, she recruited ten Aborigines who earlier in their life had moved from hunter and gatherer communities in the Bush to big cities, subsequently gaining weight and developing diabetes as well as other health issues. Professor O’Dea asked these participants to abandon their city lifestyles and return to the Bush for seven weeks. Transplanting these subjects back to a hunter-gatherer existence forced them to make dramatic changes in what they ate, as well as their activity and rest patterns. The results were striking. After seven weeks in the bush, test results for virtually every health measure improved, and subjects lost an average of 17.9 pounds. O’Dea concluded, “all of the metabolic abnormalities of type II diabetes were either greatly improved (glucose tolerance, insulin response to glucose) or completely normalized (plasma lipids) in a group of diabetic Aborigines by a relatively short (seven week) reversion to traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle.”7-11
These health concerns are symptoms of the problem and cannot be cured until the core problem is fixed. However, asking our members to cast away modern luxuries and to return to a completely natural existence is not a practical solution. Rather, our goal is to learn from the lifestyle template these natural-living communities provide, so that we may all adopt a more healthful way of living ourselves.
Ironically, even though technology is the cause of much of our problems, it is also a big part of the solution. We are at the early stages of a new movement that has staggering potential to help you be healthy. This movement is called ‘Quantified-Self’ and is the practice of tracking health data to promote self-awareness and behavior modification. In the near future, it will be common for everyone to be instrumented with sensors that collect health and lifestyle information essentially providing the equivalent of a car's dashboard but for your lifestyle. If you currently carry a mobile phone, you already have one of these sensors.
The value in collecting this data is that it can be analyzed, interpreted, and ultimately used to promote healthy behaviors. Tracking data can be as simple as jotting down your weight regularly, or it can be accomplished with one of the new tracking devices that use small sensors to passively record large amounts of health data in real time. One example of such a sensor is the Fitbit, a small, attractive device that tracks the number of steps you take during the day and measures aspects of sleep at night. This creates a feedback loop for the end user, which then has the potential to nudge them to do more or less of something (e.g., walk more or get into bed earlier).
The ability to change a behavior is not sufficient; you also must select the right behavior to modify and aim to change the behavior in appropriate way. We set a direction for health and help you set high-impact goals. Then, we faciliate self-tracking to stimulate awareness of how you're living day to day so that you have an easier time keeping your lfiestyle in a healthy zone. And with the growing amount of impeding influences - influences that will encouage a increasingly less healthy lifestyle - every single one of us can benefit from having regular objective feedback that helps you fight back against the modern lifestyle.
1. A Hill . Nature. 1992;355:719-722
2.J Fenner. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2005;128:415-423
3. Taubes G. 2011
4. JH O'Keefe. Phys Sportsmed. 2010;38:11-18
5. DR Bassett. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2007;39:410-415
6. MS Tremblay. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2008;33:836-842
7. M. Pollan. (Penguin, 2009).
8. K. O'Dea, Diabetes 33, 596 (Jun, 1984).
9. K. O'Dea, R. M. Spargo, Diabetologia 23, 494 (Dec, 1982).
10. K. O'Dea, R. M. Spargo, K. Akerman, Diabetes Care 3, 31 (Jan-Feb, 1980).
11. K. O'Dea, R. M. Spargo, P. J. Nestel, Diabetologia 22, 148 (Mar, 1982).
Hat tip http://farmerwu.wordpress.com/
Dan's Plan is based on a two part theory: 1) modern illnes is due to a broken lifestyle - or, a lifestyle in discordance with our biology; 2) a healthy lifestyle is the foundation of both health and healing. We emphasize food, physical activity, sleep and circadian rhythms as cardinal aspects of lifestyle critical in determining the objective state of a person's health. These are not the only domains of health that matter, but we consider them foundational. Therefore, while our guidance at times touches upon other areas, we mostly focus our attention and tools to optimize your habits for these activities.
Humans came into existence approximately 2.5 million years ago.1 For over 100,000 generations, natural forces shaped our biology2 establishing an intimate relationship between lifestyle (pattern of living) and health (proper biological functioning). During the course of this timespan, humans developed a unique ability to - as the philosopher Daniel Dennett has described, humans can "off load" aspects of our thinking tasks into the environment by creating tools or devices that think or work for us. This trait enabled major technological revolutions (agriculture, industrial, digital) allowing us to manipulate our environment to increasingly greater degrees.5,6 Accordingly, lifestyle has undergone massive shifts. Now, we have the luxury to focus less on basic survival needs and to use our time in distinctively modern ways.
Techology has enabled our lifestyles to evolve faster than our biology. While, the ancestral lifestyle stimulated proper biological functioning through survival behaviors, we now need to find time to "be healthy" since these healthy behaviors don't automatically happen. In fact, technological advancements have led to alterations in what we eat, how we eat, and when we eat; our technologies entertain us late into the evening curtainling sleep time, elongating the amount of time we spend in light vs. dark conditions, wreaking havoc on 24-hour biological rhythms. Our technologies also facilitate an indoor, sedentary existence. There are many advantages to living during this time, but the new ‘typical’ lifestyle pattern is vastly different than how our ancestors lived for millions of years before us. Unfortunately, this pattern of daily living predictably leads to increased risk for disease, disorders, disability, and decreased quality of life, lifespan, and daily performance. Therefore, we are all in need of a personal daily health practice to provide the stimulation needed for our bodies to be healthy and perform at our best. The purpose of Dan's Plan is to tie together the areas of lifstyle that matter, and then use technology to help you make your daily health practice efficent, effective, and sustainable.
A Broken Lifestyle
In Westernized societies, chronic diseases are commonplace. In fact, most of us know someone suffering from one of the 'Diseases of Western Civilization' - heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, or hypertension. Sadly, many of us have even lost someone we love to one of these diseases. It is believed that inhabitants of many non-Westernized cultures do not experience these mortal conditions with the same frequency, if at all. While the lack of Western technology and medicine has its own health risks and issues, it is notable that these societies often avoid many diseases currently plaguing more technologically advanced cultures.
As members of the last few remaining hunter and gatherer tribes emigrate to urbanized, Western societies, many develop diseases just like other Westerners. In Australia in the early 1980’s, Professor Kerin O’Dea performed seminal research on groups of Aborigines. Her work showed the significant impact lifestyle has on health. In one of her studies, she recruited ten Aborigines who earlier in their life had moved from hunter and gatherer communities in the Bush to big cities, subsequently gaining weight and developing diabetes as well as other health issues. Professor O’Dea asked these participants to abandon their city lifestyles and return to the Bush for seven weeks. Transplanting these subjects back to a hunter-gatherer existence forced them to make dramatic changes in what they ate, as well as their activity and rest patterns. The results were striking. After seven weeks in the bush, test results for virtually every health measure improved, and subjects lost an average of 17.9 pounds. O’Dea concluded, “all of the metabolic abnormalities of type II diabetes were either greatly improved (glucose tolerance, insulin response to glucose) or completely normalized (plasma lipids) in a group of diabetic Aborigines by a relatively short (seven week) reversion to traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle.”7-11
These health concerns are symptoms of the problem and cannot be cured until the core problem is fixed. However, asking our members to cast away modern luxuries and to return to a completely natural existence is not a practical solution. Rather, our goal is to learn from the lifestyle template these natural-living communities provide, so that we may all adopt a more healthful way of living ourselves.
Quantified Self
Ironically, even though technology is the cause of much of our problems, it is also a big part of the solution. We are at the early stages of a new movement that has staggering potential to help you be healthy. This movement is called ‘Quantified-Self’ and is the practice of tracking health data to promote self-awareness and behavior modification. In the near future, it will be common for everyone to be instrumented with sensors that collect health and lifestyle information essentially providing the equivalent of a car's dashboard but for your lifestyle. If you currently carry a mobile phone, you already have one of these sensors.
The value in collecting this data is that it can be analyzed, interpreted, and ultimately used to promote healthy behaviors. Tracking data can be as simple as jotting down your weight regularly, or it can be accomplished with one of the new tracking devices that use small sensors to passively record large amounts of health data in real time. One example of such a sensor is the Fitbit, a small, attractive device that tracks the number of steps you take during the day and measures aspects of sleep at night. This creates a feedback loop for the end user, which then has the potential to nudge them to do more or less of something (e.g., walk more or get into bed earlier).
The ability to change a behavior is not sufficient; you also must select the right behavior to modify and aim to change the behavior in appropriate way. We set a direction for health and help you set high-impact goals. Then, we faciliate self-tracking to stimulate awareness of how you're living day to day so that you have an easier time keeping your lfiestyle in a healthy zone. And with the growing amount of impeding influences - influences that will encouage a increasingly less healthy lifestyle - every single one of us can benefit from having regular objective feedback that helps you fight back against the modern lifestyle.
Next
1. A Hill . Nature. 1992;355:719-722
2.J Fenner. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2005;128:415-423
3. Taubes G. 2011
4. JH O'Keefe. Phys Sportsmed. 2010;38:11-18
5. DR Bassett. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2007;39:410-415
6. MS Tremblay. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2008;33:836-842
7. M. Pollan. (Penguin, 2009).
8. K. O'Dea, Diabetes 33, 596 (Jun, 1984).
9. K. O'Dea, R. M. Spargo, Diabetologia 23, 494 (Dec, 1982).
10. K. O'Dea, R. M. Spargo, K. Akerman, Diabetes Care 3, 31 (Jan-Feb, 1980).
11. K. O'Dea, R. M. Spargo, P. J. Nestel, Diabetologia 22, 148 (Mar, 1982).
Hat tip http://farmerwu.wordpress.com/
