Be completely present - Pay close attention to what is going on around you. Keep at it.
Restore mobility, the ability to move freely and easily - Emphasize ground contact, agility, rotation, jumping, climbing and throwing motions. Give your body what it needs - Remove low quality, anti-nutrient dense ingestibles such as cereals (gluten-like complex), certain tubers (solanum/nightshade), legumes and milk and dairy. Replace with high-quality, nutrient dense ingestibles such as fruit, leaves, roots, tubers, nuts and animal flesh and organs.
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The most important interactions a species can have with its environment are those associated with survival and reproduction. These interactions are dependent upon the expenditure and intake of energy. This expenditure and intake of energy is manifested as the elements of movement and ingestion. As important as reproduction is to a species existence, this interaction is by beyond the scope of this post. However, reproduction is dependent upon survival and activities associated with this interaction can be viewed through the lens of a group of behaviors known as foraging. Simply stated, foraging can be understood as the amount of energy an organism expends to obtain energy from its environment for purpose of survival (and ultimately reproduction). Foraging behaviors, which are actions associated with movement and ingestion, are important determinants of how a species exists or existed in an environment.
We can determine a great deal about an organisms existence based on its foraging behavior. In reality, very few organisms seek out all the different energy sources (food) that they are capable of ingesting. Based on this observation, a theory has been developed to understand the factors that determine how an organism goes about obtaining food in an environment. This theory is known as optimal foraging theory, or OFT. Based on this theory, the food types preferentially sought out and ingested by an organism, as well as how they are obtained, interact to form that organism’s dietary strategy. Dietary strategies provide a convenient way for us to understand how the elements of movement (energy expenditure) and ingestion (energy intake) interact to determine a species existence. There are two main strategies: general and specific. A species that employs a generalist strategy tends to look for, pursue and ingest many of the food types it comes into contact with. Those species with a specialist strategy ignore many of the food types they come across, preferentially searching for a few specific food types. As a species, humans employ a generalist strategy and it was an important driver of our species evolution. OFT is based on the general assumption that foraging behavior is adaptive, a product of natural selection that yields the greatest possible benefit to an organism’s survival and reproductive success. More specifically, OFT is based on the theory that organisms forage or exist in a way that maximizes their net energy intake per unit time. This suggests behaviors that are based on finding and ingesting food types that contain the most energy while expending minimal amounts of energy doing so. This understanding provides us with a framework for understanding the elements of existence and the disparity between ancestral and current existence. Ancestral humans employed a foraging strategy that revolved around mobile and efficient diurnal gathering, scavenging and hunting practices. Gathering involves collecting wild food sources. Scavenging involves obtaining discarded dead organisms for ingestion. Hunting involves killing or trapping living organisms, or pursuing them with the intention to do so. This “ancestral foraging strategy” enabled us to survive and thrive on the African savanna and colonize the rest of the planet, sculpting our design along the way. How does knowledge about the ancestral foraging strategy translate into approximating ancestral environmental conditions in modern conditions? Adaptation is the most important concept associated with the Human by Design system. Through adaptation, an organism’s design changes to fit the conditions of the surrounding environment. The principle of SAID takes this further. It posits that an organism’s design will adapt specifically to the environmental demands that are imposed upon it. This principle is fundamental to the expression of every aspect of our design.
SAID means that adaptations are specific to environmental demand. The human genome possess a blueprint for specific adaptations associated with our species evolved capabilities; we just need to impose appropriate environmental demands. That said, our practices must be limited to methods that approximate ancestral activity. Selecting and applying appropriate practices from this perspective ensures the appropriate expression of our evolved capabilities. From the perspective of SAID, each practice revolves around the systematic application of stimuli that approximate ancestral demand. The application of appropriate stimuli leads to the appropriate adaptive response - restoration of our evolved capabilities. To accomplish this, we need to determine what constitutes appropriate stimuli. SAID indicates that a practice must approximate an ancestral activity to qualify as appropriate stimuli. What are the characteristics associated with appropriate stimuli? An important concept associated with SAID is stimulus threshold. Stimulus threshold is the optimal stimulus necessary for eliciting an adaptive response. A stimulus must be significant enough to produce an adaptive response, but not so demanding as to result in disability. This means we must be careful when selecting and applying stimuli. Stimulus thresholds are a product of genetics, which means they vary between adaptations as well as individuals. Due to this variability, how can we determine optimal stimulus thresholds associated with our evolved capabilities? Fortunately, research and experience point to adaptive windows associated with each capability, as well as methods that apply the appropriate stimuli. This knowledge provides the framework for the Human by Design system. |
AuthorSeth Clayton is the creator of the Human by Design System. He is a human from Charlotte, NC who is interested in helping you achieve optimal health and wellbeing through the avenues of Zen Buddhism, Functional Movement and Paleolithic Nutrition. Archives
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