The past few weeks I’ve been overflown on my early morning walks by both small and large flocks of geese headed south. We live in a small community north of the DFW metroplex, surrounded by pasture and farmland, and the flocks are resting overnight before flying out about sunrise. The biggest V formation had already passed when it dawned on me to grab a pic this morning…
Why geese here today?
I have a physician acquaintance from long ago who’s recently resurfaced and taken me to task for aligning with much of the ancestral health world in what I’ve shared here on the Older Bolder Life.
Rounding out the story, he’s a no-nonsense internist who happens to spend over half his time working with a bariatric surgery team managing the oft expansive metabolic dysfunction that can sometimes occur post these procedures. We’ve not interacted in some time, and while I’d not define our past interactions as being those of close friends, we were involved in a community service project together years ago.
He’s particularly offended by those of us in the ancestral health and wellness circle who dare to suggest that consuming the Standard American Diet (SAD) and living what for most is a sedentary lifestyle runs counter to our inborn, encoded genetic programing, leading to development of a host of metabolic disorders and functional impairment (insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, T2DM, fatty liver are just a few that come to mind).
His argument appears to focus upon the fact that, at least from where he sits today, human evolution has been for the most part static for generations now, and that disease and metabolic dysfunction today, despite being damned prevalent, is primarily due to behavioral features that (in his view) most people simply can’t overcome; he goes on to argue that one’s “genetic program is simply the cards you were dealt” to play at your birth, and that the concept of using food and nutritional elements to “manipulate” genes is absurd.
He’s also gone on to suggest that man’s innate higher level cognitive abilities give us the power to override the (faulty) genetic programming we’re born with, at least most anyway, and he’s even suggested that the natural world around us offers very few concrete examples of deeply encoded genetic information that impacts the behaviors of creatures around us.
My acquaintance is dead wrong of course, and on a number of points.
The Canada geese honking their way overhead this morning are a beautiful example of deeply embedded programing that compels them to make their annual fall migration south, often covering thousands of miles, around the same time every year.
And, of course, there’s now decades of hard evidence supporting the fact that our genome appears to be encoded to thrive on a food plan that’s quite different from the SAD; my own experience (now having lost nearly 200 pounds!) is a prime example. The challenge of course is finding the optimal food/nutrition and activity/fitness plans to suit your particular physiology and activity demands, though it can be done, and it’s much simpler than you’d think.
(Postscript: My former colleague reluctantly admitted that he’s 70 pounds above his ideal weight range, is on statins, is insulin resistant and teetering on the edge of a formal diagnosis of T2DM, though he insists he’s “fit but fat”.)
