.
Paleo diet gurus love telling people that they need to return to the carnivorous diets of their ancestors. They are correct, but not for the reasons they give.
Studying hominid bone fossils yields limited results because of degradation. However, the evidence we seek is available in the physical and biochemical makeup of present day humans. 2.5 million years ago, or 25 ice cycles ago, hominids split off of the blood lines of old world primates in Africa. The primates were carnivorous.
All warm blooded animals release the enzyme DPPIV (DPP4) into the bloodstream. DPPIV's purpose is to break down the protein insulin. When an animal ingests a high-sugar food, without harm the pancreas can assume the animal will consume lots of it. The pancreas releases a flood of insulin. Excess insulin creates life threatening hypoglycemia. But blood DPPIV “digests” the excess insulin, and eliminates the hypoglycemia threat.
2.5 million years ago an environmental hardship, probably drought, caused starvation in the primate ranks. So some of them started eating grain, probably millet. The millet caused such disease that it killed off all but a breeding pair of the grain-eating primates. These primates had a random mutation which allowed them to survive and propagate. These primates released DPPIV into their small intestines. The DPPIV slowly digested the plant proteins which the primates' carnivorous stomachs could not digest. And this mutation started the first line of hominids.
Humans are human because they have a unique, extremely flawed, ability to digest carbohydrates.
Today's humans are vastly different from the first hominids and from our primate ancestors. In the same 2.5 million year time frame our ancestral primate ancestors have experiences little change. What caused such rapid changes in human evolution?
Today historians tell us that humans first started farming 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent. Not true. Rejoin hominids 2 million years ago, 500,000 years (5 ice cycles) after their split from old world primates.
Evolution hates overcrowding, and rewards it with communicable diseases. Hominid physiology presented evolution with a way to advance human evolution. Hominid populations became so dense in Eastern Africa that disease epidemics periodically swept through their ranks. The only way to attain that kind of population density is through agriculture. This doesn't mean that all hominids ate carbohydrates exclusively. In fact, some hominids have to have eaten high-fat animal diets.
Hominids inherited a trait from old world primates which is unique in the animal kingdom. In extremely small numbers we are capable of “exogenating” deadly viruses into our DNA, and coding around them without harm. Virus exogenation requires a person with alternative genes within epigenetic reach. And it requires the kind of elevated cellular energy which only a high-fat low-carb diet can provide.
So agricultural hominids caught these viruses and passed them on to carnivorous hominids. The agricultural hominids died, and a paltry few carnivorous hominids, through exogenation, lived and propagated. Through each of these epidemics agricultural hominid ranks swelled and ebbed. In the wild carnivorous living is hard. Temptation among carnivorous hominids to consume easily-obtainable carbohydrates was a constant mover of hominids into agricultural population centers.
Many of these viral die-offs randomly accompanied environmental hardships, hardships which selected carnivorous hominids with random mutations which allowed them to survive the hardships. Through this ebb-and-flow selection process humans acquired huge brains, upright gaits, infant water survive-ability, downward-pointing nostrils, external mammary glands, female continuously-growing head hair, male baldness, etc. …..all traits unique to humans.
How did human anatomy differ in order to make such rapid changes?
…..One little chemical called “zonulin”.
About 2 million years (20 ice cycles) ago hominids started releasing zonulin into the small intestines. Humans release zonulin in response to carbohydrate ingestion. The tendency to release zonulin increases with age. It is an immune response. The zonulin response is unique to humans. It provided the driving force which caused the above mutation cycles, and caused the massive and rapid changes to human physiology in the last 2 million years.
Along with the antigens and pathogens it introduces, Zonulin is also responsible for untold suffering and death.
Zonulin arrests the digestive action of DPPIV by making the intestinal lining porous. The carbohydrate-rich, pathogen-laden intestinal contents spill into the lymph and blood systems. The included food antigens and carbohydrates are responsible for all autoimmune diseases as well as all metabolic diseases …..diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, etc. The included pathogens are the reason for zonulin release.
As shown above, in small numbers, humans can exogenate digestively-introduced pathogens into our DNA without harm. Introducing these pathogens has been the key to the advancement of the human species.
.
Paleo diet gurus love telling people that they need to return to the carnivorous diets of their ancestors. They are correct, but not for the reasons they give.
Studying hominid bone fossils yields limited results because of degradation. However, the evidence we seek is available in the physical and biochemical makeup of present day humans. 2.5 million years ago, or 25 ice cycles ago, hominids split off of the blood lines of old world primates in Africa. The primates were carnivorous.
All warm blooded animals release the enzyme DPPIV (DPP4) into the bloodstream. DPPIV's purpose is to break down the protein insulin. When an animal ingests a high-sugar food, without harm the pancreas can assume the animal will consume lots of it. The pancreas releases a flood of insulin. Excess insulin creates life threatening hypoglycemia. But blood DPPIV “digests” the excess insulin, and eliminates the hypoglycemia threat.
2.5 million years ago an environmental hardship, probably drought, caused starvation in the primate ranks. So some of them started eating grain, probably millet. The millet caused such disease that it killed off all but a breeding pair of the grain-eating primates. These primates had a random mutation which allowed them to survive and propagate. These primates released DPPIV into their small intestines. The DPPIV slowly digested the plant proteins which the primates' carnivorous stomachs could not digest. And this mutation started the first line of hominids.
Humans are human because they have a unique, extremely flawed, ability to digest carbohydrates.
Today's humans are vastly different from the first hominids and from our primate ancestors. In the same 2.5 million year time frame our ancestral primate ancestors have experiences little change. What caused such rapid changes in human evolution?
Today historians tell us that humans first started farming 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent. Not true. Rejoin hominids 2 million years ago, 500,000 years (5 ice cycles) after their split from old world primates.
Evolution hates overcrowding, and rewards it with communicable diseases. Hominid physiology presented evolution with a way to advance human evolution. Hominid populations became so dense in Eastern Africa that disease epidemics periodically swept through their ranks. The only way to attain that kind of population density is through agriculture. This doesn't mean that all hominids ate carbohydrates exclusively. In fact, some hominids have to have eaten high-fat animal diets.
Hominids inherited a trait from old world primates which is unique in the animal kingdom. In extremely small numbers we are capable of “exogenating” deadly viruses into our DNA, and coding around them without harm. Virus exogenation requires a person with alternative genes within epigenetic reach. And it requires the kind of elevated cellular energy which only a high-fat low-carb diet can provide.
So agricultural hominids caught these viruses and passed them on to carnivorous hominids. The agricultural hominids died, and a paltry few carnivorous hominids, through exogenation, lived and propagated. Through each of these epidemics agricultural hominid ranks swelled and ebbed. In the wild carnivorous living is hard. Temptation among carnivorous hominids to consume easily-obtainable carbohydrates was a constant mover of hominids into agricultural population centers.
Many of these viral die-offs randomly accompanied environmental hardships, hardships which selected carnivorous hominids with random mutations which allowed them to survive the hardships. Through this ebb-and-flow selection process humans acquired huge brains, upright gaits, infant water survive-ability, downward-pointing nostrils, external mammary glands, female continuously-growing head hair, male baldness, etc. …..all traits unique to humans.
How did human anatomy differ in order to make such rapid changes?
…..One little chemical called “zonulin”.
About 2 million years (20 ice cycles) ago hominids started releasing zonulin into the small intestines. Humans release zonulin in response to carbohydrate ingestion. The tendency to release zonulin increases with age. It is an immune response. The zonulin response is unique to humans. It provided the driving force which caused the above mutation cycles, and caused the massive and rapid changes to human physiology in the last 2 million years.
Along with the antigens and pathogens it introduces, Zonulin is also responsible for untold suffering and death.
Zonulin arrests the digestive action of DPPIV by making the intestinal lining porous. The carbohydrate-rich, pathogen-laden intestinal contents spill into the lymph and blood systems. The included food antigens and carbohydrates are responsible for all autoimmune diseases as well as all metabolic diseases …..diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, etc. The included pathogens are the reason for zonulin release.
As shown above, in small numbers, humans can exogenate digestively-introduced pathogens into our DNA without harm. Introducing these pathogens has been the key to the advancement of the human species.
.
