Kill Gout Like a Caveman!

I want you to know, I have a MILLION things I want to relate to you about what it takes to kill gout.  And I promise you, I am going to get all of these gout prevention ideas to you as time goes on!  Killing gout is the mission into which this world I was born.  I am always thinking about what’s keeping me free from gout, and how I can pass that on to you so you can be gout free too.

I was deep in thought the other day, and I flashed on how I keep finding myself coming back, over and over again, to what prehistoric, primitive man had to do to survive and how he did it.  Biologically speaking, we are still 99.9999% the same…our bodies work just like they did then, and they need all the same nutritional building blocks to maintain a healthy life.  Hence this post…

On Becoming a Kill Gout Caveman

There are so many references and so many different directions I want to go with this, but let me break it down like this:

• Food
• Water
• Exercise
• Clean Air
• A Peaceful Environment

I just want to give you some things to think about and explore on your own.  The simple differences of what life must have been like in those times – and not all what our world is like now – could be the keys that lead directly to improved health, and indirectly to less gout.

What Does a Caveman Eat?

People ALWAYS ask me: “what should I eat?”  My simple answer is: “plants and animals”. (i.e. nutrient dense, whole foods, from good sources)  Now, think: CAVEMAN.  What did cavemen eat?  I believe that most people think cavemen only ate animals.  How could this possibly be true?  As anthropologically recorded, prehistoric man lived in all kinds of forests, jungles, grasslands, tundra, etc.  There were all kinds of plants; edible leaves, branches, berries, fruits, flowers, vegetables, roots, nuts, seeds…it’s endless.  Here is my thought and others are talking about it as well:  Plants were a whole easier to catch than animals.  So did our caveman friends eat tons of plants?  My guess is, YES, they did.  Did they eat animals?   Yes, as much as they could.  Did they eat everything raw?  Probably, maybe not, or at least not as time went on.

(as a side note, my friend, Angelo Coppola, creator of the podcast, Latest In Paleo, has a great page on his other website, Humans Are Not Broken, called “The Plant Paleo Diet” – check it out)

Food is always the big thing when we think about what life must have been like in Paleolithic times.  But here is the simple take-away I want to give you, then I will wrap up this little part about caveman food:

• Caveman didn’t really stop to cook anything.  He probably just grabbed it and ate it.  He didn’t grown grains, harvest them, soak and sprout and dehydrate them, or mill those grains and make flour out of it, let alone put it in an oven and bake it. He didn’t milk any cows or ox or whatever they had running around.  He was the grand master of, “grab-n-go” in the purest sense of the word.

If our bodies operate in almost 99.9999% the same way now as they did then, why would we eat that kind of stuff (grains and dairy) and think we are going to get away with it?  It is my firm belief that we are seeing more and more gout today because we eat so much cheap, grain-based food.  These highly refined carbohydrates are a high-glycemic food source.  Combine that with a MASSIVE amount of straight-out sugar from a million different cheap, processed sources, and we’ve got serious problems!   Top that off with UNSPEAKABLE volumes of cheap, synthetic, damaged, hydrogenated, trans fatty acids, and you’ve got a world wide health crisis.

Grain-based, sugary foods, made with fake fat, combined with adulterated dairy products….sound familiar?  IT’S JUNK FOOD!  THAT is why there is so much gout in the world!  Can you say: “disease of civilization”?!

Gout is more of a blood sugar issue than it is a problem of high purines, and our good friends at Paleo Leap do a fantastic job of telling the story – it’s worth the click to check it out.

. . .

Thank you Bert for the information. I placed my order last night for this product. My gout has been in check by using your program and what I’ve read on you e-mails.  Breathing, water, relaxing, and eating right has been great for me.

Thank you very much.

Have a Merry Christmas and a great New Year.

Richard

. . .

Even Our Water Is Processed

I know I went long on the caveman food part of this.  Let’s pick up some speed and move on to water.

Our bodies are 60 to 70% water.  If you want to change what is going on with your body physically, change what it is mostly made out of.  But, we take water for granted.  There are too many other “fun” choices of things to drink:  coffee, tea, soda, energy drinks, “vitamin” drinks, alcohol in every form – it goes on and on.  Why drink water?  The first reason is, for example, coffee, soda, and alcohol are dehydrating.  They actually make things worse.

But here’s what I really want to relate to you:  We should all drink the right amount of water EVERY day.  (1/2 your body weight in ounces per day + 1.5 times more for each portion of coffee, soda, and alcohol – i.e. 10oz of coffee, requires 15 extra ounces of water) But….WHAT KIND OF WATER?

• Here is my question to you:  What is “natural” water?  I will give you my definition – getting down on your belly and sucking water straight up out of a clear running mountain stream.  I bet you don’t do that every day.  Our water is processed – far and away, it is not the water our Paleo ancestors drank.

There are things that we can do to our water and things we can do with our water.  Something we can do to our water, is filter it.  Something we can do with our water, is ionize it.  This is the link to my solution about getting the best water we can in our modern times.

Eat Like a Caveman, Move Like a Caveman

As I am sure you are well aware, part of our modern day predicament is that we are too sedentary.   They say that if you eat like a caveman, you have to move like a caveman.  Those caveman guys had it made.  All they had to do everyday is wake up, and find something to eat.  That was it – that was the big event of the day!  Just hike around, pull some weeds, chase (or get chased!) some animals around, throw some rocks….what a life!  But those are the kind of things our bodies were designed to do.

Now we eat synthesized crap and sit around all day….wondering why we’re having a gout attack!

So what’s it going to be?  Walking? Gardening? Hiking? Biking? The Gym? Yoga? Tai Chi?  You gotta do something, and not just a few minutes a day.  I’ll leave it up to you to getter done, I trust you.  ;b)

What Are You Breathing?

Ok, so I wasn’t there in Paleo times, so I don’t know for sure, but….my guess is, the level of air born toxicity is not what it is today.  Sure there may have been toxic gases emitting here and there, but nothing like the synthetic, toxic, nasty, crap that is in our air today.  When it comes to gout, keeping our blood oxygen saturation up by breathing the most natural air we can (like living in the mountains, away from all the highways and cars) goes a long way.  That’s one more way Paleo Man had it made – no nasty a$$ smog made up of who knows what.

But here’s the kicker – and this is sort of an ad for you to buy something from me if you want to – statistically speaking, our indoor air pollution is typically WAY worse than our outdoor air pollution!  Off-gassing from plastics and paints, weird synthetic household cleaners and detergents, molds and bacteria, all sealed up in our super tight, efficient houses – have you heard of “sick building syndrome”?  This is link to clean up the air in your house or at your office.

….Just a Walk in the Park

Phew.  This post is getting a little longer than I thought it would be!  I’m wrapping up!

Lastly, we’ve been lead to believe that caveman life was very hostile.  Maybe it was.  Maybe it wasn’t.  Do you think it’s any different now?  Of course it is.  It may have been physically more hostile on some days way back then, and I’m sure that was plenty stressful.  But for the most part, life was all about:  Stay warm, get something to eat, sleep when you were tired, then do it all over again the next day.  Sounds do-able, huh?

Compare that to all the societal pressures, the influences, the expectations, the deadlines, the distractions….do you lead a pretty stressful life?  Do you think all that stress has anything to do with you getting gout?  You bet it does.  And there are deadly physical aspects to modern life – sugar being the biggest one?!  The overload of glucose in our blood is a huge stresser that takes it’s toll.  And what about the car accidents and the random crime?  It’s still a pretty hostile world, more for some than others.

Sometimes, all of what it takes to get through a day, makes hiking around, foraging for my food, hunting and gathering, sound pretty darn easy!  But the point I’m trying to make is this:  In order to stay healthy – I’m guessing like it could have been for primitive man most of the time – we need to find a sanctuary…an inner one or an outer one, or both.

   ☆ If you want to be gout free, think: What Would a Caveman Do?