 Welcome to Ancestral Health Today, evolutionary insights into modern health. Hi and welcome everybody. So in this episode of the Ancestral Health Today podcast we have part two of our discussion with Daryl Edwards. In part one we cover a number of his 12 pillars of health including the benefits of sun exposure, sleep, movement, stress management, community, interacting within nature and leaving slowly. Today we'll dive into several others pillars of health relating to diet, avoiding toxicity, breathing, play and leaving with purpose. Welcome Daryl, again. Hi, again. Thank you for being here. So last time we had a wonderful discussion and you introduced those pillars of health. And we also were able to capture how so many of them are interrelated. And today we're going to continue that discussion and I'll let you jump right in into where you want to get us to start us with. Yeah, I suppose probably moving to food would be a good pillar to focus on. For many of us our gateway into living an ancestral lifestyle was diet based. For me it was the Paleo diet, for others Primal diet, Keto, there's carnivore, there's a perfect health diet. There are many kind of flavours of this base of ancestral diet. I suppose what pretty much all of these diets and approach to nutrition rely on and so the word diet, original word diet come from dieter which is Greek means lifestyle. So even though I'm using the word diet, there's a kind of a much broader scope when we are looking at the role of nutrition in one's life. So ancestral nutrition, one of the biggest pivotal kind of turning points in relation to humans reliant on food was a change from being hunter-gatherers, nomadic hunter-gatherers to agriculture, the agricultural revolution. And that turning point meant we were allied less on what we could hunt, gather or scavenge to what we could grow, cultivate and harvest. So we went from nomadic to more sedentary. We had land that we would reuse and repurpose for food and so our food choices changed. So we had the livestock that we kept on cultivating for in terms of meat but also dairy in terms of milk and then we had a reliance on seeds so grains became a huge feature of the agricultural revolution. And there were many epidemiologists, anthropologists who see that this turning point was one where we had a significant decline in human health. So for many, many reasons. But some argue that the introduction of foods of agriculture or foods of civilization meant that there were also health issues as a consequence. So modern science gives us many of the potential reasons. So foods that increase the likelihood of inflammation of causing systemic inflammation. So foods such as grains contain compounds like lectins. So gluten is one famous example of a lectin which can cause irritation in the gut, acute inflammation in the gut. Some believe that can lead to longer-term issues with the gut such as leaky gut. And an impact of that chronic systemic inflammation can lead to chronic disease. Food such as dairy have also been linked to acute inflammation, have been linked to the fact that humans as mammals we should only be subsisting on dairy as babies and usually our mother's milk for dairy. So there's some who suggest that a separation from dairy especially for adults is a good thing and can need to health benefits. But there are also those who say that raw milk, for example, goat's milk is a really nutritious and healthful food. So I suppose that coming from that initial starting point of this separation between hunter-gatherer foods and foods of agriculture, there are many differences of opinion even when we enter this agricultural space. As we fast forward to the industrial revolution where the processing of food and the kind of systemization of food processing became a thing, right? So these foods that were once grown, cultivated, harvested became refined. So these processes which meant faster food production, which meant greater turnover of food, more production of food also led to a reduction in nutrition and nutrients as we worked on different processes that may prolong food life, shelf life, but strip many of those foods from nutrients. And then if we jump again, leap again to the fast food revolution of the 50s and 60s and 70s and right through to the present day where you have this ultra-processed food environment, that's probably where most people don't have any, there were no debates there really as to what healthful food is. So if we go from the hunter-gatherer where you had to work really hard to get your food to oftentimes not be successful in obtaining food to the industrial revolution where there's better access to food, better availability of food, but less healthful food options and to the present day where food is pretty much just ultra-fast, ultra-processed and we as humans have to make really difficult decisions around making food choices that deviate from the norm. So in one sentence I would say an ancestral nutrition template is to eat less artificial, less processed foods, avoid refined sugars and grains, avoid dairy, avoid intensely farmed produce, so intensely farmed meat, farmed fish, focus on consuming good quality meat, seafood, vegetables, tubers, mushrooms, fruits, nuts, seeds, just eat real food. So that was a pretty long sentence, more like a paragraph, but I would say that is a great umbrella as to what we should be looking at as our sources of foods. And I mentioned the word eating less rather than avoiding because there's room for flexibility there. And as long as the majority of our food choices sit within that umbrella, there's enough of a healthful dietary template to promote good health. So Daryl, you're mentioning this template, right? And you describe this evolution from hunter-gatherers through agriculture, through industrialized food. But when people hear the term ancestral diet, immediately they also hear the word paleo, right? So paleo harkens back to what our paleolithic ancestors ate. And they might think of specific paleo diets like the ketogenic diet, carnivore diet, perhaps with some plants and tubers mixed in. So is there one ancestral diet or does this template that you're describing embrace multiple options that you can customize or adapt? That's a very, that's a fantastic question. And I suppose it kind of harks back a little bit to the original, my original definition of the ancestral lifestyle, which is we're trying to model the best of ancestral health practices. So for example, many of the foods that our stone age ancestors ate aren't available to us today, right? That's for one. So for us to kind of suggest that we can copy and we can have a template which is identical to our ancestors is flawed, right there. What we can do is model the type of choices made. So we know there was an omnivorous selection of food choices for humans. We weren't just hunter hunters, right? We were hunter-gatherers for one. So there are many who will try and persuade us that we were just gatherer-gatherers or gatherer hunters and that the majority of our food intake was a vegetable matter and hardly, very rarely would we partake in animal foods. And there were some who would just say, actually we hardly ever even looked at a vegetable or fruits. We just focused on eating meat and fish if we could catch them. And that was it. And I would say like any form of extreme, this lifestyle should not be about extremes. And even though balance can be overused, I would say for sure if we look at this overarching umbrella of food choices, of real food choices, of less processed, non-processed foods, of avoiding artificial foods, of avoiding ultra-processed foods, that would be the paleo template. Paleo is a bit of a dirty word now, but the principles, many of those principles have become mainstream. So many people will go into a restaurant and request grass-fed steak. Many people will recognize that they don't want hydrogenated fats as part of their fat intake. Many people will toss up around healthier fats rather than less healthy fats. So omega-3 fats as our primary intake of fat rather than omega-6s, which are more pro-inflammatory fats. So many of those arguments, which for many started out in paleo-type discussions for nutrition, have become part of the mainstream. So even though I may not be using paleo as a term for my dietary choices, I certainly believe that this template is helpful for many. And rather than us being very dogmatic about it and trying to spread the kind of gospel of good food and it can only be this list of food choices and that's it, I would say we will be far better at shifting the perspective of saying let's go back to spending time thinking about our food choices, thinking about the food preparation, recognizing that high calorie density, low nutrient density is never a good thing. Recognizing that the more processing that occurs in foods is only likely to strip foods of nutrients. So if we go back to those basic principles, that's the ancestral template right there. Less about macro nutrient choices, less about am I carnivorous? Am I vegetarian? That's what I would argue. And even though I have given some opinion there, I would say if we do look at anthropological evidence, so one of the best papers I saw about probably about 15 years ago, I could be misquoting here, but it was a fantastic paper offered by Lauren Cordain several years after he's booked a paleo diet which looked at many hundreds of hunter-gatherers around the planet. And the great thing about that paper and looking at hunter-gatherer diets around the planet, there was basically kind of a bell curve distribution of food choices. So you had on the left the kind of highly carnivorous, mostly carnivorous hunter-gatherers, then you had this broader spread of very omnivorous splits between animal and vegetable produce, and then you had at the other end a higher vegetable intake. And that for me was, I was kind of sold. It was like, yes, there is a broad spectrum, but most of that spectrum is within this omnivorous dietary template. And even if we want to ignore that evidence, we just have to have a look at our physiology. So yes, we do have a gut which enables us to be able to process meats as well as vegetation. We look at our mouths, we haven't just got teeth that can cut into meat. We have molars that can also help to grind down food. We have hydrochloric acid in our stomach, low pH, that can tear through muscle from meat. So we know we have this kind of omnivorous physiology which gives us this nutritional flexibility. And so even if we want to ignore any of the other arguments, if we look at our physiology, if we look at our GI tract, we can see what our bodies are capable of doing. So we evolved to process carbohydrates, fat, and protein. We have amylase. We have enzymes that break down carbohydrates. So for those who say, oh, well, why we're not designed to consume carbohydrates? They're unhealthy for us. Why would we have two parts of our body in the mouth, in the pancreas that produce an enzyme that can break down carbohydrate? For example? On that point, and going back to the Cordane paper, he surveyed many populations. You mentioned different enzymes. There's individuals, there's variations between different ancestral cultures, right? So some have more or less amylase, some people can tolerate lack, have lack taste, some don't. So I guess going back to my question about multiple versus a single ancestral diet, should we pay attention to our ancestry or genetics and can certain populations maybe tolerate different foods than others? How important is that? Or do you think that's really overdone and over-emphasized? I would say it's, personally, I would say it's overdone. So one, we know genetically that we have far more in common genetically. In all seven plus billion humans on the planet, then there are differences. Things like lactase and lactose persistence, for example. We know most of that is cultural, so it isn't genetic. So if you maintain exposure to lactase after the weaning period, you're more likely to be able to break down lactose as you rage. We know that populations that were exposed to dairy for longer periods, such as the northern Europeans, are better able to process milk. So part of it is relatively recent exposure, rather than it being a genetic byproduct. So I would say it's easy to get into the weeds and it's easy to be puritanical and it's easy to say I know what's best. I would say it's better and safer for us to focus on the foods that we know without debate are the most harmful to us. And when I started my journey, the age 20 rule, the Pareto rule, was kind of the thing to do. 80% of the time you make ideal, you make the best food choices and other times you deviate from that and you hopefully can maintain a helpful dietary response in that way. So unfortunately, especially in terms of nutrition, the nutritional science is very, very poor. So we know that it's very difficult to have randomized controlled trials. It's very difficult for us to isolate exactly from within food that gives us the benefit because most things work together. They're synergy in food. So there were 10,000 phytonutrients in an apple, for example. And we don't know, we know about a handful of those phytonutrients and what their benefits are. We don't know about the other X thousands of them. We have those who will focus on anti-nutrients. So the anti-nutrients like phytates, like the anti-nutrients that will absorb or block the absorption of nutrients that are important to humans, right? So there were those who will say, though leptate, leptin to the most problematic, phytate to the most problematic, oxalate to the most problematic. So there are many who will try to focus on one aspect of nutrition, one aspect of food and say that's what's dangerous, that's what we should avoid and everything's okay. I would say it's far more nuanced than that. And I think the consensus certainly is ultra-processed foods, nutrient poor foods, energy dense foods without poor nutrition, those are what are problematic. Highly refined foods, foods that are pretty much just sugar with no nutrients. Those are problematic. The processing that's occurred to make foods like salmon, right? So if you have wild salmon versus salmon that's farmed, salmon's colored pink, they've got to try to make that food look as if it's come from the wild. And in order to do so, they've got to play around with science that may that happen, not great for our health. So I know I'm kind of going from pillar to post on this, but if we want people to embrace this lifestyle and to make healthier choices, we need to make this a sustainable choice for them. And we need to be able to motivate them to make healthier choices rather than them to literally take out, you know, have an encyclopedia on them as to what's good and bad and what makes me a better person based on what's on my plate and instead focus on what is going to fuel me to perform the activities that I need for the day, help to balance my mood and modulate my mood so I feel good about the foods that I'm eating. What can I eat that's going to help me celebrate with my peers and my family and friends and not feel, not have a guilt trip, not to become neurotic about my food choices. So you know, if I can make a food choice, know that the majority of time it's going to be helpful for me. Know that there's a lot of science backing it which isn't a science in a silo, you know, it's pretty objective. I feel that's a better, better place to be. So I hope I've got there Todd. Yeah, that's a great point and that leads me to actually a two-part question. So the first part is we live in highly industrialized societies. So we are in the US, you're in the UK. And we know that industrialized food is much more affordable. But the first part of my question is in relationship to illness. Only 11% of people in the United States are metabolically healthy. So how does that nuance play into the decisions that the public makes when there is already ADCs process like diabetes or prediabetes, high blood pressure, or even obesity, which is an indication that something is, you know, not working as it should necessarily. And then the second part of the question is back to the affordability issue. Grass-fed beef is expensive and organic produce is expensive and we are in a period of inflation. And going to the grocery store a lot of times is painful for a lot of people at the moment. So how do we balance this principles, the new ones not being neurotic about what we are choosing to eat and at the same time manage a condition and keep it affordable. I know that was a handful, but a handful, yes. Let's go to the first. Both fantastic questions, by the way. So the first point, you know, metabolic dysfunction, metabolic derangement, yeah, as you say, a high percentage. Whatever that percentage is, it's a very high percentage, especially in the US, right? So we know that the US kind of leads the way in metabolic dysfunction. So first issue I would say is everyone just tends to focus on diet being the issue. And of course is a significant part of the problem, but if we think about our lifestyle, then if we're sleep deprived, it's going to have an impact on our metabolic dysfunction. If we're highly stressed, it's going to have an impact on our metabolic dysfunction. If we're not moving, which people don't seem to like to mention, but if we're not moving, that's significantly increasing our metabolic dysfunction. So the US, the land of big cars, right? Cheap petrol or gas, even though you don't feel that's cheap, right? Air conditioned offices, the work, work, work ethic, the sleep is for WIMPS ethic, you know, it leads to this environment of metabolic dysfunction. And so if you are trying to break the back of the problem of metabolic dysfunction, you've got to throw all the tools that you have in a toolbox. And so whenever I'm kind of dismayed in a way, when people say the first thing you need to do is to sort out your diet, you know, and then you can sort out the other things, I would say better to moderate improvement in several areas to make a far bigger holistic impact on one's health. And so if we realize, so for example, right, if I just, if I focus on movement, right? So if I go for a walk after a meal, slow walk, 20, 30 minutes after my meal, and I am prediabetic or diabetic, right? Or have metabolic dysfunction, I can basically reduce my blood sugars to normal by going for that walk, pretty much whatever I ate, right? So of course, if I make a better food choice, plus go for a walk, then I'm going to be making even more impact on my blood sugars, right? But unfortunately, most people just say, oh, well, you know, you just have to cut your carbs, and then that solves the problem. But there are so many ways to skin the cat of this problem. You know, so if I'm sleep deprived, I'm more like to get up in the morning and want to make poor food choices because of leptin and grenin imbalances that occur from sleep deprivation, right? So if I move more, I'm going to become more insulin sensitive, which means I'm less likely to become insulin resistant. So even though metabolic dysfunction seems to be tied one to one with our food choices and the standard American diet, it isn't as simple as that. And I think we will make better inroads into this problem when we realize it's multifactorial. There isn't a silver bullet, and we need to use all the tools at our disposal which are helpful to help us tackle the problem. So that will be my answer for the first point. And I suppose, and I suppose the sicker we are, the sicker one is, the more aggressive you may well need to be on some of those interventions, right? So, you know, me going for a five-minute walk every day and saying I've got my movement in, and I've got pre-diabetes, no, not going to help, I'm afraid. I'm going to need to do a lot of movement. Me deciding I'm just going to make a small change to my diet and I'm dealing with a metabolic disorder, no, not going to be good enough. You're going to need to be doing something very drastic to treat this as a therapeutic intervention and hopefully then you can work to a place where you're in maintenance mode. So I would say a lot of effort up front in lots of different areas, many of these pillars that we're discussing and hopefully to a point where you can start getting into a maintenance phase where you don't have to be a strict in many of those interventions but you develop enough of a helpful habit and helpful patterns that it's easier to maintain. So that would be the first my first kind of answer to the question. The second in terms of food access again it's not a uniquely American problem but certainly a huge contribution to these issues. So in America you have these kind of like food deserts like real food deserts where you can be living in a community and the nearest real food item might be like 10, 15 miles away from where you live. There is no un ultra-processed food available in my locality. So whose fault is that? It's not the community's fault that that happens. There are bigger wheels at play so I feel that rather than just looking at the individual we have to start looking at more societal and more community interventions and that way we'll have greater health like parity health equity and then hopefully we can have better pricing so that people don't have to decide between real food, helpful food and whatever the cheapest most processed food is. So yes we need to be doing far more and I'm from the UK so I don't understand if I'm bashing the US but if the richest country on the planet by far the second place in GDP per capita is so far behind there is so much money available in American coffers but what are the decisions made in terms of where that money goes? The fraction like if half a percent of your defense budget was spent on improving the lifestyle of your citizens there wouldn't be food deserts there'd be gyms everywhere there'd be less reliance on medication there'd be better access to green spaces and so on like there'd be better health education for your citizens lifestyle medicine would be the norm so that's me getting off my soap box And it's pervasive too even in the places where there is a lot of abundance and there is a lot of grocery stores or even farmers market the addition of all the lifestyle factors how much people have to work and how little community there is to have everything done in conjunction so the responsibilities fall on the individual it's easier and it is far cheaper sometimes to order pizza on DoorDash than it is to go to the grocery store buy the food then the time that it takes to prepare it and to by the time that you're done preparing it and eating it it's almost time to go to bed and now you want to play your video game you know just relax from the kind of day that you've had and that's what US citizens are going through for the most part and that's a global problem so I would say if we go back to the hunter-gatherer hunter-gatherers what drove them to become agriculturalists it was convenience somebody decided I've had enough hunting for food and not getting food I want it I'm sick and tired of gathering food all day and just getting a handful of berries somebody had those conversations and somebody had the bright idea hey let's just throw these seeds here look at those cows you look really friendly let's tame them and make sure we can keep them nearby and who are instant food so convenience is pretty much at the seat of our DNA right convenience ease of use ease of an easy path to get whatever I need in life and so we have to in my opinion there needs to be an environmental factor factored into this so if we make our environment conducive to making things easier i.e. it's easier to go to a supermarket and get these highly processed foods and pop them in a microwave and ding and it's done and blend the food it's easy easy easy easy if that's what we engineer into our lifestyles and if our DNA is telling us this is a really good thing which it does then we have to work really hard to step away from that and it's the same with movement right it's the same with movement our environment is engineered to be sedentary so it's very difficult to think about movement options why would I take the stairs when I've got this lift, this elevator here why? same with sleep right why should I go to sleep when I've got all this entertainment I can watch when I've got these bright lights that keep me awake at night so we can't talk about this as individuals and blame ourselves for many of the choices that we're making many of them unfortunately are environmental many of them are very very difficult to turn away from and so you need a really strong work and self-determination ethic to be able to make many of those choices and it's really hard I wish it was easy I would love to say it's an easy choice but it's not it's very very difficult to live this lifestyle there is nothing easy about it it's easy for a month, 28 days right it's easy when you read a book and you go oh my life has changed but continuing that is very very difficult and so we need community we need government intervention in my opinion of the correct type we need environmental changes that will make some of those choices easier you know if we can subsidize at the end of the day if we can subsidize certain foods and have mountains of foods stored away I'm sure we can subsidize fresh fruit and vegetables I'm sure we can subsidize farmers to produce more livestock that's not factory intended to be farmed but we have to somebody has to decide what's important for us humanity you've mentioned that it's about a lot more than food it's the whole environment it's also about movement and we touched a little bit on movement in part one but there's another aspect coming back to this convenience mindset where we compartmentalize movement into an exercise program going to the gym you've talked a lot about play you have a whole program on this I'd like to hear a lot more about that but going back to the ancestral theme what's the connection between play and our ancestors could you start there and then how do we incorporate this into the modern environment play is common to all humans it's common to all mammals it's common to all animals so we have ludic genes we have play genes that are part of us so children aren't taught how to play the youngest of babies will blow bubbles and smile at the fact that they're blowing bubbles so it's something that's part of our nature and if we look at hunter gatherers and we look at them celebrating success it's in a playful way it's like we've got some food let's celebrate, let's dance we have these rituals that are really important which are again based on this play framework many of the feel good hormones that we have like dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin they're activated through a playful spirit they help humans connect to communicate to become better at their day to day tasks so we became better hunters through playing more so kids model adult behavior so they do what they see adults doing and in turn they improve their function to be able to do what adults do so there are so many benefits to play and in the modern world there's a significant amount of play deprivation so now we see play is just for kids and that time of kids play has been reduced to the point where it's almost non-existent so for all of us here we had childhoods and childhoods of like a significant amount of play the majority of my day as a kid outside school was play during the summer holidays play parents hardly saw us get outside the house play just don't get up to any mischief come back when it's time to eat that food went down so quickly down my gullet because I wanted to get back out and play play play play play right and there comes a point in time when you're told play no no no you've got to focus on work and that leads and bleeds into our adulthood so we have a very serious very stressful approach to life as adults and any forms of play that we seek tend to be very detrimental you know gambling you know let's go drinking, let's go partying that tends to be our playful celebration rather than the innocent form of play that we have as kids so for me with having this focus on play and especially active play one is it helps me to get more movement in my day because I've got a smile on my face often rather than a grimace when I'm moving more and secondly it helps to fire all of these feel good hormones that we have so for many people having a more playful approach to life whether that's with physical activity or in other areas is beneficial so that's why play is one of my 12 pillars I've seen that you go into schools and you actually have to teach kids how to play which is really sad right so I mean that said but how do you get adults into this what you're talking about play I mean our days are so harried we have limited time what kinds of things could you recommend just starting points go to my website go to PromaPlay.com but in all seriousness like we all know what it's like to play and if we go into work on a Monday morning say and we ask our colleagues how was your weekend most of the time they'll talk about what they did that was fun right so hey we went on a hike at the weekend it was incredible you know we went to Disney World with our kids incredible so we don't need to be convinced of the importance of play and of course it can help if children are involved because it's easiest for us to switch on this plan of playful state but we're all seeking it we're all searching for it and I feel this level of play deprivation that exists now that permeates society that us as adults are affecting and impacting our kids so you know when we say when you mentioned I had to go into school to teach kids to play why is that? it isn't because of kids it's because of adults it's because adults have decided one play should be deprioritizing for kids there should be a better more focus on academics that's one problem two there's a helicopter parenting focus now of you know more supervision we want to see where they are we want to know what they're doing we don't want free range kids getting up to mischief we don't want that happening I don't know what they're doing at all times and thirdly our institutions like schools are set up to make sure that happens right so kids have to be taking on a school bus to school or transported to school by adults if they go and play dates with other kids but supervised by adults if they're doing any physical activity it tends to be supervised by adults by coaches because that's what they should be doing for physical activity and play has just been dialed down so by the time we get to adults many of us well I would exclude myself from that but many adults are really struggle to enter that play space to access there in a child it seems so long ago and so what I would suggest is just use your play history go back in time and remember how good it felt playing whatever games you did as a kid and think about how you can recreate some of those or some of that feeling as an adult and that's what I try and do with the primal play method is try to recreate that feeling and the more we do that hopefully the more you're going to want to continue doing that so for me I realize that I hated exercise but I loved movement and I realize that movement that many people choose to do didn't excite me so me going on a hike no me going for a lengthy walk or a run no for me yeah climbing a tree that's fun balancing our ratings fun playing tag fun me creating scenarios when I'm walking down the high street to beat people and bobbing between people fun so I dictate what is fun I dictate what is playful and I try to pull in as many playful opportunities as possible and it helps me to move more helps me to be a nicer person helps me to better relate to people helps me to think I'm a nicer person than maybe I am but at least they get to see my playful spirit rather than the serious is a life bleak work do you know what I mean can't wait to get in the office on Monday can't wait to leave the office can't wait to sleep that's my week in week out isn't life fantastic well for me it wasn't so life still can be mundane and routine but we can throw in a little bit of play every now and again to have more play opportunities in our life and play is also about creativity kids games you're making stuff up it's make believe it's giving you that joy it's being bored we don't want our kids to be bored now I remember many times being told I'm bored I tell my parents I'm bored it's like amuse yourself find something to do but now we know that parents will say here you go here's something you can do here's the smart device here's a television program here's something that you can do that's going to stop you being bored so people don't know how to daydream anymore because if a kid daydreams it's problematic we see it as a problem we say they're on the spectrum it's incredible how much has changed in the last generation or two so yeah I feel privileged and honored to be able to have a childhood that I did in terms of being a free range kid active play kid all the kids in my neighborhood had the same sort of experience yeah and we're raising kids to be sedentary adults because they are being sedentary throughout their lives and the more that you cultivate that lifestyle the more difficult it is to do something alternatively about it yeah and if we're modeling that as adults so if they see it if they see that as adults they're like yeah that's what adulthood is about and now there isn't much of a distinction between the two so when I was a kid there was like the adults are doing the adult stuff couldn't care less what they're doing they're not having a good time we're having a good time but now many kids are thinking oh the adults are having all the fun all that time in their screens they you know like that's how we're programming a childhood's mind to be thinking about adulthood right being sedentary coming back from a gym going oh I'm so sore oh it was so awful oh you know okay exercise isn't fun is it no it's really hard work it's just about being sore don't like that yeah I'll just stay in my armchair and watch TV playing my computer games so this is the world that we're an environment that we're creating one for ourselves secondly for our kids and for our kids there's even an even worse impact because it isn't there it really isn't their fault you know we should be doing we should be doing better so yeah that's why I do the work that I do um and when I do go and teach kids how to play to be honest I'm really trying to encourage the adults to reconsider how important play is for the kids so that's really what I'm really what I'm trying to do is to kind of like a bit of misdirection and say hey can you see how much fun the kids are having and not being told all these rules and giving them a bit of freedom can you see how great this is for kids and letting off steam and we now have this research which tells us that kids can perform better academically by having more of those play breaks right by taking them out of that stressful state all the time they're actually performing better they're more emotionally intelligent they're less likely to be bullies so another pillar that you mention that sort of takes us out of the stressful state is breathing deeply yes that's an interesting one because a lot of people just assume we all know how to breathe right are you telling me how to breathe what is it about breathing or changing the way we breathe that can come back and doesn't that breathe also occur when you're doing when you're playing you're having much more of that you know bringing that into your life as well so everything like you said is interconnected everything is interconnected so yeah for sure so we know there was a focus on breath and breath work and you know most of us take shallow breaths all the time but the reason why many of us take shallow breaths all the time is because we're sedentary that's why because if I went for a sprint for the bus there is no there is absolutely no way I'm just going to be breathing with my chest and shallow breathing not going to happen my body is going to say to me hey Del you need far more oxygen than what you're delivering to me now so yes we have this focus on breath we know that if we take time to inhale to exhale if we breathe deeply there's this parasympathetic response there's a relaxation response we're bringing the heart rate down we can reduce blood pressure we can promote relaxation we can reduce stress so I think one of the beauties of the thinking about this ancestral lifestyle is are these cycles that occur and this kind of amplitude that exists so we shouldn't just be staying in this shallow breathing state we should be breathing appropriately for the oxygen demand that we need so that's what I feel we should be doing we should breathe deeply enough to sustain ourselves at the point that we need so if I'm sedentary and I have time to focus on breathing deeply and I want to enter this kind of meditative, relaxed state then that's what I should do if I'm sprinting and recovering from the sprint then I should be focusing on breathing deeply to get my heart rate down if I need to perform an activity for an extended period of time I need to be focusing on a breathing pattern that will help me to sustain that activity for a certain duration so breath is really important of course oxygen is really important again if we look at our physiology there are some people who will say you should only ever breathe in through the nose should never breathe in through the mouth and there's all these reasons why the nose is far better as a vessel for channeling air into the body but of course we have this secondary backup it's like yes, nose should be mainly be used but if you go for max effort sprint you're not going to be breathing in through your nose you're going to be using your mouth you're going to be trying to fill your lungs your diaphragm is going to be engaged you're going to be doing everything you can to get oxygen in so there is a step change there's a basically a gradient of oxygen need based on the activity we're doing and the outcome determines what our breathing response should be so slow my heart rate down I want to be more relaxed I want to be more parasympathetic or I want to be sympathetic I want to be going all out and I will do anything I can to take oxygen in because oxygen at this point is fuel for me so I hope that kind of explains that pillar of breathing and why it's extremely important I think it does are there practices that we can learn that will you're talking about integrating into ordinary life but are there breathing practices that occasionally can help us control stress or modulate health in other ways yeah I mean I suppose if you determine that you are your only ever mouth breathing for example then there are practices that just you know taping your mouth being more focused on nasal breathing there are apps that will tell you what your respiration rate is per minute so you know if you're respiring like 30 times per minute that's too many especially if you sedentary so you can find out how many times per minute you should be breathing in and out and then you can try and work to slow that down to a rate which is the norm of course if you have any issues with lung function if you have conditions which means you have poor lung functions then you may need to change that so it depends on your starting point it depends on what the issue is and it depends how much work you need to do to train yourself either to do more nasal breathing either to do more diaphragmatic breathing so many of us just breathe into the chest but if you really want to take a deep breath you've got to involve the diaphragm so diaphragmatic breathing is a really good practice I use that a lot I sometimes will mirror movement patterns with my breathing pattern to also help to stay relaxed even though I'm doing something very vigorous so those would be those would be a few practices which are fairly easy to implement wonderful Daryl and we have covered a lot of the pillars and we've talked about how they all interconnect and how we need to be you know looking at multiple points in our lifestyle choices and the changes that we need at a system level which I think has really helped bring it all together for the audience is there anything else any of the pillars that we have missed or anything else that you would like to say to tie them all together yeah yeah so living purposefully and I suppose being on this podcast having yourself Isabella and Todd as wonderful hosts this is part of our purpose this is one of the reasons I know there are many but this is one of the reasons why we get up in the morning it's what can I what can we contribute to the world around us whether that's to our peers to our community to our friends family it's taking what you're most passionate about and thinking about how I can continue to do this how I can continue to live this way and how can I do something which changes other people's lives not just my own and we know that those who live with purpose are more likely to live longer to live longer with health to be less likely to suffer the issues of social isolation and being alone and it also helps to reduce stress because you have a focal point rather than constantly being distracted you're like I have a mission I have a purpose and it doesn't have to be overly ambitious it just has to be purposeful it has to be actionable it has to be something which is well defined for you and it's meaningful for you and it's likely to drive action so one of my purposes is promoting movement that's playful and I suppose I spend my time trying to spread that to everyone I meet and without embarrassment because that's who I am and I held that aspect of myself back for so many years of my adult life working in a very high powered investment banking technology background and everything was serious and one of the turning points for me was being called into my boss's office because my colleague and I were laughing at the water cooler and we almost got fired because like you're not here to be laughing or smiling having a laugh and a joke with your colleagues you're here to make the bank money to help the bank make money and that was thank goodness I had that conversation because I realized then I wasn't living with purpose I was just pushing myself to one side because of this financial reward but at the end of my life I'm not going to be thinking about how much I have made whilst working in that bank I want to be focusing on my memories on the cherished memories that I had with others and the times that I will never be able to recreate and what I want others to say about me at the end of my days so that for me is my purpose I think that's a great way to wrap up a wonderful discussion and I can tell you you do achieve your purpose Darrell I've attended your movement sessions at Ancestral Health Symposium and we're sitting there in this room cold dark room listening to all these lectures and then your play session comes up and everybody looks forward to it and you bring brightness into our lives and I know you do it with the folks you coach and children and whatever it's rewarding to see the impact that you have on others so I think that's a really key point and thank you for helping to sort of introduce the podcast and the audience to this range of health pillars which is really broad and I think a lot of people come into this just thinking about food but it's so much more I don't know Isabel yeah I definitely echo that you bring a lot of play but also compassion and nuance to this space understanding that everybody is starting at a different point and I think that is that makes a big big difference from you know some of what we tend to see with it's either one way or the other I think that your audience can really relate to the fact that you acknowledge the struggles and that you integrate the play into those struggles from wherever people are and we really thank you and are very glad that you're part of this community as well thank you far too complimentary and I suppose just to recap I'm going to quickly run through in a very playful way the 12 pillars follow the sun live slowly I should have said that more slowly live slowly interact with nature sleep deeply manage stress appropriately avoid toxicity eat naturally engage your community breathe deeply live purposefully move naturally remember that one and finally play whole heartedly amazing thank you so much Daryl for being with us today thank you so much and just for folks who want to check out a little bit about what you're doing where can they go yep my website is called primalplay.com where you can find out a lot about moving playfully influencing others around you to move more playfully I have a book out called Animal Moves for adults Animal Moves for kids and for a big picture overview of what I do my TED Talk why working out isn't working out wonderful thank you so much Daryl and thank you Todd thanks for joining us on this episode of Ancestral Health Today we hope you enjoyed our discussion on how evolutionary insights can inform modern health practices be sure to subscribe to our podcast to catch future episodes