 Welcome to Ancestral Health Today. Evolutionary insights into modern health. We're talking today with Daryl Edwards. Daryl used to be an investment banker and a technologist and he was living a sedentary lifestyle but transformed his health for the better many years ago by changing his diet and incorporating movement into his life. He's an author of the best-selling book Animal Moves. He's a movement coach, a motivational speaker and his 2019 TED Talk gathered over a million views. He's a regular speaker at the Ancestral Health Symposium and I've participated myself in some of his movement and play sessions. They're challenging but fun and you can find a lot more on his website primalplay.com. I'm here with my co-host Isabel. Hello Isabel. Hi. And welcome to the podcast, Daryl. Thanks very much, Tad and Isabel. We're looking forward to our conversation today. So, Daryl, your talks and your books and your coaching, you've introduced people to this Ancestral Health idea in very practical terms and you have a framework which we'll talk about today, these 12 pillars of health that kind of provide a very practical way to incorporate Ancestral Health ideas. But maybe before we get into that, can you just give the audience a brief definition of what you think Ancestral Health is? Is it the same thing as paleo or is it something different? Yeah, so Ancestral Health, it can also be or it's often referred to as a paleo or primal lifestyle. I would say it's a holistic approach to health and wellness. It draws its kind of core principles from our ancestors' lifestyle habits. So it's based on the premise that our bodies evolved over millions of years to live in a certain way, in a certain environment. And modern lifestyles, especially since the advent of agriculture and industrialization, have moved us away, our bodies and our environments away from those conditions. So a common misconception is that those who are following an ancestral lifestyle are trying to mimic the lifestyles of our ancestors, whereby actually we're trying to model aspects of their lifestyles that we can implement in a modern environment, in a 21st century environment. So there's no way we can perfectly mimic those conditions, the environment, our landscape is completely different. But certainly by applying those principles that guided their lifestyles in a way that makes sense in our modern world, we hopefully will live a healthier life in the 21st century. Wonderful. And Todd already alluded to those 12 pillars of health that you discussed. Can you tell us a little bit about them and how do they fit into the ancestral health model? Yes, so like many others, when you encounter the ancestral health, many of us have a gateway. And so for most people, the gateway is via nutrition through a diet. And the paleo diet is for many, was their gateway in to finding out more about paleo and then finding out more about a paleo lifestyle. For me, my gateway was through movement. So I actually read about evolutionary fitness, found out about evolutionary biology. And I was fascinated with this back to basics approach to movement. I realized that this single sort of point of failure that many, many prescribe as like, okay, this is the solution. There's a problem with our dietary environment and nutrition environment. So if you eat this way, everything's going to be golden. You know, we're in a sedentary environment. If you move, move more job done. Whereas actually far better to be a jack of all trades and to be more holistic in one's approach. And so me finding this gateway, you know, using this gateway to find out more about the wider scope and spectrum of ancestral living meant I couldn't just focus on one thing or two things. And so my appetite for finding out more about what I could do to model my ancestors and ancestral lifestyle today meant I couldn't just look at diet. I couldn't just look at movement. I had to focus on sleep and sleep hygiene. I had to focus on managing stress on breathing on my relationship with with others. And so I created the 12 pillars of health, which I felt for myself was very comprehensive overview of improving one's health, because it's not only about what you can do yourself as an individual. But it's also how you can modify your environment and the way you interact with others to also improve one's lifestyle. So I suppose I could I could discuss them in in kind of numerical order. It's not necessarily in order of importance. But my first pillar of health is about following the sun. So the reason why I say follow the sun is because we all have a master circadian clock circadian rhythm. And it's regulated by day and night. It's regulated by our exposure to the sun in the morning. It's it's it's regulated by the hormones which are produced in the morning. So for example, we have high levels of cortisol. That's the natural way of things. We have this elevation of cortisol in the morning, which helps to become more alert in the morning. We have a serotonin release, which is activated through sunshine, which helps us to have a bright outlook on our day. It's known as one of the happy hormones. So these hormones are activated help us feel better and better prepared to start our day. And then as a day continues, as we get to the sun going down and we enter the nighttime phase, then we have other hormones. So we have melatonin, which is produced, which helps us to wind down. And so by obeying these laws of day and night and by trying to match our daily kind of work patterns or leisure patterns to this natural order of day and night. And being in in accordance with the day and night patterns. So many of us stay up late. We use artificial light. We watch TV, look at our screens late. And even the light is different. So what's the problem with that? What happens when we have all this artificial light at night? Yeah, so so one of the biggest problem is you're kind of extending, you're extending the daytime phase way into the evening. So for many, even for those who have where it's quite can be quite light in terms of summer evenings, you're pretty much extending that to be all year round. So sunlight activates serotonin. And when it gets darker, we have these receptors in the in the eyes that basically start to activate melatonin. So this natural production of melatonin helps to promote relaxation, helps us to wind down, and it helps to promote sleep. And if we disrupt that either very forcibly by doing say shift work where we are awake during the night and working during the night and we sleep during the day, for example, there's a significant impact to our health. So it increases the risk of not only mental health issues of anxiety and depression, but it can also have an impact on our cardiovascular health on increased risk of diabetes type two diabetes, for example. So this obedience, the laws of nature in terms of day and night is really important for that reason. Secondly, it's extension of the day by having exposure to natural light, blue light. So this blue light basically blocks the natural progression of sleep. Hence why now we have devices, whether they're physical devices such as blue light blockers in glasses, or we have options on our screens on our phones and our computers to dial down blue light in the evenings to help to promote deeper sleep. So having this awareness of an increased focus on sleep hygiene, which is the term that is often commonly used of improving one's sleep habits. And there are a few things that we can do for sure in relation to that. So one certainly is to try to get to bed at a decent hour. Again, the kind of the old wives tale is, you know, every hour of sleep you get before midnight is worth double what it would be after midnight. Okay, so so trying to get to bed at a decent hour, trying to avoid food within two or three hours before going to sleep because food, the digestive process can interrupt sleep, avoiding alcohol, a few hours before bedtime, because alcohol, the process of breaking down alcohol can also be a sleep disruptor. There's a reduction in growth hormone production, there's a reduction in testosterone levels overnight. So alcohol also blunts this can blunt the sleepfulness response. Physical activity, if you are physically active during the day, especially when you're trying to promote serotonin, natural serotonin levels during the day, that helps promote deep sleep at night. Even if you have very vigorous activity just before bedtime, it may actually impact your ability to go to sleep so the onset of sleep, but it actually increases the amount of deep sleep one has. So one of the phases of sleep, deep sleep, the most restorative of our sleeping patterns that is impacted by being active throughout the day. So alcohol increases, even though it has a sedative effect, almost like a tranquilizer effect. It makes us feel as if we're going to get a better night's sleep because I drank some alcohol and I was out. What actually happens is it promotes light phases of sleep. So you'll wake up not feeling very well rested. So alcohol is a disruptor, bright light, blue light at night is a disruptor, eating close to bedtime is a disruptor of sleep using tech, so not being able to wind down, so not having an evening ritual where you're basically convincing yourself that now is a time to be thinking about rest and restoration. And probably the last discussion around that is the impact of caffeine. So not many people aware that caffeine is a half-life of between six and eight hours. So caffeine blocks, so there's basically receptors, adenosine receptors in the brain, and caffeine disrupts, which basically says, oh, you're tired, we're tired now, we're tired. Caffeine blocks that signal, which is great early morning when you want to feel a bit more alert. So you drink some coffee because, oh, I just don't feel great, you have some coffee, you feel alert. Doesn't work so well at night. And so people feel as if it's okay if I drink coffee in the morning, if I drink it in the afternoon, I'll be fine. But because of this half-life of caffeine between six and eight hours, if you have 100 milligrams of caffeine, which is an average, not even a pretty small cup of coffee, whether caffeine at seven o'clock in the morning, you will have about 25 milligrams of caffeine at 10 o'clock at night. That 25 milligrams of caffeine at 10 o'clock at night can have a 25% reduction in deep sleep quality that night. And that's even for those who feel that they handle very caffeine-tolerant, and it has no impact on my sleep, however late I drink caffeine. But the study suggests that for all individuals will have some impact in relation to deep sleep. So I think I've kind of covered most of the disruptors. Probably the last one is the environmental disruptors, so noise pollution can be problematic. So you want to kind of bring down kind of environmental noise to a level that promotes sleep. And finally, room temperature. So ideal room temperature for sleep is about 17 degrees or about 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I swiped up on my Fahrenheit today. So that's the sort of an ideal sleeping temperature to promote sleep. So we've covered some environmental aspects of promoting sleep. We've covered some of the beverages like alcohol and caffeine that can also impact sleep, but also blue light exposure and not having an environment which is conducive to sleep. Yeah, it's great that you have highlighted all the aspects. And I know of several sleep doctors that say that sedation is not the same as good quality sleep architecture. Because we have so many people that have trouble going to sleep and their habit is to have a drink in order to have that sedative effect and go to sleep and not realize that that's perpetuating the problem. Exactly. We certainly know sleep quality is an issue. So there should be a certain amount of hours in terms of recommendations by the National Sleep Foundation. They recommend about seven hours for adults over 18 to be sleeping. But even more important than the quantity of sleep is the quality of sleep. And the most the deep phases of sleep. So the REM, which is fantastic for cognitive function and mood and brain repair, but also deep sleep, which is the restorative repair state physically. So both of those phases are really important and also immune system function repair. So between the hours of three and six a.m., for example, that is the kind of optimal phase for immune system restoration. So the more we kind of mess with this, the more we disrupt sleep, we know there are significant impacts on our health both acutely. So, you know, our judgment is off, you know, not having three or four hours sleep is the equivalent of having a drink at the wheel. So, you know, drivers are impacted when they're sleep disruptive. And we know those the following days, you've had some sleep disruption at night. We know the following day there's an impact on the food choices that you make. So we have these other hormones like leptin and ghrelin that are kind of appetite hormones. And those hormones are also impacted by sleep disruption. So, you know, we could spend the entire session just talking on just talking on sleep. But I think the kind of takeaway here is that sleep disruption has an impact on our physical, mental, emotional, health and well-being. It increases the likelihood of chronic disease, not just insomnia, right? It has an impact on many other chronic conditions. And it's impossible to catch up on that sleep deprivation, right? So if you have a sleep deficiency and you go, okay, it's fine. At the weekend, I'll have a lion and I'll be okay. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. It's impossible to pay that sleep debt by trying to take credit in the future by getting more hours in bed. Far better to maintain a regular sleep pattern. There's a great book by Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep, that goes into a lot of the research you're talking about with the different phases of sleep. And he even talks about the importance for adolescents, you know, and respecting that they need a different amount of sleep and maybe schools should think about, you know, those early morning schedules. But you know, they need far more. So you mentioned the importance of sleep, but then the flip side of that is getting up in the morning and not necessarily relying on caffeine. And another thing you talk about, I think it's your third pillar is getting outside and interacting with nature. Can you say, how is that important this getting outside aspect with so many of us working inside and working in offices? Yeah, so again, if we're trying to model an ancestral lifestyle, then for many of our ancestors, they were outside in nature for the majority of their day, right? So their work and play was outdoors. They'd get out of the cave to do the stuff that they had to do that day. In modern environments, most of us are inside. If we're working in an office, if we're staying home indoors, you know, if we're working from home, we're in indoor artificial light, you know, temperature controlled environments. So we know the research tells us that just by being outdoors, just by being having exposure to nature, it promotes, you know, a relaxation, relaxation state. There's a stress reduction state, even just the colors of nature. So the color green, we have a what's known as biofilia. So this state of of an affinity, a love for nature. Most of us feel really good when we go for our weekend hike, when we go to our local park, when we go to a beach, you know, when we're in an outside outdoor environments, we tend to feel much better about ourselves because the feel good hormones are activated. So we mentioned serotonin. So serotonin is activated one one mechanism of activation is by being outside being outside and moving even more activation of serotonin. So so so yes, being outside in natural environments when we can is really helpful. One way to kind of focus on that is by breaking up your working day. So for example, if you're having your lunch break, rather than you sitting at your desk and having your lunch of the day is by having an active lunch, going outside, go for a walk. Forget about some of the stressors that you have acutely at work and focus much more on being outside and enjoying being in an outdoor environment. And really interesting in relation to this kind of natural stress response, the improvements in immune function. So again, there's an improvement in our ability to to manage infections to handle infections, a reduction in chronic disease risk just by being outside more than than many of us are is we also have access to, you know, vitamin D from the sun, depending on, you know, where you are in the world and what time of year it is, but many of us get can get most of our vitamin D should be from the environment, not by taking supplements, not by relying on food. Unless we unless we really have to. So getting outside helps with vitamin D in during the summer for those of us in the northern hemisphere. It helps with reduction in stress management of stress. It helps to improve our kind of immune regulation. So again, our body's ability to manage our immune system. More importantly than that. And what's really fascinating about this is there have been studies just with prison inmates when they're exposed to pictures of nature within prisons. And many of the health benefits are gleaned just by having access to a natural landscape. So so so our brains are so hard wired to our love and affinity for nature that even within an indoor environment, having indoor plants, having pictures of landscapes and landscape environment, having the green colors of nature within your habitat are also really beneficial. So so so again, it's not about perfection. It's not about saying you can never work in an office environment because you're not going to be ancestral enough. It's about taking the opportunities where you can to have moments in nature where you're kind of down regulating where you kind of being reflective and have moments of reflection before you get back to the hustle and bustle of your day to day life. Yeah, that's amazing. And it's something that can be accomplished even in very urban environments. If you go outside and just sit by a tree and have that opportunity to surround yourself with something that is natural. That's not the inside artificial environment. It could be very beneficial. We've covered two of the pillars. Can you tell us more about where we're going down this house we're building? I suppose number two on the pillars is to live slowly. So I think it's a good segue. So by living slowly, I mean there's a slow food movement, which is kind of where I took this from. And it's basically just about being more present. I don't necessarily like using the term mindful, but just being more present and in the moment about many of the things that we do which may seem mundane, may seem as if they're getting in the way of what's important in life, but actually taking pleasure in some of life which is mundane and reducing this focus on rushing through life and actually realizing that life is precious and every single moment we have is precious. So when we think about fast food, my kind of superficial thought about fast food is just about, oh, it's processed. It's produced quickly. You know, if I go to a fast food restaurant, I order foods there. Great. But actually there's something else which tends to accompany that which is the fast eating, which becomes that, you know, the sort of can't wait to get this down so I can get on to whatever else I'm doing. And so by slowing that process down, by taking the time to think about the foods you're going to be ordering, by thinking about, you know, the benefits of that food, by being grateful, the gratitude that accompanies that food. And I know I'm focusing on food here and we'll be talking about nutrition diet later, but that approach can be applied elsewhere in life. So living slowly is basically saying that we need to make our time here count. You know, we should savor our time, we should savor the minutes that make up time for us and we should be aiming for quality within that time. So whatever leisure time, whatever spare time, whatever time we have at work, where we've kind of can be just focusing on churning through and improving productivity, but we just lose this focus on what's really important. So being mindful, rather than being mindless, and that approach for slow being slow and the movement of being slow can be also applied to movement and also applied to restoration. And our approach to thinking about improving my sleep hygiene and food choices and what I want to do in my spare time. So so so slow living slowly is is is extremely important because even with physical activity with movement, where oftentimes I want to be as and we'll discuss this later, but I want to be as vigorous, powerful, strong, fast. I want to be all those things as much as possible. But even within that, I want to be really slow. So my body may be fast, my reaction time may be really quick. But in terms of that in terms of that internal processing, it's very, very slow. It's a flow state. I have an awareness, which comes about thinking about what my body is capable of in a given moment. So and that's one of the reasons why I don't want to kind of focus on mindful because people tend to assume mindful, meditative, I slow things down, be still, pretend the world is silent. And of course, the world isn't silent. The world is manic, there's havoc externally and internally. So whatever we can do to kind of embrace that and become more resilient within that within the mayhem, I feel is far more important. Darrell, this sort of taps into one of your other pillars, which is about stress management, right? So slowing down a bit. But we live in an inherently more stressful environment than perhaps our ancestors did. So I guess, first of all, but they didn't live in the absence of stress either. So is all stress bad or is it just certain kinds of stress? And which ones should we minimize? And which should we figure out a way to embrace? Well, I mean, I would argue that our ancestors certainly faced far more stresses than we do. So, you know, they had, for example, they had predation, right? They had saber-toothed tigers. We, you know, we focus on the hunter aspect of ourselves as hunter-gatherers, but we also were predated. We were food for many creatures. So there was a heightened state of stress for our ancestors for sure. You know, there was significant death at childbirth, right? The risk of given birth was significant from others. You know, so there were so many dangers in our world, our ancestral world, that our ancestors had no idea how to deal with, right? And so what the problem in the modern era is most of our stress today is perceived stress. It isn't real stress. It's what our mind is concerned and worried about. You know, I've got to get that report done. You know, how many days have I got to do it? Oh, it's the end of quarter, quarter three. You know, it's six months away, but I'm still worrying about it. You know, so it's the media, the news environment being hyper-aware, hyper-vigilant. So we're in an environment where many of our stresses are just perception, are not reality. And in relation to our HPA access, this kind of our body's ability to manage stress, we do have this acute stress response, which is beneficial, which heightens concentration and focus and alertness. So if there's danger, immediate danger, and I've got to, you know, fight or flight or, you know, or like, fawn is another expression. You know, if I have to do any of those things or freeze is another of the apps, right? You know, for those responses. If I need to, if I, if I need flight, I don't have time to think about it. So the, the adrenaline response, the no epinephrine and epinephrine response or no adrenaline as we say in the, in the UK. Those responses, the cortisol response enable us to have a significant amount of energy and the ability for our brain to basically fire our kind of motor cortex to basically say, get out of here, right? Or stay still. Don't make a sound freeze. This is the best thing for you to do. So acute stress is fantastic. And even in the modern environment, environment. And I know this myself being a kind of like a procrastinator and do things at the last minute type of guy. And when I worked in investment technology and banking, you know, information technology and banking, I was that guy who was like, Oh my goodness, the report has to be ready at 2pm this afternoon. And I start working it at one and I do it and I used it and I nail it because that's how I would like to work. And that's all based on that acute stress response. Hyperproductive, very focused. I'm going to get this done, right? The downside to this acute stress response is if that acute response is maintained and it sustained. And so that elevation of adrenaline and cortisol, which is protective in the right situations, when that's elevated quantity and it becomes chronic and a chronic stress with state. That's where it becomes harmful. So this chronic stressful state can increase the risk of chronic lifestyle diseases, strokes, heart attacks, cancer. Many conditions are linked to this chronic stressful state. Your HVA access can become completely ineffective. So you're basically can be chronic fatigue. You can be completely tired or it could flip the other way where you're constantly wired. We're basically everything is just on the go, go, go, go, go all the time. And that can lead to the risk of burnout. So again, most people when they talk about stress and stress management, they forget the benefits of stress. They forget the benefits of acute stress and the reasons why they're beneficial. But it's the it's the mismanagement based on our bodies and minds being in this chronically stressful stage, increasing physical and mental disease states. And the good thing is there are things we can do to to break that cycle of maintaining elevated stress or state all of the time. We can focus on things like exercise interventions. Exercise is a fantastic way to manage and mitigate stress. The reason being is because we're actually giving our body something to focus on in the now, which is going to utilize some of those some of that adrenaline call as our response. So there's a utilization of that in the present and your body and mind are aware that, oh, I feel this way. I've done something and so my stress levels reduce, even if they don't reduce acutely. Chronic exercises tend to have a better management of their stress longer term. Can we use voluntary acute stress or intensity to be protective against chronic stress? So you mentioned high intensity exercise, for example, some people use cold exposure or other deliberate short forms of stress. Can these be protective against the kind of chronic stress you're talking about? Yes, because yes, because they, you know, you're trying to almost you're teaching the body and the mind that it's OK to deal to have to deal with stress. And so because in the modern world, we don't have any many real stressors. And most of them are, you know, can I afford to pay my mortgage or they're pretty much 21st century in some respects, first world problems, right? That many of us are really stressed about by doing things like exercise, like cold thermogenesis, like a breathing practice, where you're kind of touching on this kind of this Hormesis, this the body's ability to respond to these stressors in a with a natural response is something which is very beneficial. And so for many individuals, it's about probably finding what works for them. And what they feel most comfortable doing to obtain that stress response in the short term, because even with something like exercise, you can over exercise. So the medicine of movement, you can take two larger dose, right? Similarly with cold thermogenesis, you could spend too long in the ice bath or in the bathtub or in a cold dipping. So there's an optimal amount of time and exposure to that stressor, which will lead to a positive response. And probably the best example I would save a physical stressor is exercise. So exercise is meant to significantly stress the body, the heart, the lungs, the musculoskeletal system. The benefit of exercise actually comes from overloading the body in the short term for very brief periods, because what you're actually looking for is adaptation. And the adaptation to that physical stress response actually means you're going to be stronger. You're going to be adapting better able to adapt to stress, not just the stress of exercise, but external stressors. So there's a lot of evidence and research on the benefits of physical activity for reducing stress. And the amazing thing about it is probably conventional wisdom would have said, if you want to reduce stress, you need to gravitate towards the slower movement styles like Tai Chi, yoga. But now we realize in the research backs us up that the higher intensities have more of an impact on managing stress and reducing stress and reducing the risk of depression and anxiety, then the slower, moderate and low intensity forms of exercise. So I know we kind of blur the lines here talking a lot about movement, but for sure these other interventions like cold thermogenesis, like a breathing practice, like seeking adrenaline, you know, shrilled rides, or, you know, there are many things that we can do, heat exposure. So not many people talk about, you know, hot thermogenesis, right? Because now people are like into the cold, the cold showers and, but you know, having going out to a harder climate and having to deal with temperature regulation and being able to bear that acute stress again. But of course, if you're in that environment for too long, it's not helpful. Yeah, and one of the ways that I find that helps me personally manage my stress is one of your other pillars, which is engaging with community. How do you find that community is helpful towards, you know, addressing the needs of leaving a more ancestral lifestyle and how does it fit in with the other pillars. Yeah, so I suppose with all the pillars really, and it's probably really worthwhile focusing is that you have, you have this kind of spectrum for all of the for all of the pillars, you know, too much, not a good thing, too little, not good. You're aiming for that kind of sweet spot and that sweet spot is pretty wide. Right. It's the majority probably of that kind of pendulum swing is where it's beneficial. And outside of that, it's not, it's not healthy. So too much social interaction, too much time spent on social media, too much time being aware of what everyone is doing is detrimental to our health, detrimental to our mental health. Being socially isolated. I want to be on my own. I don't want to interact with anyone doing that too much is also, you know, not, not healthy. Right. And studies, the studies back this up. So social isolation, independently of any other issues that we have with modern health has been identified as an issue has happened a direct bearing on our on our health. Okay, so if we recognize that humans are social beings, if we recognize that many of our feel good hormones have an additional layer of response when there's a commune when there's community when there's gathering. So for example, we have a hormone called oxytocin known as the love hormone the hug hormone the bonding hormone. So part of that activation is through physical touch. It's through eye contact. It's through having in depth discussions. It's bonding and having relatability with other with other humans. It helps with decision making helps us to with with being more emotionally connected and more emotionally intelligent. If you're by yourself, there's very little if none of this activation of oxytocin. So worst case scenario, those who have to deal with the most social isolation and fortunately can become the most violent of offenders can become mass murderers can become serial killers. Those that tends to be the profile of many of these individuals of having enforced isolation. Those again pendulum swing the other way. You know, I'm always on my phone. I don't have any real friends. They're all on social media. I'm only concerned about what people think about me and social media blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. You know, then you have that other pendulum swing right of people toxic behavior of, you know, wanting to basically be disruptive in the social sense and not having a real a real life. So we want to be in that sweet spot where we have meaningful relationships, not only with those that we are closest to us. You know, I mean the most to us our family and our closest friends, but also our interactions with others outside of that inner in a circle. And so by referencing our ancestors and by referencing the kind of golden age of ancestral health, in many respects, which is pre agricultural revolution that many people identify as the first issue in human, you know, kind of decline in human health. Then we know we fried in relatively small communities that we spent a lot of our time with our immediate family that there was significant amount of care and interdependency in a meaningful in a meaningful way. And our coexistence on our ability to adapt to our environment was based on that fact. So we have these hormones, which adapt to that process. So another example is marching, for example. So we have a hormone called endorphin endorphins and neurotransmitter, which is like a pain reliever. Right. So it helps to relieve pain. It's like an analgesic. It helps to promote mental health and clarity as well as physical health pain relief. And if you exercise, you can increase the amount of dolphins. And so it's known as the runners high. So runners who go for run for half marathon, they tend to get this feeling of euphoria once they finish. Interestingly, if you have people running or marching at the same time. So in a group in unison, there are higher levels of endorphins that are released over and above the activity itself. So if you have somebody walking by themselves, you know, keeping a certain rate, and then you have two people doing exactly the same. There are higher levels of endorphins for those two individuals because there's some kind of symbiosis. There's something kind of like some synergy. There's some synergy at play, whereby our hormones play with each other and interact with each other. So this isolated and this view of looking at ourselves as individuals and thinking about these systems that are working within our bodies, but actually they're kind of like they're jumping and bouncing and interacting in ways that we still we still don't understand. You know, that's really interesting what you mentioned about individual exercise versus group activity. And you've even said that play and natural movement is different than what happens in the gym. You certainly get some benefits in the gym, right? But can you say a little bit more about what you mean by natural movement? And how is this different than just going to the gym and also play, which it taps into as well? So yeah, moving naturally is, again, we've got this pendulum. You know, we've got the left hand extreme of sedentary behavior, not moving, not doing very much, spending most of our time in the chair. We have the do too much on the other side, which is like, I don't want to rest. I don't know, recover. I just want to spend all my time exercising. Sleep is not important. And then you have this beautiful sweet spot, which gives us a significant benefit. So I believe movement is medicine. There's a significant amount of research and evidence supporting that. And we know people who do just a little bit more than being sedentary can already significantly improve their health. And it's dose dependent. So the more we do, and the more we do is a significant amount. So it takes a lot for us to do too much of movement. So where natural movement differs from just movement is trying to model and mimic our ancestral movement behavior. So we evolved to move in a particular way. And that evolution was for us to navigate the environment we were in. So we have inbuilt efficiencies based on our evolution, right? So for example, walking is one of our most efficient gates possible for humans. We can walk significant distances. We sweat. This is what I'm doing now. It's really hot here in London for some reason. But you know, we sweat to cool our bodies. We're bipedal, which means we can cover great distances. We have glutes, which kind of drive huge muscles, which kind of drive our ability to walk. And walking, if we walk at a very kind of slow pace, there isn't much more energy expenditure than us being still, right? So in the discussion around hunter-gatherers, what many people tend to miss is the nomadic aspect. So we're not just hunter-gatherers. We didn't just stay in one place and go, oh my goodness, there's a feast of food here. Wow. This is incredible. There's a bounty of food we don't need to move. The reality was we were nomadic. We had to walk significant distances. And some of those distances were like, it could be 30 to 40 miles a day. Incredible distances were covered on foot. All age ranges, right? So people got, you know, the men who were hunting, significant distances were covered to go to the hunting grounds to hopefully get there, get the kill, and then to bring it back, to carry it back. Right? So when you think of just those basic movement patterns involved of one being able to walk great distances, having great cardiovascular endurance and efficiency, then the ability, if you're a hunter to, okay, right, we need to crawl. We're going to need to, you know, have a lookout. So we need to climb for vantage points, right? We need to, we're using tools. So we're going to have to throw. We're going to have to throw very powerfully. We've got to be very quick. We've also got to be aware that we might be chased. So we've got to be able to sprint and climb and avoid danger. And, you know, so you start thinking about all of these movement patterns that humans are involved to do. So we can climb, we can carry, we can lift, we can jump, we can crawl, we can walk, we can run, we can sprint. And we have systems within us, energy systems, that supply our body's requirements to be able to perform those functions. So we're not one-dimensional in any way in relation to our movement capability. And as we know, and as we discussed at the beginning, movement's my thing. So I tend to kind of like my eyes light up when I'm talking about it and I become even more passionate than anything else I probably talk about, apart from play. But the reality is as nomadic hunter-gatherers, and so in most societies the men would tend to do the hunting, the women would tend to do the gathering. So the women would have to carry the offspring oftentimes while they would go together. So they'd be lifting and carrying their offspring and walking for hours to obtain the berries and the foods that they were obtaining. So movement was a significant part of their day. And so natural movement is a consideration of what our bodies evolve to do. And the importance of our ability to do that, because as great as food is, if we didn't have the physical ability to obtain that food, we wouldn't be able to have a wonderful plate of nutrition to indulge in. So there was a priority in a kind of a sequential sense of our bodies need to adapt to be able to function in a way that allows us to seek and source food within this environment. And within the 21st century, moving naturally, I want to be able to model many of those behaviors without having to physically go out and hunt or to build shelter or to have to walk 40 miles a day. Do you know what I mean? So how can I model that in the 21st century utilizing exercise science to validate why we should be moving in a particular way? And in a way that also improves the likelihood of prevention of chronic disease, but also being able to support the therapy of modern disease if we happen to succumb by any of them. Yeah, we can just walk to the supermarket if it's close enough, right? Well, yeah, I mean, supermarket is that's a lot of effort. I mean, I think for most people now it's the click of a mouse, right? So, so I mean, I'm going to be honest, most of the time I get food, if I'm sourcing food externally, it's like, boom, Uber eats, job done, right? Done click up. Yeah, I want the food exactly how I want it. Right. If I have, if I have to make a really good decision about the food that I make, then, you know, do I drive to the supermarket? You know, do I walk supermarket, which is what I do. I'll walk to the supermarket. I'll make it today. It's kind of a day out. Yeah, me too. Do you know what I mean? So, so, so, so I then I'm spending time again, a bit of slow, you know, thinking slowly about, you know, a bit of slow living in relation to sourcing my food. And movement is a part of that, you know, so, so, so yeah, in the best way that I can. I think movement and food are inextricably linked. There we go. Finally we got it. They're inextricably linked. Right. And, and unfortunately, our 21st century environment encourages us to be sedentary. You know, our genes are designed, evolved around convenience. If I don't really have to do something, I'm not going to do it. So if I have a comfortable chair, if I have a screen that can get me food, if I could pay somebody to feed me, I probably would. Right. And, and, and that's not because I, I, and there's something comforting about that. And that's why many of the reasons why most of us succumb to the disease of civilization is because of this comfort, because of the ease of us feeling comfortable about not having to make a difficult decision. Right. An uncomfortable one of, oh, one of exertion. Oh my goodness. I have to prepare my food. Oh my goodness. I've got to go and hunt for food today. Right. Once you move the exertion and the difficulties, then you're drawn to fast food. Then you're drawn to clicking a button. I can have it here quickly. I can just char it down. I can get a blender. I don't even need to chew. So, you know, being very dystopian about it. Right. I think the progression in relation to technology and relation to food is we are going to get to the kind of, you know, the Charlie and the chocolate factory. The pill of having all meals in like one little tablet that you'll eat. And you go, oh, that was a great starter. Oh, now the main course. I mean, if you remember Charlie and the chocolate factory when there's somebody eating a, you know, a little, a small kind of like sweet. And he literally had a three course meal. And he had, he felt all of these flavors and, and, and you think, hold on a second. There was, there was nothing there, which obviously is not nutritious. Not nutritious. It's not going to be supplying the energy the body needs. It's just a very quick, easy fix, which isn't actually fixing anything at all. So, so this focus on convenience even goes over to exercise, right? We, we, we schedule this time in the gym, short in and out. It's got to be at a certain time of the day. And it's, it's, it's fairly, it's convenient. That's why I like to look into the supermarket because I get to have two tasks at once. So, you know, I don't have to make time to exercise. I'm already doing it while I'm procuring my food. And oftentimes I'll call a friend. I'll go with, you know, a family member. And that's that community time that you're building right in there as well. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Sorry. No, in other words, I think what Isabel's talking about, you're combining several of your pillars, this being, being slow, the community, the movement, walking is great. But, but there's one other part of movement. And I just want to make sure we, we touch on, because I've experienced this personally from your, your, your movement coaching at ancestral health symposium, where you're, you're asking people to think about different ways to move in a more playful manner. And I can tell you this, it's, it's fun. It's challenging. You feel different afterward. What is a, can you describe these different kinds of movement? Why they're important? Why you can't just go to the gym, the treadmill, lift weights? What are you getting from this other kind of movement and the playful aspect of it? I suppose a couple of things. If you, if you think about exercise, right? So exercise was designed by humans to compensate for sedentary behavior. So initially, initially it was actually for, designed for elite sportsmen because it wasn't, there weren't sportsmen back then. It was designed for elite sportsmen to be able to work in a way that meant when they had to perform, where it was gladiators or the Olympics in the ancient Olympics, they were able to perform those tasks. So that's, that's where exercise came from, right? So because for most people they moved throughout their day. They moved naturally, right? That was their physical activity. So exercise was like a supplement or a substitute or proxy for the lack of physical activity that would come from their day. So if you fast forward now to the present day, we have this kind of huge system that is built around exercise. Whether that's going to the gym, whether that's exercise equipment, whether that's exercise programming. And again, it's trying to, it's trying to counter sedentary behavior. So we have these bite-sized pieces of activities that we go, hey, if you do this, you can, you know, you can inhibit some of the harms of sedentary behavior. The downside to that is, again if we focus about moving naturally, is that most of us when we exercise don't do all of the behaviors we need to in terms of physical activity. So for example, if I'm a runner and I go for a run, I know I'm going to be working my cardiovascular system, my aerobic fitness, my heart and lungs. I'm going to improve my circulation. There's going to be some other benefits that are going to come from that. But I'm not going to do much in relation to my strength. There's no resistance training there, for example. My musculoskeletal system is not going to be impacted too greatly by that. Yes, so thank you very much, Daryl. We've covered about six of the pillars and we're very lucky to have you back for a part two so we can continue covering the rest and integrating how they all fit together. So I look forward to seeing you again and thank you so much for being on the Ancestral Health Today podcast. You're welcome. Thanks very much for your time, Todd and Isabel. It's been a real pleasure. 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.