 Hi everyone, I'm Marlitha and I've been super looking forward to this day for a really long time because I thought it would be such an honor to be at AHS and have the scientific side behind it. So I'm of course going to tell you all about what I'm talking about, but first I'd like to start with a story because stories are always great, right? Everybody likes a story. So about 12 years ago I started following the paleo diet, maybe about 15 at this point, or I went paleo as was the vernacular of the day. And when I say I went paleo, I went paleo, like super paleo. And I think a lot of people do that, but I read every single one of the books, like and I think we've all read these lovely books, right? Listen to all the gurus, read all the blogs, and I became my own little paleo police as I like to call myself. So if it wasn't paleo, if it wasn't grass-fed or grass-finished, organic, all the good stuff, then I wasn't going to touch it. I had lost all of the weight that gastric bypass couldn't manipulate my genes into quite releasing. And I started getting all of these people asking me, oh my gosh, how did you do it? You should write a blog. You should start a site. You should do all that. Of course. Why wouldn't I? I mean, so I did that. And I met lots of other cool paleo people, right? And so I went to all the conferences. I went to all the paleo meetups and shout out to Daryl Edwards, who's not here because that was probably the most fun I have ever had at a conference, right, just running around in the grass and jumping on things. Who doesn't want to do that? So I did all of that and you could say that I drank the paleo Kool-Aid. I was one of the cool kids, right? So a little bit more into the paleo world than probably most people, but I knew that something was off. It's something I couldn't ignore. It was the tribe was missing something for me. And that is the warm hug of my grandmother's green beans and potatoes, right? But I couldn't have those because oops, paleo's potatoes aren't paleo. I couldn't also, I missed the warm, tender edges of her hot water cornbread, but couldn't have those either because oops, grains. And then there was the soul that was her black eyed peas. And I couldn't have those either because legumes and lectins, you know, all the lectins. And in fact, it was kind of missing any semblance of me. It was missing my heritage. Didn't have my tribe in it at all. It kind of been stripped down like the list of foods that I could no longer enjoy because they weren't approved. So I found myself looking for those foods of my childhood that fed my soul, the parts that connected with me to my culture. I also found myself knee deep in the mental torrent of orthorexia. But I mean, I was also finding that my lifestyle was taking a toll on me physically and emotionally. My skin was a wreck. Anyone who has ever had an autoimmune issue knows that it's no fun to be stressed, but my eczema was a mess. And I also had uricaria, which is recurring hives. That's not fun either. And it would just keep coming on and off, no matter how compliant I would be. And I would love to show you an image of that, but I photoshopped all of those so that it wouldn't look so bad. Those are all gone. I needed to maintain the healthy image, right? And it was sort of not my unwillingness to take part and to be compliant. It was more that something was missing. I would even venture to say that my social connections were very damaged because I would not only take my own food to all of my social gatherings, but if the food wasn't up to my standards, I would intermittent fast. And of course, we're knowing that that's not really winning any friends when you show up with your own food or don't eat theirs. So it just wasn't winning any popularity contests with that type of behavior. So I wasn't enjoying life. But I knew that no one would really know that as long as like my super shiny exterior was looking all that great, but you didn't know what was going on on the inside. And that to me is super important. And so I was smiling outside. Everything was great. But what was missing was my heritage, right? So I decided to put my science degree to work since it was doing nothing but collecting dust at that time. Anyway, because I was no longer teaching, I was at home with my kids. And I dove into peer-reviewed studies. I was looking at journals trying to find anything that would show me what my heritage foods would look like. What did they eat? What was healthy for them? What helped them to survive? Because there had to be something out there, right? Some nutrients of those foods since these people had to survive the brutalities of slavery for decades and then more gross injustices. So there had to be something. But there was one study that I found and there it is that kind of helped me and it was kind of disheartening to find that. So I decided to embark on my own little in one study. And this 2010 study did give me some hope. It was a starting place for my own in one and searching for different patterns of practice and lifestyle and environment because of course it's more than just food. It's not just what we're putting in our mouths that make us healthy. It's a holistic approach. I know a lot of times we spend a lot of time focusing on macronutrients and micronutrients and all the good stuff of science. But there are some things that can't be quantified by science. And so that was also what was studied here in this study and thought I would base mine on this. So these researchers, they studied the elders around the world for some wisdom and what has sustained them for so long. And among those elders were my elders which is the West African elders. So yeah, good idea. Let's talk to people who actually made it to old age. Their mental, physical and spiritual health intact and what did they do to get there. That's a great idea. So I thought let's let's do that. I mean that's kind of why we're all here is ancestral health. So what they found was grouped into three major categories. The first one was philosophy, attitude and outlook. And that's kind of your mindset, how you see things when, how you deal with problems when they occur and your outlook. And then the second one was lifestyle practices. And then lastly they dealt with dietary nutritional practices which we get a lot of. So these elders demonstrated a really comprehensive but simple set of practices that I think can enhance our own vitality and promote sustainable longevity. Which is I think what the goal is. So in essence, the practice of wisdom of our longest living elders, it promotes the spreading of healthy lifestyles by following traditional ways of taking care of the body, the mind and the spirit. So again, I use this as a super simple framework for my own in one experience experiment. Now if I'm to be honest, philosophy, attitudes and outlook are not something that we really discuss a lot of when we come to these conferences or any conference. I mean when was the last time you heard somebody give a talk on, I don't know, focusing on being present or how it affects your mental health. So we really don't hear those things. For the most part of the wellness movement, I think, and this is my opinion, but I think it's based on fear. Fear of not getting sick or sicker if you're already sick. Fear of eating the wrong foods. Fear of moving the right way or not moving the right way. Or fear of, you know, oh my God, looking good naked. I've heard that a million times. So that's kind of what we kind of base our actions on. But studies have shown that our DNA, of course, as we all know about epigenetics, but our DNA is controlled by signals that are outside of our cell. So in other words, the cell's environment matters much more than, you know, what we might think. The cell wall, you know, is selectively permeable, so that means it selects what it lets in and what it lets out. And those selections, what it chooses to let in and let out is really based a lot on the environment that that cell is in. So what's really, I think, really fascinating about that is that those signals, those thoughts, what tells that cell to, hey, let this in, don't let this in. Those are thoughts, that philosophy, attitude, and outlook. So if you have a terrible outlook, terrible philosophy, terrible attitude, then those attitudes, those thoughts, those feelings actually do affect our cells. So if you have a terrible thought about a specific food or food group, for instance, it can affect the way that your cells process that. And I thought that was really interesting that those ancestors believe that the balance of mind, body, and spirit, not just of what we're eating, the balance is what was essential to well-being. A lot of times we focus on one piece and not the rest, and that that intimacy with nature is profoundly important. So outside of the fields of slavery, for instance, my ancestors were looking for ways to lead a stress-free lifestyle, looking for ways to rest, because rest is super essential to this other piece of our philosophy, our attitudes and our outlook. It is essential to surviving and finding ways to relax and enjoy your life is very much a part, should be very much a part of your day-to-day activities. Our ancestors, my ancestors focused on living in the present and didn't dwell too much on the past, and they didn't spend too much time worrying about the future because that breeds anxiety. There is a belief that being in the present actually made way for the future. They didn't operate based on that fear that a lot of us tend to operate on, and even though their reality was grotesque, to say the least, they were hopeful about the future, and they had a pronounced resiliency about them. They had an obvious respect for community, and so their peers and elders and leaders and including nature and life in general, they had a respect for that community. They had a community care was very big, high on the list of things to do and take care of. They knew that in order to be healthy, the mental, spiritual, and not just physical health was important for all members of the community, and it needed to be kept at the forefront. They respected community. They respected it from a web of life perspective in that we're all connected, and what effects one affects all. The perspective was observed throughout the history of Africans in America that elders collectively were peaceful, and they traded lightly giving thanks and representing all life. They always had passion and purpose no matter how simple it seemed. The physical, mental, and spiritual health of all members of the community was a community concern, and they knew that disregarding any of those pillars, any of those was similar to having a tripod with just one leg, and it can't stand, right? So we can focus on one thing, but it's just not going to be successful. With this information in hand, I decided to focus the part of my little experiment on the philosophy attitudes and outlook of my ancestors, and so I was raised obviously with respect for my community and never departed from those teachings. So I chose to focus on adding life to my years and not years to my life, not just, you know, adding years to life, which is a nice little quote that I found. It's like, oh, that's kind of cute. I'll throw that in there. So that was the goal for which my ancestors strove is to add life to years. And so what I did to do that is I got rid of my alarm clocks. Yes. I changed my schedule so that it would begin after my morning meditations. So when the previous presenter was talking about breathing, that is definitely one of the things that I have totally incorporated was because it definitely changed part of my lifestyle. I also switched a lot of my high intensity trainings for walking and playing with my kids and gentle stretching to reduce a lot of the stress that was in my life. I know a lot of people can't do that, but totally what I did. And the ancestors in order to stay alert mentally, this part of their lifestyle practices, I think a lot of people can do. So there was a lot of reading and memorization and joking. And I love the part about the memorization earlier and singing and playing music and storytelling. And I practiced this in my own life by telling having, we have a weekly story night at home and we retell stories of the week or our favorite adventure when we went out on a vacation or our favorite memory of my grandmother who's no longer with us. And it helps us to retell those stories and it helps our children to understand that it's very much more than just the memorization but it's more about connecting as a community because again, we are all connected and it is more than just one. So this quote from Robert Waldinger, not going to read it to you because I think you all can read, is the director, he's one of the director of the world's longest running studies of adult life. And he's evidence that the elders were definitely onto something. They were deeply involved in this community aspect and they were connected, they were rarely lonely. A lot of times I think we kind of take the food thing as let's just eat these specific things but we don't understand that there is a human connection in food and being connected to each other and sharing a meal with someone and actually making eye contact and having those conversations is part of our community. And this is what definitely I learned a little bit and it's again why I partake in storytelling and telling to the younger generations and sharing with my community because it's not just about a meal but it's about the exercise that stretches your mind. It's about the exercise that keeps your mind active but also those traditions alive, right? So I retell the stories of my family and again, pass on those traditions like family stories and beloved recipes and cooking in the kitchen with my kids, it's part of our connection. And speaking of recipes, yay, food, I'm sure we can all agree that traditional diets are the best and studies repeatedly demonstrate that those are the best diets for us but whose tradition are we talking about when we look at these, whose ancestors? Frankly, the diet and nutritional practices of my ancestors have been studied in the wellness community is little to none and it's pretty much not there. And so the book that we're widely pronounced that I was studying I was telling you about that were the gold standard in the community really didn't include my specific ancestors so I kind of had a really hard time trying to sort of piece together the dietary nutritional practices of my ancestors which are obviously from Africa. I know it's a shocker but it's true. I know, I know, you guys are like, but you know, they are from Africa. Here's my 23andme report which is kind of tiny but I'm 88% West African and so I, the other 12% as, I don't think you can see it but the other 12% is made up of 10% European and 2% Asian and indigenous. And so I started to think, okay, why am I basing my dietary practices yes on great, they're on traditional people but which traditional people I'm basing mine on 10% and so I needed to switch those things around and that's exactly what I did. I no longer wanted to ignore the 88% of my genetic makeup in my dietary practices. So what I did is I dug into, gosh this was really hard, I dug into the dietary nutritional practices of my ancestors but I had to like do a whole lot of research because it was really not easy to find a lot on the specific areas that I am from and so I scoured the internet. I did find some really great resources. This one from old ways was the African Heritage Diet Pyramid and it is based specifically on West African diet and so what I did is I discovered that many of the foods that were brought here on those slave ships and how they were adapted to give them the nutrients that they needed to survive all of the virtualities that they were about to go through. I learned that they enjoyed many of the foods that I thought were terrible and that had been vilified but I decided I'm going to bring those back in and some of those foods are like peas, tubers which are okay now, beans, peanuts and oh my gosh, grains. That's like a curse word. I know but some of the grains that I enjoy are folio and armanath. You know some of the ancient grains it's not, I'm not telling you to go out and have a slice of, I mean you can have pizza if you want but it was not included in the African heritage diet. So they knew how to process these foods so that they would have the most nutrient densities for instance, soaking grains and soaking beans right and I knew that because my grandmother taught me how to do it back when I was a little girl and her mother and her grandparents taught her how to do it and so it's been passed on in tradition and I knew this and so I was like why did I say that these were terrible right? So I knew that they had been processed the right way because again they had given all of the nutrient density to my people for centuries. So the West African diet as you can see is not centered around heavy meat. It's centered around leafy greens. That's the base of the pyramid and then a lot of vegetables and grains and then even more greens. Those, that's actually just a different type. I know it's really hard to see but the biggest meat, the biggest protein source is fish and I absolutely love fish. If I were to listen to my body I would probably be a pescetarian because I love fish and then a little protein and some oils up there and dairy and then at the very tippy top sweets but we know I learned today don't eat those first, right? So, but this is the typical African diet like I said from my ancestry and what I was able to find. And then so here's what I did for my experiment. The first thing I did was to include those traditional foods right and then here's the hard part. I tracked everything. So I tracked all of my results. The pandemic of course gave me a lot of extra time to track those results especially over the last year and so I used a lot of my grandmother's recipe books. I used her mother's recipes and I found a lot of foods from. I ordered these really great traditional grains which I thought I would never be able to find but I was and I incorporated those into my diet and what I learned over time was kind of, I think eye-opening for me especially having been so ingrained in the things that I should not have had. I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be terrible. My numbers are going to look a hot mess. But what really happened was that my body loved every minute of it. My health markers improved vastly. My sleep, I went from about maybe five to six hours of sleep to about seven to eight hours of sleep and of course I don't have an alarm clock but I didn't have one when I started either. So my quality of sleep has been better. Of course we have all these bile trackers so I can actually see that this number has improved. But also my blood pressure has improved. It was, my numbers were all over the place but they have improved vastly. And then I said goodbye to inflammation which I think is great. Oops, I went the wrong way. I said goodbye to inflammation and what I mean by that, I'll get right back over there, give me one second. There we go. Is that my skin, like I told you, was a hot mess. I was covered in eczema. My eczema was flared so badly that it had turned black because it had died, most of my skin had died. And then I was plagued also with urticaria which is chronic hives. And I haven't had an episode, a flare of chronic hives in probably a good seven months which is to me pretty amazing. And as you can see, I don't have to photoshop my hands this time. So that's definitely a plus for me. And then finally, the hair that was falling out when I was very strict was, has also grown back and it grew back, not just back but it grew back thicker, yay. So to me, like I said, I've incorporated these other aspects of, those food aspects of my elders wisdom but I also incorporated the other aspects like you know, not being a jerk about what kind of food you take to social situations. And so my community relationships have improved. And I think also importantly, my own body image has benefited greatly from this process. And what I know is that we're all beautifully different, right? And that's perfectly fine. I realize that we're not all meant to look exactly the same in order to be healthy, that health does not have a look. I realize that not only do these foods feed my belly but they fed my soul and my soul was starving for the foods of my ancestors. The food that I had banished from my queendom because they had been deemed bad by all of the good wellness gurus. So finally, here's my takeaway for you. Health is not, this heritage in health is not a either or situation. You can either have some of your heritage or you got to be healthy. It is a both and situation. So you can explore the foods and the traditions of your culture and be healthy. They both fit in. You don't have to pick one or the other. This is definitely a both and lifestyle. So here's your mission. Should you choose to accept it? I've always wanted to say that. I was like, I'm going to put that in because it sounds cool. I would be a Bond girl. But I would like to encourage you to look at how your heritage might be missing from your current wellness practice. And if you're like, well, I don't have any heritage, we all do. You can go all the way back even if it's just something that you did with your grandmother over cooking because again, it's not just about the food. It's about the traditions and the connection. And so did you do something that you've eliminated? Is there something that is missing now that you've, you know, that or some food that was excommunicated from your clean eating lifestyle? For me, it was definitely my grandmother's hot water cornbread which was, you know, I missed it. And so I brought it back. Do you have a tradition that you're missing? Bring that back, tuck it in. I would also like to encourage you to experiment to feed your soul and discover your own path to enhance and produce or promote longevity for you because we're all different. We're all unique. Your heritage is different. And unlike you might have been told by some guru which I have heard this before, you actually are the unique snowflake. We all are. And lastly, I would like to encourage you to share your findings with the world. Remember, storytelling is good for us. We learned that today. And just as in nature, like we learned, diversity only makes us stronger. And so make sure that everything that is different, you do share with us. We'd all love to learn, at least I would. So thank you so much. This has been great. Any questions? Thank you so much for your presentation. It was moving, humorous and enlightening. So many things. So many good things. Thank you. I have a question about the African heritage diet that food pyramid is like a wow. I love that. It's beautiful. Towards the base of the pyramid are like sweet potatoes, peanuts, squash, maize, potatoes, and beans that are new world crops. So would have only been in Africa on any kind of scale for just a few hundred years at most. Yeah, no. So what happened is Africa has always had yams, always. And yams in Africa are completely different than the yams that are here and that are present. And so this is just representative of sort of what we can do here in the U.S., what we can do now to sort of take the place of the yam that we don't have access to anymore. I mean, you have to be really scouring the world to find those yams, the actual food. So this is just more of the how, as a child of the diaspora, how can I now take the traditional African diet and adapt it so that I can get as close as I possibly can to those foods? So there'd be analogs to like the peanuts and squash and beans that were purely new world crops? Exactly. So for instance, rice, rice is, I think rice is there somewhere. Rice has always been, I always thought in my studies, rice was not African at all. Like why would I even consider rice? But rice actually is very African and they actually brought specific slaves to the U.S. to farm those crops of rice because they were so good at it in Africa that they brought it here. And so something like that that is, obviously I'm not going to get that African grain of rice, but I will still be able to incorporate unprocessed or brown rice. You're wild rice, for instance. Right. Wild rice or North care, they have a Carolina gold rice that is more traditional for the people, for my ancestors as well. So it's things like this, this pyramid is more like, how can I adapt this, the African diet to my now diet? Things that I can access. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Oh, Arlitha. Yeah. Excellent talk. Thank you. And as you were talking about the lack of resources you could find like in PubMed or places like that, have you thought to consult or have you ever heard of the human relations area file called abbreviated HRAF? And they have it online now. You've heard of that? Yes, I actually have a subscription. Okay, because I've used that for some research back when I was a graduate student. I found it to be an invaluable source. It's basically a collection of data from ethnographers who have lived among traditional pre-industrial people from around the world. So you can like isolate to certain parts of the world and gather all kinds of aspects of lifestyle including I would guess nutritionally. And that's actually how I found out about Phonio. I'd never heard of Phonio ever. I mean, I was like, what, what is that? And when I found it, I was like I have to have this and I scoured Amazon for it and I finally found it was pretty expensive, but I got it and now I can find it at Whole Foods. So it's becoming more, I think it's becoming more mainstream to be able to offer different ethnicities and different backgrounds, foods that are locally. But yes, that is one way that I found out more about what types of grains, because it'll just say grains and I'm like, yeah, what kind? You know, or what kind of greens? So yeah, thanks for that. And I'm glad you brought it up because other people can hear it. I'll follow up question and then we'll bring the microphone over there. Did you say you're writing your personal research and up in form of a book or something? I am writing it, but it's ongoing because I also, I'm following my kids because I wanted to see how moving, because they've been, they were paleo from the time they were two. So I'm wanting to see what their results are as well. So I'm writing it up. H-R-H-R-E-F-S. H refs, H-R-A-F, sorry. H-R-A-F-S, H-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A, yes. A-E for me. I have a question. Yes, sorry. Your eczema, you talked about, did you figure what the triggers were and then what the remedy was when you kind of dieterally? Yes. So just as any other presentation of disease, There's always something underlying, there's always a cause, and for me it was multifaceted. It wasn't just what I was eating. I had been on, and I'll tell you how terrible my eczema was. I was actually admitted to Mayo Clinic for a month because it was bad infected. So it wasn't just like, oh, it's bad, I have a rash, it was terrible. And so stress was my biggest, biggest trigger. I realized that once I was able to stop having these jolting alarm clocks, stop having missing my sleep, eliminate a lot of the stressors of actually trying to follow a very, very dogmatic diet. When I sort of relaxed that a little bit, it relieved a lot of the stress. When I walked, I found that not exercising as hard as I was was actually causing flares for me. So when I was doing the hardcore crossfit, I was breaking out in hives. So I would have a flair. And so for me it was the stress, more than one stressor, but for me it was stress. And then when I changed my diet to include the other foods, it still cleared up. So it wasn't necessarily including the other foods 100%, but it was more stress for me. One other thing was I had just come across High on the Hog, the book. Such a good book. Which opened up so many things. And we ran into the chef at the farmer's market out here who was doing the reenactments of the presidential dinners that they had done. Yeah, the macaroni and cheese. So I'm excited. Next week, the hog head that's sitting in the, I'm going to do my first head cheese one of these days. That's so awesome. Every time I open the freezer, it's still there communicating. Check out the Netflix special too. It's also really good. They've renewed it for a second season. So High on the Hog is what he was saying and it's really good. Thank you for that. Yeah. My question is, and maybe it's for everybody to ponder, but for you specifically, how did you determine, and I think I know the answer. I think you explained it, but how do you determine where to define ancestral? And I think for myself, I've been exploring the hundreds of thousands of years or millions of years prior to agriculture, and I consider, for me, for my learning process, that's my ancestors. And of course, we all began in Africa, but long before the splitting off and how agriculture has influenced the human body, and then the modern day and all of that. So I guess my question is, how do you decide what ancestral is? And I think it's for you, it's culture and what relieved that stress. And congratulations. Thank you. That's a lesson for everybody is to find your path, what works for you, and it's not going to work for everybody else. I agree. And that's exactly what culture is, and how you define your ancestry is your ancestry. And some of us, of course, will have overlap, right? We're going to have some, some of us have the same things that work well. For instance, we, none of us need to make a diet based on donuts, and like, we just don't. That's not good for anyone. However, you know, saying that some people, no one ever needs to eat rice is something that we can't say is a blanket statement. Some people do need to incorporate rice. Maybe it's better for them, maybe they feel better. And so I would like to encourage you, yes, find the framework, but find your particular path in that framework because we're all different. And even though we all want to have an easy way out, like, yes, let's all do this one thing. It's not easy. It's not going to work for everyone. You still have to do the work yourself. You have to, we can, we can listen all day, but you still have to plug it into your life and make it work for you. Sorry. Okay. Do you know this with your family? Well, so the cool thing about, you know, being a technical family, a techie family, my husband's super techie, is that we were still able to connect. Obviously, everybody and their mother was on a Zoom meeting. How many people did not have a Zoom meeting with your, like, everybody had a Zoom meeting? Right? So we had, like, Zoom, we had a Zoom family reunion, for instance, last year. My grandmother, I lost both of my grandparents during the pandemic. And so we couldn't really go to see them, which was really hard for us, but we did. We were able to connect. We had a virtual candlelight vigil, you know, so it's still ways to connect. And I would, again, like, to encourage everyone to connect to their community, because it's so healthy. And we, I think a lot of times we miss that. That's why we're here, right? Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Right now we come back with our last presentation of the day at 4.20. So you guys have about 14 minutes.