>> Living in harmony with
your evolutionary past Part 1.

This is an asynchronous presentation.

As we all know, we are part of parcel of nature.

And it always reminds me when
we look at our genetics and DNA.

Remember, genetically, we're -- And even to
bananas, we are 60% genetically similar to a cow

about 80%, to a mouse 85, to a cat 90,
to a chimpanzee 96% genetically similar.

And all modern humans are
99.9% genetically similar.

So in a way, we are almost controlled in a
way or modulated by our evolutionary past.

And no -- And any variation of that
may make life more challenging.

But anyway, it sometimes then helps to ask
the question, on reflection, how did we evolve

and how did we live for those
thousands of generations?

Go back 50,000 years ago, how did we live?

We were hunting, gatherers.

We ate all variety of foods.

We lived in small clans.

Yes, people died in childbirth,
people died in accidents,

but some lived till the age 90 just as much.

There may have been a deduction in some
of the illnesses we now so commonly have,

such as our inflammatory illnesses, you know.

And what kind of foods did people
eat by which they allowed themselves

to survive, by which we survived?

How did we move?

How do we take rest?

What constitute our social systems
which is probably a small claim.

All those factors still are
seen in our behavior today.

We still react.

We still live and optimally when we accept and
live in harmony with our evolutionary past.

So this presentation will focus more on this.

And part of it is that I look around and
I'm also shocked of how many young children

and adults have now autoimmune illnesses, have
cognitive disorders such as ADHD or, you know,

or how many have other illnesses is listed here.

And how come many of these -- Those
diseases were mainly absent in rural Africa

and much more common in the
industrialized first world.

And we see this kind of epidemic of
autoimmune illnesses, of allergies increasing

and increasing all around the world.

And then how come one third of
American children are now prediabetic,

which is really a horrible
prediction for the future?

How come there's such an
increase in nearsightedness?

How come cancer, Alzheimer's disease, appears
to be occurring earlier than ever before?

And how come these diseases are occurring
more frequently and were almost absent

in your grandparents' generation or
in our non-industrialized people?

These are the interesting questions to me
because they ask not just what can we do

to treat these disorders, what
can we do to treat allergies.

And it's remarkable that we can do some of that.

But what is it that we need to do to
potentially prevent it and optimize our health?

So that is really the sense
of trying to understand,

living in harmony of our evolutionary past.

And statistically, as you can see very well
on this slide, that many of the illnesses

which are infectious disease is either by
viruses or by bacteria have now been reduced.

Look at hepatitis A going down.

TB has been going down, mumps and measles.

I know that looks like it's
only due to vaccinations,

but many of these were already going
down before vaccinations ever occurred.

And look how we have this epidemic, in a
way, of these more autoimmune-like illnesses.

You know, whether it's Crohn's disease,
that's a gastrointestinal disorder,

or type 1 diabetes, asthma, multiple sclerosis.

You know, it's really -- It's shocking when you
think of that, you know, of this radical change.

You can also see that it's so interesting.

It says mainly those diseases,

those inflammatory diseases are
those from the Western hemisphere.

If you look at the graph underneath and
look at Western Europe and the Canada

and the United States, and you see
it's almost totally absent in --

or much less in the other parts of the world.

You know, and then -- You can
look at a rate of the increase

in autism from very low to now very high.

It's true that some of this is more
powerful diagnostic ways of doing it.

We may recognize it when in the past
it was not recognized as a disorder,

but it also looks like a real phenomenon.

OK? And then you look at many of
the allergies we have, you know,

just think, -- I keep thinking of that.

You know, I used to remember flying, and when I
flew people would be serving peanuts and nuts.

And the concept of having peanut allergy
just wasn't part of my awareness.

And if you ask your grandparents, when they go
back and think of their childhood and they were

in school, how many of them
knew people who had allergies?

And many will say, maybe only one in 40.

Now our students, one third of us will
say, gosh, I have some reactivity allergic.

And it may because we have been
changing our world so much,

we are now living away from
our evolutionary past.

You know, look at it, for
example, about hay fever.

Hay fever was first described
in 1819 by John Bostock.

And, you know -- And it occurred really among
people of higher class and living in cities.

Part of it is that if you were a
farm child or living in the farms,

you would be continually exposed to
these, the materials from the hay,

and therefore you would not
develop this allergy.

And similar phenomena seems to be has occurred
for irritable bowel disease and Crohn's disease.

That was first described in
1932 by Burrill Crohn, you know,

in which he described this necrotizing
inflammation scarring of the intestines.

However, this disease clearly is associated
with social class and wealth and the more --

And being more and more removed
from any part of nature.

It used to be one little per 10,000.

Now it's even one per 200.

It's just shocking to think about it.

And then why is it that these
have all increased?

I am not saying I know the answers at
all, but I'm looking at possible causes.

I don't think we can say it's genetics.

I think genetics, in many
cases, you look at that

and we can find a genetic,
you know, link that is clear.

But in most cases, genetics, you know,
only provides the possibility, you know,

and it's the environment that it
pulls the trigger to expose it.

So you may have a genetic
predisposition to gain weight

and thereby potentially get
more type 2 diabetes.

But if you don't eat the foods that
do this, you most likely won't get it.

OK? So look at it over the last 30 years,
we have now increased in allergies.

Now, how come all this may occur?

Well, there are many factors.

I'm only listing a few.

I'm sure many of you can add many more.

And they are all probably correct.

It is very difficult to identify that
because if you do animal studies, you know,

we're not totally the same as animals.

We sometimes can't eat the same foods.

And so, it is not totally the same.

There are hidden at least.

Well, let's just list a few.

One, it's during pregnancy, the fetus experience
either a kind of alcohol malnutrition,

but it's affluent malnutrition
in the Western world.

But it really means probably inappropriate
amount of essential nutrients or an exposure

to endocrine dysregulating chemicals.

These are all the plastics.

The -- These are all the pesticides, herbicides,
and the many things we ingest without knowing

which in fact act as endocrine there's,
you know, systems dysregulation.

Then because of finance, in many cases
socioeconomic inequality during the first year

of life, we don't allow babies to
breastfeed and bond and possibly

to concurrent malnutrition by giving formula.

And by giving formula, you also
miss the transmission of immune --

appropriate immune cells which you
have gotten from the breast milk.

And then during early childhood and life, we get
exposed to endocrine dysregulating substances,

the plastics, which you're all exposed to
often act as estrogens, the pesticides,

the herbicides, they all may
affect our immune system.

You know, then we have this
massive exposure to antibiotics.

Antibiotics are great.

I mean, gosh, if you have a bacterial
infection, you're going to die.

Please get the appropriate antibiotic.

However, in so many cases
it's used inappropriately.

And what antibiotics do to you is they basically
remove or kill whole groups of bacteria

which are essential for our health.

So in fact, we have an impoverished human biome.

And then we have excessive hygiene by
which in many ways we are no longer exposed

to some viruses or bacteria which
in the past would have immunized us.

And we see this now coming
up in the post-pandemic

that many people have been
separated from each other.

And now when we meet again, all of a
sudden, we have an increase in flus.

There's nothing new to this.

This has been observed before in
the expeditions to the Antarctica.

When people in the Antarctica would go a
scientist, they would then be living there.

And then the Antarctica winter would occur
they would no new people meeting them.

And first upon -- When they first got together,
there were a number of flus and illnesses.

Now they were all exposed,
no new bacteria came in.

And for the next six months or however
much time it is, none of them got sick.

People did get sick of other diseases, but not
of bacterial or viral infections, basically.

And then the first visitor came and all

of a sudden people would get
their colds or flus again.

So by not being exposed, we
put ourselves more at risk.

And that our lifestyle in a
way has really shifted so much.

You know, we're so much -- We sit so
much, we have so much lack of movement.

We have lights that interfere
in fact with our health.

Light at night, for example,
maybe -- may affect, not only may,

does affect our diurnal rhythms,
our daily rhythms, because light,

especially blue component of
light, tends to suppress melatonin.

And it's one of the factors people have
hypothesized is why young girls are developing

earlier menarche immediately.

The first menstruation occurred
because they have lights on at night

which disturbs their biological rhythms
as well as increased weight and fat.

There are many other factors.

OK? But overall, you could
argue that a number of this kind

of newer illnesses are the
result of our lifestyle.

Namely, we have disrespected our evolutionary
origins without realizing that we are part

of this intrinsic web that
includes diet, movement, parasites,

biological rhythms, bacteria,
you name it, viruses.

They're all part of us.

And in many cases, some are -- Or in
many cases dysfunction can be reversed

or maybe even prevented by respecting and
returning to our evolutionary origins.

The data is overwhelming.

You have people, for example, who get up
and do significant amount of movement tend

to have less cardiovascular disease.

Notice that's a dysfunction
which can be reversed.

Eating less sugar and simple carbohydrates,
which is not part of our evolutionary past,

would mean that they would not develop
type 2 diabetes or much less likely.

So in a way, it goes right back to
the simple rules of health, but --

Which we described earlier by Nassim Taleb.

Anything that was not part of our
evolutionary past is probably harmful.

I want to underline again,
anything that was novel and not part

of our evolutionary past is probably harmful.

And probably we don't need evidence
of harm to claim that a drug

or any unnatural procedure is dangerous,
even if that harm does not yet exist.

Therefore, the easiest way to
optimize health is to remove the,

what he would call via negativity,
remove the unnatural, the unfamiliar.

You know, just think of reducing lung cancer

which is what people have demonstrated
very clearly by stopping smoking

which is the function and the
irritation of the airways.

All of a sudden, lung cancer is decreased and
a number of other illnesses are increased.

Although right now we are seeing an
increased epidemic of the use of e-cigarettes,

which will again lead to a future epidemic.

OK. Remember, from an evolutionary
perspective, let me outline.

Genes survive and prosper if their
reproductive fitness increases.

And the changes in our external environment
continually impacts the natural selection

of genes named our reproductive fitness.

Novel and increased inputs
reduces our reproductive fitness.

And you could say act as an allostatic load.

And nature and natural selection
favors those mutations, those genes,

those behaviors that enhance the
reproductive fitness with these novel stimuli.

Therefore, by -- Thereby you
lose the allostatic load.

And you keep in mind that is
especially true for younger people

and people, you know, in their 20s and 30s.

But once you have given birth or an older adult,
remember, you're not going to reproduce anymore.

So then those illnesses have much -- are much
less affected by this evolutionary perspective.

So I would not expect that
Alzheimer's is impacted by this

because there's no natural selection.

We have already reproduced.

OK? But remember to underline
this again, natural selections.

Individuals best adapted to their surroundings
enjoy increased reproductive success.

They pass on the traits adaptive or
sometimes even maladaptive or neutral

to their descendants, who gradually constitute
a greater proportion of the population.

Remember, we carry this imprint
of our biological heritage in us.

So, it's useful to say how and what were we
doing earlier on that allowed us to be us now.

And now I want to underline this even
more, but this is very important.

Let's have that selection.

We are wired for whatever
habitat we are involved in.

Biologists who study animals in the wild
describe this as habitat selection theory.

And the general rule is that animals who
are in their natural habitat do much better.

They thrive both physically and psychologically
and social behavior compared to animals

that are placed in unnatural
habitat such as a zoo.

They most likely evolved in the forest of
Africa without the presence of digital displays.

And so, by just sitting in front
of digital displays the whole time,

or just sitting the whole time, we
probably are reducing our health.

And people have called sitting the, you know,
our -- The new epidemic of smoking, basically.

And what I've said many times before is that
genetics only loads the gun, but our behavior

and environment pulls the trigger.

And I like that phrase a lot.

So let me look at it give an example how our
environment may cause us to develop illness.

This is called -- The concept is
evolutionary or ecological traps.

Evolutionary/ecological traps occur

when formerly adaptive habitat preference
become maladaptive, meaning they become harmful.

Because the cues they individually
preferentially use

in selecting habitat may now lead to
lower fitness than other alternatives.

It means that whatever adaptive
habits of preference we evolve for,

and now we allow that to happen
too much, it may lead to illness.

But let me give a remarkable example of this.

This is with the birds in the
Pacific called the albatross.

And when you go to Midway
Island, it's just shocking.

In Midway -- On Midway Island, you see
these many carcasses of these birds.

You can see the skeletons, you can see
the feathers, and you see what was left

over in a gastrointestinal tract.

Look at all the pieces of plastic, how was that?

How come? And so many are dying.

Well, think of the albatross
going over the ocean from Midway.

There -- That's an island which is
2,000 miles away from any other islands.

And the bird lives, you know -- Eats the fish.

So it goes -- It is flying over the ocean.

It sees some shimmering in the water.

It looks like a fish.

And those birds for evolution,
who, you know, who have adopted

and could identify this the quickest and the
most, they would then dive, they would eat it,

swallow it, and then possibly
regurgitate it to their chicks.

Now, however, that same shimmering in the
water now is our small piece of plastic

which are coated also by the algae.

So it has some of the similar
outer taste initially.

So now what happens is the birds now
take this plastic and swallow it as food.

Now, do we say these birds are stupid or are
we at fault that we have created this world

where these birds, we made such a radical shift?

So, these birds were evolved to
be able to see that shimmering,

they would then go at it and now they would die.

And that is a very, you know
-- It looks really challenging.

And as Professor E.O. Wilson stated, organisms
when housed in unfit habitats undergo social,

psychological, and physiological breakdown.

Here then you see that the
habitat radically changed.

The animal cell is wired to find
that shimmering object as food.

But now it's no longer food.

I want to keep this down because are we --

What other evolutionary or environmental
traps are there for people today?

You know, just if you took out a piece
of paper, think of things that may --

you may be doing which you automatically do,
but basically are triggered by the environment

because you have evolved for that to respond?

Pause. I'll pause.

I won't pause.

Pause the computer for write
them down and let's check it out.

Let me just think a few.

One, we react to cues of food automatically.

We see food, we may become hungry.

We smell it, we become hungry.

We, you know -- automatically.

Well, why?

Because we need food for survival.

You know, for millions of years probably,
you know, food was only challenging.

We always had to hunt for food.

Therefore, we have really no
mechanisms easily to stop eating.

And this is especially true for sugars.

Almost all foods that are sweet
are usually not poisonous.

Yes, I knew that -- know that the
paint, you know, lead paint is sweet

when you chew it, the pieca it is called.

However, that's not the rare things.

Most other things in nature that
are sweet are -- represent calories.

Therefore, we want to eat them because
we need the calories for survival.

And we don't have an off switch easily.

The same thing will be true for fats.

So we -- When the cue of food is shown to
us, we react to eat or want to eat or hunger.

And I'll show that in a moment.

OK? And the similar part is I think for
reproduction, you know, we, you know --

That's probably the drive
by pornography is such --

is probably the biggest bandwidth on
the Internet because there are cues

which said survival that leads to --
maybe because we want for reproduction.

And then we have all the cues
around us for protection.

We remember are -- we're historically prey.

There were other animals that saw us for food.

So we always had to be very careful.

We had to look around and be vigilant.

We still all are.

And now however all those cues which of
sounds, of changing objects around cause us

to react all the time and where
-- which captures our attention.

You know, no wonder we tend to
get addicted to computer games.

Once we sit and we watch one next, you know --

We start to watch a Netflix series
automatically we keep sitting there,

and then the next sequence pops up and we
don't change because we're captured by it.

And then for survival in small groups, for --

In clans, we need to know
who the power structure was.

Because as we, you know, mature, we
want to be part of the power structure.

We don't really exclude.

We need to know what's going on.

So in some sense, you could say
that's our social media addiction.

You know, it's basic and
it's triggered that way.

And then our bodies really want to rest.

Why expend energy when there's not
enough energy you have or calories?

So anytime you could rest, you would do it.

So that quickly leads to excess
sitting and lack of movement.

In the past, we didn't have to go to
the gym, we didn't have to go jogging.

Our whole world included that physicalness.

And so now, however, it doesn't.

And then there are many other things that occur.

Light, we want to be active,
we want to be involved.

However, light, artificial light which keeps us
awake, keeps us active, also reduces our rest,

interferes with melatonin, affects
our circadian rhythms, et cetera.

And then the final pieces, from my
perspective, the brain cannot, I would say,

discriminate between actual
and visual auditory images.

So when we watch a film in front of
us for our brain this is really real.

I know you, we all would say, yes, I know it's
a -- It is a drama, it's a play, it isn't real.

And yet for our body, this is the first
time in our evolutionary past, well, really,

since cameras were, you know -- since
you could do film in late 19th century,

then we could have a picture which was not real
in the past, everything we saw was always real.

We could touch.

And so, when things go into our eyes, our
brains say, that's real, and we react this way.

And even though we may want to argue
that, I think most of you, if not all,

have had the experience that if you
watch a horror movie or horrible scenes

where the horrible things happened
in a series and then you go outside,

all of a sudden that little noise behind
you triggers a massive autonomic response.

In the past, that would not have done that.

Because we are -- Our bodies saw what
we saw on the film react as real.

And I think we have really underestimated
that how powerful that phenomenon is.

And part of the reason we
have these economic we are --

We react all the time is because our commercial
industry uses these cues which are really traps

for us to capture our eyeballs
and that's the whole basis

of our social media, of all
the many of the Internet.

It's really people don't
get paid for the content.

They get paid for our attention,
hijacking our attention.

And equally for many industries, it is the
profit margin that doesn't ask, is it healthy?

It just asks can be, can
you, will you buy the object?

Just think of the, all the cereals with high
laden with sugar, all the candies in front

of the counters, you know, and do we then
blame children that they have no control?

So in a child who is wired from an evolutionary
perspective for survival to eat more calories,

when it sees the sweets, it wants those.

Do we blame the child?

Or should we blaming the corporate
culture, the world around us?

And maybe we really need to be careful with
this and say, oops, you may need to define that

and we may need to set, you
know, social constraints

that we don't trigger these
dysfunctional behaviors.

And remember, even watching pictures of food
and smelling it will activate your brain.

You know, it is most interesting.

I think I have a slide in that later.

OK? So the solutions really are that the
society may need to protect its own population

from the commercial exploitation of
these evolutionary ecological traps.

Now this is a great difficult
discussion because we think

of the freedom of speech in a very broad sense.

But yes, I think it is a critical issue.

We cannot depend upon self-regulation
to reduce our sugar content in our Coke,

in our foods around us or anything else.

And you can already see the
effect in human physiology

by having been exposed to
these environmental traps.

If you look at the brainwave activity,
the quantitative electroencephalography,

the brain activity, the brains of
normal students today look more

like an ADHD student than 20 years ago.

If you look at the spine of young people
today, as colleagues of mine in Canada observed

in the athletics department that compared
to 20 years ago, the spine just --

The upper spine, these people
are slightly more curved forward

because our whole world is looking down at
our cell phone or looking at our screens.

The pandemic only, you know, accelerated
this trend that was already going on.

And then there's so many other qualities,
things that we have, increase of pesticides,

of plastics, of BPA, all of that
which may lead to pathology.

So we may need to control our -- By the --

With our legal system, be
exposure to protect ourselves.

It's a challenge.

OK? But just for fun, let me go
back for a moment what I said

about what you see and smell affects your body.

The brain and visual system, remember, are
intimately linked to the acquisition of food.

It is necessary for survival.

And when we get an image of
food and the smell of food,

our physiological neurological changes respond.

And it may even be a danger
in our growing exposure.

These beautiful presented images of foods, which
we do each time I go to Facebook or Instagram

or TikTok and I make a short video on
TikTok about the delicious food I'm eating,

or I take a picture and post it on
Facebook or Instagram on the food.

What happens is it will induce
this in the person.

Here, I take the picture and
then I can look at the brain,

what happens to the person does this is work.

And you can see by weighing it all, and you
can see that if you show the food inside a,

you know, PFT [inaudible] imaging where you can
see how the blood flow goes through the brain,

basically, or metabolism, then you see
all of a sudden that there's a 24 increase

in the brain metabolism by just showing the
images of foods while lying in a scanner.

Now, this is a very complicated study
where you don't only saw the image,

they brought the smell in, they
put it on your tongue as well.

So it's a very -- It's -- It is a complex one.

However, imagine -- Imagination
and seeing it affects physiology.

And so next time you send that great meal to
your friend, you may be helping them to want

to eat more and increase their obesity.

So really, you know, our diet
and exercise do change it.

You've been sitting here for a little while now,
so just for a moment, once again, just get up.

Just get up and move.

I know it's so hard, but get up.

Just wiggle and move.

Just move.

I'm swinging, I'm swinging.

I reach up and then I look up.

I look up again and I look up again.

I take a big breath and then --
and I let my sit myself down again.

And just note again, when you
have done that, note two things.

One, how hard it was to get up and do it,
how much we want to just keep sitting.

And two, that after you did it,
how your energy slightly went up.

OK. So really remember, what I want to point
out is health is living your evolutionary roots

and whatever increases reproductive
fitness predominates.

And then remember our past
that we are wired to be preyed.

And finally, we start regenerating
when we feel safe.

And if you look at that more,
it means you may look at diet.

We'll look at that much later
in the semester but have a lot

of greens, tubers, nuts, organic foods.

And then we can see that the absence of some of
the vitamins may lead to significant illnesses.

And I'll talk about this in a moment.

The lack of Omega 3, which we now have
massively up because we mainly have Omega 6s

because of the massive amount of
corn products we eat, you know,

may inhibit embryological development,
increase eczema, others, the folic acid,

which is part of food -- of healthy eating a lot

of veggies may increase the
risk of spina bifida.

And then we have all the cases where
people are no longer doing breastfeeding.

I'll talk about that in a moment.

That increase the risk of
celiac disease and asthma.

And then we have the whole light
night melatonin suppression by light.

And then our relationship of
our body's bacteria, parasites.

And I'll talk about that in a moment
about Crohn's disease, et cetera.

OK, let me just see in detail
a little bit what happens

when you disregard your evolutionary background.

And I'll go through the following
fairly quickly.

Living in isolation constantly formula, versus
breastfeeding or breastfeeding versus formula,

eating processed foods or really
being having affluent malnutrition.

Feeding an animal a carnivore a herbivore
diet, feeding a herbivore a carnivore diet,

feeding rats milk protein casein
that we have never been used to,

possibly how come we can get food
poisoning, et cetera, et cetera.

OK. So let me first go back to isolation.

It's most interesting.

This was the study at Kaiser which I really
liked where they looked at the adults

without children who contract COVID
19 versus those who had children.

And notice that for equivalent ages,
this is before you're vaccinated,

that adults who had no -- who are not
around little children were 49% were likely

to be hospitalized and 76% more likely
to have intensive care unit admissions

than infected adults of similar ages and health
histories who had young children at home.

This really is a very impressive data.

It suggests both social isolation is harmful
or it really says, gosh, for all our evolution,

we lived in little clans that included
grandparents, great grandparents,

parents, children and even babies.

And all together and what the -- And you
could possibly argue is that little babies

and toddlers continually have snotty
noses, they have flus, and these are --

They are all by different most cases by viruses.

And by being exposed to that
continuously or episodically,

we're getting a kind of natural vaccination.

And that may then protect us from the COVID
virus because 30% of flus are coronavirus

which is in a similar family as the COVID.

So that's possibly.

And when we have looked at what happened with
COVID is that the greatest deaths occurred

with elderly who were in locations
where there were no little kids

around and had comorbidities.

OK. But, you know, let me
shift to different ones.

Reflect on the statement.

Think of the risk and benefits
of feeding a baby.

Formula is better because it allows
the mother to sleep and regenerate.

It involves the partner in the baby's
care, right, pros and cons on that.

Just stop it and think about it.

Now I'll just argue a few reasons why maybe
breastfeeding is normal, natural, and healthier.

And this data I'll talk about can be very
much criticized because you could argue

that by definition people who can
breastfeed may be more affluent

and different socioeconomic factors.

And when you control from those the risk
-- these data may slightly disappear.

OK? But there's no way I can be
persuaded from an evolutionary perspective

and Polyp's perspective as well that
a formula can better than breast milk,

unless there's some specific
cases of sickness or others.

OK? But basically, the data is overwhelming
from this perspective that children,

babies who are breastfed have a reduced
risk of asthma, obesity, type 2 diabetes,

ear and respiratory infections,
and sudden infant death syndrome.

It also -- It lowers the mother's risk

of hypertension type 2 diabetes,
ovarian and breast cancer.

You know, what is so sad is that this is
mainly the challenge of economic disparity.

And in the US, it's our public health policies
or public policies which basically do not allow

or give women time to breastfeed.

Namely in some European countries, you
can have a year off or two years off

where after you give birth you can
be at home and get your salary paid.

And I think we need to do that.

Basically.

in the US what we want to do is we want
to not have costs at the beginning,

and then we're stuck with these
very high costs as we get older.

I would recommend we should do the
cost up front and support the women

so their jobs are kept being
that they have equality

and they can go back to their job afterwards.

But if you look at the data,
the data I think is clear.

Most children, most mothers -- If
they can, in some cases you can't.

There's no harm in that.

You do the best one can do.

But in those cases, you can.

Most mothers want to breastfeed
and try to continue to.

However, it's very difficult.

If you go to work and then
you have to pump the breast

and do other things, the
system is just against it.

It's too much work.

And notice by, you know, after three months,

only half the babies were
exclusively breastfeeding.

And by 12 months, only one third, you
know, and most supplemented with formula.

The key is you don't want to
supplement this with formula.

At best, what you do is you
want to breastfeed continuously

and keep supplementing other foods enter --

other foods continually to it than you also
reduce a massive rate of any allergies to.

The data is clear that if
you do both at the same time,

then there's very low allergy rates to foods.

However, in the United States
this is really an issue

of economic disparity and to me it's immoral.

But the quick summaries and I'll give
some data on these for the mother,

it distinctly reduces the breast cancer
risk, reduces stress, enhance bonding.

For the baby enhanced bonding,
reduces allergy, reduces obesity,

probably enhances immune function.

But look for the mother in detail if you study
breast cancer for 10 years after pregnancy,

then you see those who had 34 more weeks

of breastfeeding had a cancer
risk drop by 13%, you know.

There is distinct, and this is
probably much higher than that if the --

One gives birth in your early 20s.

There's a consensus at early
first birth an increased number

of full-time births shows you a significantly
long term reduction of breast cancer risks.

OK? And I think this is really
something we don't talk about

and for the benefits for the baby as a group.

And again, like I said, the data
is very difficult because this is

so confusing by socioeconomic inequalities.

Babies who are breastfed have higher
IQs as adults than formula fed.

You know, the people born in
1920s and '30s who were breastfed

as babies achieved significantly upward
mobility when they were in the 60s

and 70s compared to formula-fed babies.

Men and women who were part
of this study in 1937,

'39 had a 50% reduction developing
celiac disease.

That seems to be very common.

So as if by being breastfed and then
slowly adding food to it, you don't --

You can continue to be able to eat glutens

and not develop celiac disease
compared to breastfed babies.

And formula-fed babies are fatter
as children and skinnier as adults.

I'm going to underwrite that,
formula babies are fatter as babies.

I'm sorry.

And as children and adults, they're skinnier.

That's an error there.

OK? But remember, the formula are
incomplete for the first couple of months.

It doesn't have all the appropriate fatty acids
which are necessary for neural development.

Although after a while the
brain will replace its all --

Again, our body place itself
so that we can all do it.

But it still means that for the first
four months the baby is getting basically

inappropriate products, as well as all
the immune cells and other things it gets

from the mother via the breast milk.

And then even when one is very conscientious
about pumping milk and sharing this,

and it's just great that can be done that the
milk is different at different times of day.

So when the mother is going to sleep,
the breast milk has a different quality,

has different substances which
allows the baby to go to sleep more

and the same thing in the morning.

And now what happens when you
mix these up for the baby?

So life is more complex.

And remember, babies that are fed on
formula may be slightly disadvantaged.

I've already looked at that.

Babies born in 1970 in formula-fed are twice
likely to have neurological problems at age nine

as compared to exclusive breastfed
for the first three weeks.

Premature babies who are formula-fed achieve
significantly low IQ scores at age eight.

And premature babies are breastfed.

Is this due to the breastfed milk,
due the absence of body contact?

Is it due because by having the
privilege to be able to breastfeed,

it means you're already in
a more upper social class?

There are many of those, you know.

And I can keep going on these
if you look at formula.

Maternal milk is better than formula for
preterm babies, that date is quite good.

OK. And then finally, which is the
most interesting part when you think

of the evolutionary perspective, it
isn't only the baby at this point,

we need to also think of the epigenetics.

And I'm not going to talk about that today
or much, but remember that the mother --

The pregnant mother's lifestyle has an
impact on the fetal -- fetus development.

If the mother is anxious, is stressed, taking
drugs, takes alcohol, it affects the development

of the baby and that is a
burden the baby will carry.

However, it gets even more
significant that in fact the sense

that people say illnesses skip a generation,
they're sort of right in a very funny way.

Because a pregnant mother -- woman impacts
her baby, but also her future grandchild.

Because the little fetus that's
developing, all the fetuses' eggs

that are developing during the time
it's a fetus are impacted by the mother.

And that means that when that
-- The child becomes the mother,

its eggs are also have already
been shaped by her mother.

So the grandmother in fact impacts the mother.

And once you look at that, you
can really see how we do --

How our past transcends into the future.

And then let's look at totally about some
whole other areas about food, when we --

I cannot say enough about how I would say
how bad in many ways the US food supply is.

Bad is the wrong word to use how
unnutritious in any way it is.

It's remarkable that we get plenty of calories

and that's very important
if you don't have calories.

However, we are now becoming a world
of malnutrition, affluent malnutrition.

And we often spend lots of money's
time on foods that are not nutritious.

Here's a single case study as
we're about to look out for fun.

If you drink 10 Cokes a day for a month --
Now, it's not a study, it's a case report.

But I think it makes perfect sense.

When you drink a can, a £12 can of
Coke, you're drinking 39 grams of sugar.

That's a lot.

What happened?

Outcome after one month, increased
weight by 23 pounds, insulin levels,

the person became prediabetic, blood pressures
increased, the body fat increased by 9%.

And this -- And later on the
Harvard study has also shown this,

drinking one can of soda can lead to
a five-pound weight gain in a year.

And also drinking soda daily is strongly
to early death and increased likelihood

of having a heart attack or stroke.

It's also linked in women with an increase
in osteoarthritis even with athletes.

OK? So I'm not recommending drinking Cokes
by definition, but just when we don't listen

to our evolutionary diet or background and
we now do changes, it may backfire on us.

And I'm going to use a few.

I'm going to give three examples of this.

You can think of many more, but I'm trying
to think of a way of thinking about this.

OK. So what I look for is may you
feed carnivores or herbivore diet,

when you feed herbivores a carnivore diet.

And when you feed rats foods they were
totally unfamiliar with in their history.

So that's an allostatic load.

OK? This goes back to 1985.

This is in the US zoos, cheetahs
were not doing well.

They had many deaths, only
18 births, seven died.

Six percent cheetahs had liver damage.

Only 10% of females produce cups.

You could argue well, because they're in a zoo.

It worked out is not the
case because in the zoos

in South Africa, the cheetahs were doing well.

Remember, the cheetahs are one of the
fastest animals in the world, you know,

and so they had -- But in South
African zoos they had no problem.

Why? Well, what is the food we're feeding?

Who knows what it totally is,
but what the major factors appear

to be the diet of cheetah's health.

In South African -- In South Africa, the
cheetahs ate whole carcasses, whole meat,

just like they did for their evolutionary past.

In the US the cheetahs start to eat commercial
prepared cat food because it's much cheaper.

There was horse meat, that's OK.

But they include a lot of soya bean
products were added for protein.

Soy contains diazine and genistein
which acts as weak estrogens.

And estrogens can affect liver and increase
the size of uterus, possibly also carcinogenic

and excessive if you're estrogen
sensitive for breast cancer patients.

What is so interesting, when they got rid of
the soy and they gave the animals only meat,

their health improved and
their fertility improved again.

I'm not saying that eating
soy causes this at all.

In human beings because we are
not carnivores, we are omnivores.

Although I have my questions
about, you know, nonorganic soy,

so I would not quite recommend that.

But then look at the opposite one.

This is the mad cow disease episode
that occurred about 20, 25 years ago.

And this was happened mainly in Britain.

And what happened is that the animals
developed something called mad cow disease,

bovine spongy form encephalopathy,
essentially degenerate brain disease.

It's a similar disease that is seen in
human beings as Creutzveldt-Jacob disease.

It's a prion disease.

It's transmitted by eating
part of the brain tissue.

And that's also true in human beings because
the way, you know -- When you go to New Guinea,

where historically there was a large
episode of this kind of disorder is

because when the people would fight
each other in New Guinea, the tribes,

then the winning tribe would
eat the brains of their --

of the person they had beaten in the battle.

And if they were now infected with this
prion, they would then get the same disease.

OK? So we know if you eat the nervous
tissue, then that could be an issue.

Most likely, people hypothesize that
mad cow disease in Britain started

when they changed the way the meat
waste products were distributed.

Namely, what the people did is you would collect
meat products and that could be from cows,

from sheep, from all others, you know, and then
you would process this to make a meat powder

which you would then feed to the cows to quickly
have them gain weight and produce more milk.

OK? So now basically you are
giving the cows who are --

whose GI tract has really evolved to eat
grass very low quality, you could say food,

low caloric food, you now
feed it a carnivore diet.

And most likely in that process, when you now
fed them these waste products all ground up

and processed, they contained the prions from
the sheep which in sheep is called scrapy.

And then that let it be expressed in cows.

And then when these cows were slaughtered
again, you would then take their waste products

as fish holders and you would
again feed it to other cows.

And so that's most likely
how mad cow disease started.

And the quickest way this was
stopped by not doing that anymore.

But it's, you know -- I'm not saying
that eating meat would be harmful,

but possibly if you never were exposed to it
then your GI tract may not be able to cope

with the scrapy or with the prion or
other things that may be occurring.

So that's when you step outside of it
and then let me do a different one.

This is a very interesting one about rats.

It's an old study by Campbell and Campbell
or it's really by Wells even older in 1976.

You take rats and you give
them a low doses aflatoxin,

which is a very powerful carcinogenic
agent developing these tumors and cancer.

In most people if a dosage high enough,
but you give them a very low dose.

And what is interesting is you get
to normal rats, you get this low dose

and then you haven't eaten normal rat show.

And then cancer is expressed in all the animals.

Now what you do is you change --
And you change the rat child of food

because basically what is the rat food?

It's a little rat pellets, but it
often has a lot of milk products in it,

milk protein called casein in it.

But I think from an evolutionary perspective,
rats never drank milk or milk products.

I mean they eat everything, probably not milk.

So their body probably did not die to process
this well then it's an allostatic load.

What is so interesting is when you reduce the
consumption of -- in the foods to 5% of casein,

then when you give them this
aflatoxin, it would induce cancer.

The cancer does not occur.

So, you can see as if the casein
increases or reduces the immune response

or ability and allows the cancer to occur.

Again, from my simplistic perspective is
that rats never ate milk or milk products.

So this is a novelty.

And then there's a long-term cost.

There's some evidence in human
beings that eating lower animal --

Lower levels of animal protein is
associated with lower cancer rates.

So the more veggies and fruits you
eat, the probably better it is.

It is not as clear because the Inuit
people in the Arctic eat mainly,

historically ate mainly animal
products, lots of fats

and blubber, and they did not develop cancer.

So that it may not be as clear as it all looks.

But, you know, living in harmony

with your evolutionary past may
give hope for a number of disorders.

I'm going to make a whole
long list for a moment.

There's some suggestive evidence -- Some
suggestions that even epilepsy in children,

and epilepsy is a complex disease, it's not
simple, but for some can be at least controlled

by eating a total ketogenic diet.

This is very hard to do.

And just eating -- And for them, if
you put them on a ketogenic diet,

then if they just eat one cupcake which would
then be refined flour would trigger seizures.

There are many other factors, but this is at
least one the person could have control over.

Two, I already alluded to the cancer
as giving a low dose about autotoxin.

But this may also suggest that
possibly what the foods were now eating,

some of them are so strange and not
part of our evolutionary background

that it may do something
for us in a similar way.

We just don't know.

And then there's a case of, again, which you
all watch by multiple sclerosis by Terry Wahl,

who had severe multiple sclerosis.

She adopts a hunting and gathering diet
and then thereby reverses her MS totally.

You know, there are case examples,
but I think they give hints.

And then we need to think of foods.

I mean, we, you know -- When you look at
your tissue, look at your hand for a moment,

look at -- Remember every cell in your body,

everything your whole body is built,
created from the foods we ate.

If you eat, you know -- Think
of building a house.

If you have very good materials and you have a
very good plan then the house were very strong.

The plan could be your genetics
and the epigenetics.

But even with a very good plan,
if you have poor materials,

the house or the building you're making will not
be as good and would be in danger of collapse.

And think of it this way.

And now much of our foods we're eating and
partly because of the green revolution,

which has been great, that allows all
of us to have enough plenty of foods.

So there is always a balance.

But our monoculture and our processed foods
may eliminate many important micronutrients.

You know, we're not aware of what we need.

Two, our pesticides and herbicides --
I'm just thinking of Monsanta's Roundup,

we'll do this later when we talk about food, are
carcinogenic and immune suppressant, you know.

And then there's lots of evidence that
we -- That our -- The foods we eat may --

Or the lack of foods we eat may be
a cause of a number of illnesses.

Just think of going back
during the ages of, you know --

just think back of the age of sailing
where sailors got scurvy, you know.

But why did they get scurvy?

Scurvy? Because the foods they
were eating was even pickled.

They were not getting enough
vitamin C so they lost their teeth.

There's massive death rate
of sailors due to scurvy.

It was until the observation was made
that when they ate limes, citrus fruit,

which contained vitamin C, there are many foods
that have more vitamin C that once they start

to eat those, then they could
solve that disease.

And then in the late 19th century, you know,
with the advent of the result of colonization

in the -- in much of the world and the
idea that brown rice was sort of, well,

that's for common people
that white rice was best.

But the trouble was by eating white rice
you get rid of the vitamin B1, thiamine.

And that led then to a very serious
neurological disease very, very.

You know, it was because we
started not eat the whole foods.

There's so many of these we can't think of it.

OK? Let me do another one
here about spina bifida.

Spina bifida, you know, is really that the spine
does not close of the little -- of the fetus.

However, it can totally be almost
avoided, at least decreased

if the food contains enough folic acid.

But what do you get folic acid by?

By eating spinach, asparagus, turnips,
greens, legumes, many of these and organ meats

such as liver and kidney all contain folate.

You don't need to take a pill.

You need the right foods.

So when I see these, that we need to
add these substances to the foods,

it's really telling me we're
eating the wrong foods.

OK? And I already talked
about the vitamin C or think

of Omega 3 or fatty, you know -- fish oils.

You know, this then -- The data looks very
good that mothers who are at high risk,

that's genetic for allergic disease.

When they got Omega 3s from 21
weeks of gestation to birth,

that there was a significant decrease
in eczema, egg allergies and others.

Notice almost it went from 12% for the
controls who didn't get it to 7%, 15 to 9.

Most likely if the mothers had it from
the at the beginning of pregnancy,

maybe these numbers would even be much better.

And this is the result at age one.

So notice the long lasting cost by having
a diet that's low in Omega 3 at least.

And our diet right now is massively weighted
to Omega 6s, which is highly inflammatory

because so much of the foods we
eat are it include corn, oils,

et cetera, which are all omega 6s.

OK? It even changes behavior if you
give Omega 3 supplements for six months.

And that's a double-blind
study for 8- to 16-year-olds.

You know, overall, what you see is that it's a
reduction in significantly in behavior problems.

It's just really remarkable.

OK? And now I'm going to shift again to diet one
more time, going back to the exposure of getting

to food poisoning which so often occurs in our
modern diet, whether all of a sudden thousands

of people die or hundreds of people
die and some or get sick and a few die

because they ate hamburgers
or even the romaine lettuce.

Here's one of romaine lettuce.

But the question really is what caused it?

And in most cases, we would see as
caused basically, you know, by e. coli.

Right? But look at -- But I would want to
argue that it's really what we have done

with the -- with our cows and our animals.

So let me take you through a little story why we
get possibly one pathway, we get food poisoning

in one case and not in the other.

OK. The normal diet of a cow is
basically somehow grass us is on the left,

but now we bring them to a feedlot
where they're getting a lot of grains.

The reason you do this, because
they'll bulk up very quickly.

However, the gastrointestinal tract of a
cow is not really -- It did, you know --

From an evolutionary perspective
did not have to process it.

And it changes the pH in
the cow in the fecal mass.

OK? And so, if you look at that
-- If you look at the manure

of cattle eating grass, it's about 7.7.3.

While the manure of cattle at feedlots wheat
grain, which is very high caloric value is 5.3.

Now why is this important?

OK, all the manure in cows contain e. coli, but
there are many different versions of e. coli.

And the one that lets us get sick,
really get sick is the e. coli 0157.

That is the e. coli that survives at a
very low pH and much more acidic condition.

And notice that if the manure of
the cow is that eats grass is 7.3,

there will be a very low number of this e.
coli because they wouldn't really survive well

at this higher pH. And then when that cow gets
slaughtered, keep that in mind, then probably --

Sometimes the intestinal
content contaminates the meat.

Now you eat your hamburger
with the contamination in it.

But since it is the e. coli
that survives at 7.3 when it --

but you now eat it goes into your
stomach, but the stomach is a ph of 2

and all those e. coli essentially all
get killed and so you don't get sick.

Now on the other hand, if you're eating
meat from the cattle from a feedlot

that has been eating the mainly grain,
its manure is 5.3 and then it's in --

And you see a thousand times more e.
coli, you know, 0157 which is the one

that is really makes us very
sick as I point out.

And when you now -- And they
now multiply in the meter or so

and now when you eat them
they go through your stomach.

But now, they can survive this
pH's acid of and 10% survive that

and then they start multiplying this
lethal infection in your intestines.

So that is really the big difference.

So the cure is probably not to try
to give antibiotics or anything else.

It would say maybe we should
think of the evolutionary backup.

What should cattle be eating
to reduce their health?

So we fed the cows hay or grass then the pH
would stay up to 7.3 and would reduce the odds

of having this e. coli 0157
be present in the foods.

Because now if the cattle that has the
-- is from the feedlot is slaughtered

and the meat is contaminated, now when
you eat it, you potentially get sick.

But moreover, the manure of this
cattle at 5.3 drifts over fields

where there may be spinach is grown or other
foods are grown or a worker carries this

on their boots and goes to those
fields or goes for the water.

Then all of a sudden, you're spraying some
fields of vegetables with this e. coli 0157

and then you can get sick by
eating even the vegetables.

OK, I think that's enough.

OK? And then there's so many other factors,

I can keep going that the foods
we eat also change our bacteria.

Remember, the foods we eat affect which
colonies of bacteria increase or decrease.

But most of the foods we now eat look
the same and are totally different.

Almost all the grain, corn, soy,
processed foods and meats contain low level

of Monsanta's produced herbicides, Roundup
and other herbicides and pesticides.

And those -- And they in fact suppress
some of the healthy human biome bacteria

and allow the more pathological ones to
continue possibly as this we may have messed up.

We need to go back and think how
we're living in the first place.

And remember, we are an ecological system.

I want to underline this.

We -- And now I move even more to a
slight different perspective on this,

to some illnesses that they evolved with
parasites, bacteria, and viruses, you know.

And when we eliminate some of those bacteria
or parasites, the balance is disrupted.

The pathology can occur.

Some of you have experienced that
already when you have taken antibiotics.

Often more women may have experienced that
more when they had no problems at all,

then they took antibiotics even maybe for acne.

And then the antibiotic not only
killed a whole class of bacteria

in their GI tract but also
in the vaginal barrel.

And then they've developed a yeast infection.

Because when you remove certain groups
of bacteria, others will take over.

So what is critical is the balance.

And I want to talk about.

And that's all what you'll be
reading in the book by Blazer,

which really looks at the human biome.

But I want to go back now for a moment
about our parasites, bacteria, and viruses.

We've lift those forever.

We live in symbiosis.

That is really where the bacteria are mutual.

You know, we live together and
they're in different categories.

In mutualism, they both benefit.

And many bacteria benefit by living
with us, and we benefit from them.

Then there's commensal, which is where one
benefits but not the other one doesn't.

There's no harm, you know.

And the final one is basically a parasite
where one benefits and the other one is harmed.

And the harm can be very minimally.

If you're intrigued in parasites specifically,
a great older book which I really like,

is by Rob Dunn, the Wildlife of Our Bodies.

It's really the epidemic of absence.

It's a way of understanding
autoimmune illnesses, you know.

But let me give this as an example.

In the 1930s and '40s, nearly
half American children had worms.

And if you go all around the world in third
world countries, except in our weird world,

that's Western, educated,
industrialized, rich, democratic countries,

many people had little worms, you know,
sometimes like whip worms and others.

In most cases, they were very benign
unless you had too many of them.

There are some bits you never want to get.

OK? And one way that -- In the
1930s, most of people had it just

like your dog has worms at times.

OK? But usually, the way you
would avoid getting worms is

that you would not have to
walk on human fecal mass.

So what you then did is but
you -- If you wore shoes

and used an indoor toilet,
you're less likely to get it.

But what is so interesting is that a disease
called Crohn's disease did not exist in places

where people generally didn't
have people at intestinal worms.

But as the intestinal worms have become
very rare, which we have done in the US

and many other places, all of a
sudden, we get this -- The much more --

And whole serious illness
called Crohn's disease.

Now, worms is always relevant.

Having a few worms in you,
many of them that you would --

You intake them, they would multiply
in you, you would excrete the eggs

and it would be one cycle
till you get reinfected.

Others could be very harmful.

But in many cases of -- They could be more,
you know -- They would just do a tiniest harm.

It's only if you're a highly malnutrition

that other issues were going
on that it was very harmful.

And remember, I want to underline again,
most people had experience of worms

until the 20th century, but by
having better hygiene, wearing shoes,

and children are now growing up
without ever having had worms.

And the worms can live in our,
you know, GI tract or bloodstream.

I'm not recommending it in a bloodstream.

And to survive -- However, to survive
within the host, worms must interact with

and change the host immune system.

You see. And some worms can cause disease,
but many are not, possibly even harmful

and may even beneficial for our immune system.

That's hard to believe, I know conceptually.

But you could argue if we live for as
long as we know with some parasites,

our immune system would then
be in a kind of balance

with these parasites or this
-- with these worms.

And all of a sudden, if you
take these worms away,

then our immune system may not know how to cope.

So it is now believed that the
inflammatory bowel diseases,

such as Crohn's disease is really partial --

is partially caused by dysregulation
of mucosal immune system, you know.

So, we see this massive increase
in Crohn's disease.

If, on the other hand, if during childhood
you get exposures to Helmuth, that's worms,

they somehow talk to your immune
system or they produce something

which tells the immune system, hey, slow down.

I'm just here as a passenger.

I won't do too much.

Just keep it cool.

I'm making this up.

And then as if -- It stamps
down the inflammation.

But without that experience, the
immune system has no way to change.

And this is one of the hypotheses
by Joel Weinstock

and he has done some very interesting studies

on using Helmuth parasitic
worms to help the immune system.

As I pointed out earlier, the disease,

Crohn's disease is a very
difficult illness on our GI tract.

It's where our immune system is attacking and
causes horrible abdominal pain, skin rash.

It's just truly difficult.

OK? It's just a disaster.

And now estimates 1/3 million people
have this, at least in the United States.

And one of the ways -- If you think about
it, how come Crohn's disease does not exist

in third world countries
because people have worms.

That's a hypothesis, by the way.

But people have been doing
episodic experiments on this.

And now in a more systematic
study by Joel Weinstock,

he took chronic people with
chronic Crohn's disease.

They now gave them worms.

Now, you know, with worm, it's just benign.

It doesn't do any harm.

You know, you put little eggs in it.

You don't even know you're swallowing in.

And what happened in this
study of these 29 patients?

Four patients, yuck, worms.

I don't want to do this.

So they got a medication
to get rid of the worms.

But in 24 weeks, all but one patient was
doing, 21 patients were in remission.

Now that is remarkable.

Their bodies were much healthier than
when they had -- now they had parasites.

And so, you know, this is very suggestive.

And it's a similar model you see later, as
you'll be reading in the book by Blaser,

about the whole part of our human biome that
when they're empty -- when there's absence.

And remember to underline, going back
again to the inflammatory GI disorders,

one of the promising remedial acts
against irritable bowel disease

and other allergic autoimmune
illnesses is helminth therapy.

It can also be probably bacterial
therapy or human biome therapy.

Cure of helminth therapy seems
to be the most effective therapy

in the irritable bowel disease
currently proposed.

OK? And now I'll jump even more
that the human biome is active

and a vital participant in our lives.

Remember, more than half of your -- of the DNA
in your body are bacteria, are human biome.

And that's critical.

So do look at the book by Blaser.

And we get these exposures to these
different -- once in many different ways.

You know, kids play in the dirt.

Eating dirt is very helpful, you know?

You know, our GI tract, these bacteria produce
serotonin and many, in fact, interestingly,

many of our antibiotics are derived
from material, you know, grown in dirt.

So, play the dirt.

It's much better.

OK? And maybe we shouldn't be using
so many antimicrobial soaps, you know?

Possibly, yes.

If you know someone is infectious do wash your
hands and after bathroom use wash your hands

but most likely don't use antimicrobial
soaps because basically you are developing --

You get rid of the healthy bacteria and
maybe leave a place for unhealthy bacteria.

And as I said earlier our human body is made of
many cells at least half of those in our bodies

or more our bacterial nonhuman cells.

It's most interesting.

And there's so many factors that affect the gut
bacteria which includes the birthing process,

the breastfeeding, exposure dirt, antibiotic
exposures, diet and they all are interactive.

And I think on that note I
will stop but keep thinking

of the evolutionary background what are
you doing now that your great, great,

great grandparents would have no idea about?

And it's likely that those novelties could
be harmful or increase an allostatic load

and could be a co-contributor to many of
these inflammatory diseases we now have.

>> Living in harmony with our
evolutionary past, Part 1.

This is an asynchronous presentation.

As we all know, we are part of parcel
of nature, and it always reminds me,

when we look at our genetics and DNA.

Remember, genetically we're, even to
bananas, we are 60% genetically similar.

To a cow, about 80%.

To a mouse, 85.

To a cat, 90.

To a chimpanzee, 96% genetically similar.

And all modern humans are
99.9% genetically similar.

So in a way, we are almost controlled, in a
way, or modulated by our evolutionary past.

And know any variation of that
may make life more challenging.

But anyway, it sometimes then helps to ask the
question on a reflection: how did we evolve,

and how did they live for
those thousands of generations?

Go back 50,000 years ago.

How did they live?

We were hunters and gatherers.

We ate all variety of food.

We lived in small clans.

Yes, people died in childbirth,
people died in accidents,

but some lived until the age 90, just as much.

There may have been a deduction in some
of the illnesses, we now so commonly have,

such as our inflammatory illnesses.

You know, and what kind of foods people
eat, by which they are allowed themselves

to survive, by which we survived?

How did we move?

How did we take rest?

What constitute our social systems,
which is probably a small thing.

All those factors still are
seen in our behavior today.

We still react.

We still live, and optimally, when we accept any
and live in harmony with our evolutionary past.

So this presentation will focus more on this.

And part of it is that I look around, and
I'm also shocked of how many young children

and adults have now autoimmune illnesses, have
cognitive disorders, such as ADHD, or you know,

you know, or how many other
illnesses is listed here?

And how come many of this those diseases
are mainly absent in rural Africa,

and much more common in the
industrialized first world.

And we see this kind of epidemic of
autoimmune illnesses, of allergies increasing

and increasing all around the world.

And then, how come 1/3rd of American
children are now pre-diabetic,

which is really a horrible
prediction for the future.

How come there's such an
increase in nearsightedness?

How come cancer, Alzheimer's disease, appears
to be occurring earlier than ever before?

And how come these diseases are occurring
more frequently, and were almost absent

in your grandparents generation or
in our non-industrialized people.

These are the interesting questions
to me, because they ask not just,

what can we do to treat these disorders,
what can we do to treat allergies?

And it's remarkable that we can do some of that.

But what is it that we need to do to things
to prevent it, and optimize our health.

So that is really the sense
of trying to understand living

in harmony of our evolutionary past.

And statistically, as you can see very well
on this slide, that many of the illnesses,

incidence of infectious diseases, either by
viruses or by bacteria, have now been reduced.

Look at hepatitis A going down.

TB has been going down.

Mumps and measles.

I know that looks like it's
only due to vaccinations,

but many of these were already going
down before vaccinations ever occur.

And look how we have this -- this epidemic, in
a way, of these more autoimmune like illnesses.

You know, whether it's Crohn's disease,
that's the gastrointestinal disorder,

or type one diabetes, asthma,
multiple sclerosis.

You know, it's really, it's shocking to me to
think of that, you know, of this radical change.

You can also see that it's so
interesting, it says, mainly those diseases,

those inflammatory diseases, are
those from the Western Hemisphere.

So you look at the graph of
[inaudible], look at Western Europe,

and Canada, and the United States.

And you see it's almost totally absent, or
much less in the other parts of the world.

You know, and you can even look at
a rate of their increase in autism,

you know, from very low to now very high.

It's true that some of this is more
powerful diagnostic ways of doing it.

We may recognize it when, in the past,
it was not recognized as a disorder,

but it also looks like a real phenomenon.

Okay?

And then you look at many
of the allergies we have.

You know, I just think, I keep thinking of
that, you know, I used to remember flying.

And when I flew, people would
be serving peanuts and nuts,

and the concept of having peanut allergy
just wasn't part of my awareness.

And if you ask your grandparents, when
they go back and think of their childhood,

and they were in school, how many of
them knew people who had allergies?

And many will say, maybe only one in 40.

Now our students, 1/3rd of us will say,
gosh, I have some reactivity emerge.

And it may be because we have
been changing our world so much.

We are now living away from
our evolutionary past.

You know, look at it, for
example, about hay fever.

Hay fever was first described in 1819, by John
Bostock, and, you know, and it occurred, really,

among people of higher class
and living in cities.

Part of it is that if you were a
farm child, or living in the farms,

you would be continually exposed to
these -- the materials from the hay,

and therefore you would not
develop this allergy.

And the similar phenomena seems to be it
has occurred for irritable bowel disease

and Crohn's disease, that was first
described in 1932 by Burrill Crohs, you know,

in which he described this necrotizing
inflammation, scarring of the intestines.

However, this disease clearly is associated
with social class, and wealth, and being more

and more removed from any part of nature.

It used to be one, literally, per 10,000.

Now it's even one per 200.

It's just shocking to think about it.

And then, why is it that
these have all increased?

I am not saying I know the answers at
all, but I'm looking at possible causes.

I don't think they can say it's genetics.

I think genetics, in many cases, we look at
that, and they can find a genetic, you know,

link that is clear, but in most cases, genetics,
you know, only provides the possibility,

you know, and it's the environment
that it pulls the trigger to expose it.

So you may have a genetic
predisposition to gain weight, and thereby,

potentially get more type two diabetes.

But if you don't eat the foods that
do this, you most likely won't get it.

Okay? So look at over the last 30 years,
we have now increased in allergies.

And how come all this may occur?

Well, there are many factors.

I'm only listing a few.

I'm sure many of you can add many more,
and they are all probably correct.

It is very difficult to identify that.

Because if you do animal studies, you know,
we're not totally, totally the same as animals.

We still getting the same foods,
and so it is not totally the same.

There are hints at least.

Well, let's just list a few.

One, it's during pregnancy, the fetus experience
either a kind of, I'll call malnutrition,

but it's [inaudible] malnutrition
in the Western world,

but it really means probably
inappropriate amount of essential nutrients,

or an exposure to endocrine
dysregulating chemicals.

These are all the plastics, the these
are all the pesticides, herbicides,

and the many things we ingest without knowing,

which in fact act as endocrine
in our system's dysregulation.

Then because of finance, in many cases,
socioeconomic inequality, during the first year

of life, we don't allow babies
to breastfeed and bond,

and possibly to concurrent
malnutrition by giving formula.

And by giving formula, you also
miss the transmission of immune --

appropriate immune cells, which you
have gotten from the breast milk.

And then during early childhood and life, we get
exposed to endocrine dysregulating substances.

The plastics which are all
exposed to often act as estrogens.

The pesticides, the herbicides, they
all may affect our immune system.

You know, then we have this
massive exposure to antibiotics.

Antibiotics are great.

I mean, gosh, if you have bacterial
infection, you're going to die,

please get the appropriate antibiotic.

However, in so many cases,
it's used inappropriately.

And what antibiotics do do is they basically
remove or kill whole groups of bacteria,

which are which are essential for our health.

So in fact, we have an impoverished human biome.

And then we have excessive hygiene by which,
in many ways, we are no longer exposed

to some viruses or bacteria, which
in the past, would have immunized us.

And we see this now coming
up in the post-pandemic,

that many people have been separated from
each other, and now when we meet again,

all of a sudden, we have an increase in flus.

There's nothing new to this.

This has been observed before in
the expeditions to the Antarctica.

When people in the Antarctica would go, a
scientist, they would then be living there.

And then the Antarctica winter would occur.

They would now have no new people meeting them.

And first upon -- when they
first got it together,

there were a number of flus and illnesses.

Now they were all exposed.

No new bacteria came in.

And for the next six months, or however
much time it is, none of them got sick.

People did get sick of other diseases, but not
of bacterial or viral infections, basically.

And then the first visitor came, and all

of a sudden people would get
their colds or flus again.

So by not being exposed, we
put ourselves more at risk.

And then our lifestyle, in a
way, has really shifted so much.

You know, we're so much -- we sit so much.

We have so much lack of movement.

We have lights that interfere,
in fact, with our health.

Light at night, for example, may --
maybe -- may affect, not only may,

does affect our diurnal rhythms,
our daily rhythms, because light,

especially a blue component of
light, tends to suppress melatonin.

And it's one of the factors people have
hypothesized is why young girls are developing

earlier menarche, meaning the first menstruation
occur, because they have lights on at night,

which disturbs their biological rhythms,
as well as increased weight and fat.

There are many other factors.

Okay? But overall, you could
argue that a number of these kind

of newer illnesses are the
result of our lifestyle.

Namely, we have disrespected our evolutionary
origins without realizing that we are part

of this intrinsic web, that includes diet,
movement, parasites, biological rhythms,

bacteria, you name it, viruses,
they're all part of us.

And in many cases, some -- or in many
cases, dysfunction can be reversed,

or maybe even prevented, by respecting
and returning to our evolutionary origins.

The data is overwhelmed that people, for
example, who get up and do significant amount

of movement, tend to have
less cardiovascular disease.

Notice that's a dysfunction
which can be reversed.

Eating less sugar and simple carbohydrates,
which is not part of our evolutionary past,

would mean that they would not develop
type two diabetes, or much less likely.

So in a way, it goes right back
to the simple rules of health,

which we described earlier by Nassim Taleb.

Anything that was not part of our
evolutionary past is probably harmful.

I want to underline it again.

Anything that was novel, and not part of
our evolutionary past is probably harmful.

And probably, we don't need
evidence of harm to claim that a drug

or any unnatural procedure is dangerous,
even if that harm does not yet exist.

Therefore, the easiest way to optimize health
is to remove what he would call via negativity,

remove the unnatural, the unfamiliar.

You know, just think of reducing lung cancer,

which is what people have demonstrated very
clearly, by stopping smoking, which is pollution

and the irritation of the airways.

All of a sudden, lung cancer is
decreased, and a number of other illnesses.

Although right now, we are seeing an
increased epidemic of the use of e-cigarettes,

which will again lead to a future epidemic.

Okay, remember, from an evolutionary
perspective, let me outline, genes survive

and prosper if their reproductive
fitness increases.

And the changes in our external environment
continually impacts the natural selection

of genes, named reproductive fitness.

Novel and increased inputs
reduces our reproductive fitness,

they could say, act as an allostatic load.

And nature and natural selection favors those
mutations, those genes, those behaviors,

that enhance the reproductive fitness
with these novel stimuli, therefore by --

thereby reduce the allostatic load.

And you keep in mind that that is
especially true for younger people,

and people, you know, in their 20s and 30s.

But once you have given birth,
or an older adult, remember,

you're not going to reproduce anymore.

So then those illness that have much -- are much
less affected by this evolutionary perspective.

So I would not expect that
Alzheimer's is impacted by this,

because there's no natural selection.

We have already reproduced.

Okay? But remember to underline this again.

Natural selections.

Individuals best adapted to their surrounds
enjoy increased reproductive success.

They pass on the traits, adaptive versus even
maladaptive, or neutral, to their descendants,

who gradually consider a greater
proportion of the, of the population.

Remember, we carry this imprint
of our biological heritage in us.

So it's useful to say how and what were we
doing earlier on that allowed us to be us now?

And now, I want to underline this even more.

But this is very important.

That's habitat selection.

We are wired for whatever
habitat we are involved in.

Biologists, who study animals in the wild,
describe this as "habitat selection theory".

And the general rule is that animals who
are in their natural habitat do much better.

They thrive, both physically, and
psychologically, and social behavior compared

to animals that are placed in
unnatural habitat, such as a zoo.

They most likely evolved in the forest of
Africa without the presence of digital displays.

And so by just sitting in front of
digital displays the whole time,

or just sitting the whole time, we
probably are reducing our health.

And people have called sitting the -- you know,
our -- the new epidemic of smoking, basically.

And what I've said many times before is that
genetics only loads the gun, but our behavior

and environment pulls the trigger.

And I like that phrase a lot.

So let me look at it -- give an example how our
environment may cause us to develop illness.

This is called, the concept is
evolutionary or ecological traps.

Evolutionary/ecological traps occur

when formally adaptive habitat preference
become maladaptive, meaning they become harmful,

because the cues the individually preferentially
used in selecting habitat may now lead

to lower fitness than other alternatives.

It means that whatever adaptive
habits of preference we evolve for,

and now we allow that to happen
too much, it may lead to illness.

But let me give a remarkable example of this.

This is the birds in the
Pacific called the "albatross".

And when you go to Midway
Island, it's just shocking.

In Midway -- on Midway Island, you see
these many carcasses of these birds.

You can see the skeletons.

You can see the feather.

And you see the -- what was left
over in a gastrointestinal tract.

Look at all the pieces of plastic.

How was that?

How come? And so many are dying.

Well, think of the albatross going
over the ocean from Midway there.

That's an island which is 2,000
miles away from any other islands.

And the bird lives, you know, eats the fish.

So it goes -- it is flying over the ocean.

It sees some shimmering in the water.

It looks like a fish.

And those birds, through evolution,
who you know, who have adapted,

and could identify this the
quickest and the most.

They would then dive, they
would eat it, swallow it,

and then possibly regurgitate
it to their chicks.

Now, however, that same shimmering in the
water now is our small pieces of plastic,

which are coated, also, by the algae, so it
has some of the similar outer taste initially.

So now what happens is the birds now take
this plastic, and swallow it as food.

Now, do we say these birds are stupid, or are
we at fault that we have created this world

where these birds, we made such a radical
shift, so these birds were evolved to --

to be able to see that shimmering, they
would then go at it, and now, they would die.

And that is a very, you know,
it looks really challenging.

And as Professor E.O. Wilson stated, "Organisms,
when housed in unfit habitats, undergo social,

psychological and physiological breakdown."

Here, then you see that the
habitat radically changed.

The animal still is wired to
find that shimmering object

as food, but now it's no longer food.

I want to keep this down because our weak --

our other evolutionary or environmental
traps are there for people today.

You know, just if you look at a piece
of paper, think of things that may --

you may be doing, which you automatically
do, but it basically are triggered

by the environment because you
have evolved for that to respond.

Pause -- I'll pause.

I won't pause.

Pause the computer for writing
down, and let's check it out.

Let me just think a few.

One, we react to cues of food, automatically.

We see food, we may become hungry.

We smell it, we become hungry.

We -- you know, automatically.

Well, why?

Because we need food for survival.

You know, for millions of years, probably,
you know, food was only challenging.

We always had to hunt for food.

Therefore, we have really no
mechanisms easily to stop eating.

And this is especially true for sugars.

Almost all foods that that are
sweet are usually not poisonous.

Yes, I knew that -- know that the paint that,
you know, lead paint, is sweet when you chew it,

the pikas [phonetic] that it's called.

However, that's that rare things.

Most other things in nature that
are sweet are -- represent calories.

Therefore, we want to eat them, because
we need the calories for survival,

and we don't have an off switch easily.

The same thing will be true for fats.

So we are -- when the cue of food is shown to
us, we react to eat, want to eat, or hunger.

And I'll show that in a moment.

Okay? And the similar part
is, I think, for reproduction.

You know, we, you know, that's
probably the drive for pornography is

such is probably the biggest bandwidth on the
Internet, because there are cues, which said,

ah, survival that leads to, maybe
because, you know, for reproduction.

And then we have all the cues
around us for protection.

We remember our -- we're historically prey.

There were other animals that saw us for
food, so we always had to be very careful.

We had to look around and be vigilant.

We still all are.

And now, however, all those cues, which
-- of sounds, of changing objects around,

cause us to react all the time, and
where -- which captures our attention.

You know, no wonder we tend to
get addicted to computer games.

Once we sit, and we watch one -- you
know, we start to watch a Netflix series.

Automatically, we keep sitting there,
and then the next sequence pops up,

and we don't change because
we're captured by it.

And then, for survival, in
small groups, for in clans,

we need to know who the power structure
was, because as we, you know, mature,

we want to be part of the power structure.

We don't want to be excluded.

We need to know what's going on.

So in some sense, you could say
that's our social media addiction.

You know, it's basic -- and
it's triggered that way.

And then our bodies really want to rest.

Why expend energy when there's not
enough energy you have, or calories?

So anytime you could rest, you would do it.

So that quickly leads to excess
sitting and lack of movement.

In the past, we didn't have to go to the gym.

We didn't have to go jogging.

Our whole world included that
physicalness, and so now our -- it doesn't.

And then there are many other things that occur.

Light. We want to be active.

We want to be involved.

However, light, artificial lights,
which keeps us awake, keeps us active,

also reduces our rest, interferes with
melatonin, affects our circadian rhythms,

etc. And then the final piece is, from my
perspective, the brain cannot, I would say,

discriminate between actual
and visual auditory images.

So when we watch a film in front of
us, for our brain, this is really real.

I know you -- we all would say,
yes, I know it's a, it is a drama.

It's a play.

It isn't real.

And yet, for our body, this the first time
in our evolutionary past, well, really,

since cameras were, you know, since
you could do film in late 19th century,

then we could have a picture,
which was not real.

In the past, everything we saw was always real.

We could touch.

And so when things go into our eyes, our
brains say that's real, and we react this way.

And even though we may want to argue
that, I think most of you, if not all,

have had the experience that if you
watch a horror movie, or horrible scenes

where horrible things happen in a series.

And then you go outside, all of a sudden,

that little noise behind you
triggers a massive autonomic response,

in the past, that would not have done that.

Because we -- our bodies saw what
we saw in the film, we act as real.

And I think we have really underestimated
that -- how powerful that phenomena is.

And part of the reason we
have these -- we are --

we react all the time, is because
our commercial industry uses these --

these cues, which are really traps
for us to capture our eyeballs.

And that's the whole basis of our social
media, of all the many of the [inaudible].

It's really people don't
get paid for the content.

They get paid for our attention,
hijacking our attention.

And equally, for many industries, it is the
profit margin that doesn't ask is it healthy?

It just asks can we -- will you buy the object?

Just think of the, all the cereals,
with highlighting the sugar,

all the candies in front
of the counters, you know.

And do we then blame children
that they have no control?

So in a child, who is wired from an evolutionary
perspective for survival to eat more calories,

when it sees the sweets, it wants those.

Do we blame the child, or should we be blaming
the corporate culture, the world around us?

And maybe we really need to be
careful with this, and say, oops,

you may need to define that, and we may
need to set, you know, social constraints

that we don't trigger these
dysfunctional behaviors.

And remember, even watching pictures of food,
and smelling it, will activate your brain.

You know, it is most interesting.

I think I have a slide in that later.

Okay?

So the solutions really are that the society
may need to protect its own population

from the commercial exploitation of
these evolutionary, ecological traps.

Now this is a great, difficult discussion,

because we think of the freedom
of speech in a very broad sense.

But yes, I think it is a critical issue.

We cannot depend upon self-regulation
to reduce our sugar content in our Coke,

in our in our foods around us, or anything else.

And you can already see the
effect in human physiology

by having been exposed to
these environmental traps.

If you look at the brain wave activity,
the quantitative electroencephalograph,

the brain activity, the brains of
normal students today look more

like an ADHD student than 20 years ago.

If you look at the spine of young people today,
as colleagues of mine in Canada have observed

in the athletics department, that
compared to 20 years ago, the spines are --

the upper spine of these people
are slightly more cured for,

because our whole world is looking down at
our cell phone or looking at our screens.

The pandemic only, you know, accelerated
this trend that was already going on.

And then there are so many other qualities,
things that we have, increase of pesticides,

of plastics, of BPA, all of that
which may lead to pathology.

So we may need to control our -- our legal
system, the be exposure to protect ourselves.

It's a challenge.

Okay? But just for fun, let
me go back for a moment,

what I said about what you see
and smell affects your body.

The brain and visual system, remember, are
intimately linked to the acquisition of food.

It is necessary for survival.

And when we get an image of
food, and the smell of food,

our physiological, neurological changes respond.

Then it may even be a danger
in our growing exposure --

these beautifully presented images of foods,
which we do each time I go to Facebook --

to Facebook, or Instagram, or TikTok.

And I make a short video on TikTok about the
delicious food I'm eating, or I take a picture

and post it on Facebook or
Instagram on the food.

What happens is, it will
induce this in the person.

Here, I take the picture, and then I can look
at the brain, what happens to the person.

This is their work.

And you can see Wang et al, you can see that
if you show the food inside a, you know,

PET [inaudible] imaging, where you
can see how the blood flow goes

through the brain, basically, or metabolism.

Then you see, all of a sudden, that there's
a 24% increase in the brain metabolism

by just showing the images of
foods while lying in the scanner.

Now this is a very complicated study,
you know, they only saw the image.

They brought the smell in.

They put it on your tongue as well.

So it's a very -- it's -- it is a complex one.

However, imagine -- imagination
and seeing it affects physiology.

And so next time you sent that great meal to
your friend, you may be helping them to want

to eat more and increase their obesity.

So really, you know, our diet
and exercise do change it.

You've been sitting here for a little while now.

So just for a moment, once again, just get up.

Just get up and move.

I know, it's so hard.

But get up, just wiggle and move.

Just move.

I'm swinging.

I'm swinging.

I reach up, and then I look up.

I look up again, and I look up again.

I take a big breath, and then, and
I let my sit myself down again.

And just note it again, when you
have done that, note two things.

One, how hard it was to get up and do it,
how much we want to just keep sitting.

And two, that after you did it,
how your energy slightly went up.

Okay? So really, remember, what I want to point
out is health is living your evolutionary roots,

and whatever increases reproductive
fitness predominates.

And then remember our past,
that we are wired to be prey.

And finally, we start regenerating
when feel safe.

Okay. And if you look at that more,
it means you may look at diet.

We'll look at that much later in the semester.

But have a lot of greens,
tubers, nuts, organic foods.

And then we can see that the absence of some of
the vitamins may lead to significant illnesses.

And I'll talk about this in a moment.

The lack of Omega 3, which we now have massively
upped, because we mainly have Omega 6s,

because a massive amount of
corn products we eat, you know,

may inhibit embryological
development, increase eczema, others.

Well, folic acid, which is part of food
of healthy eating, a lot of veggies,

may increase the risk of spinal bifida.

And then we have all the cases where
people are no longer doing breastfeeding.

I'll talk about that in a moment.

That increases the risk of
Celiac disease and asthma.

And then we have the whole light/night,
melatonin suppression by light.

And then our relationship of
our bodies, bacteria, parasites.

And I'll talk about that in a moment,
like Crohn's disease, etc. Okay,

let me just see in detail
a little bit what happens

when you disregard your evolutionary background.

I'll go through the following
fairly quickly, living in isolation,

possibly formula versus breastfeeding,
or breastfeeding versus formula,

eating processed foods, or really being
-- having [inaudible] malnutrition.

Feeding an animal, a carnivore,
an herbivore diet.

Feeding an herbivore a carnivore diet.

Feeding rats milk protein, casein
that they have never been used to.

Possibly, how come we can get
food poisoning, etc., etc. Okay.

So let me first go back to isolation.

It's most interesting.

This was a study at Kaiser, which I really
liked, where they looked at the adults

without children, who contract
COVID-19, versus those who had children.

And notice that for equivalent ages, this
is before we were vaccinated, that adults,

who had now -- who are not
around little children,

were 49% were likely to be hospitalized.

And 76% were likely to have Intensive Care Unit
admissions, than infected adults of similar ages

and health histories, who
had young children at home.

This really is a very impressive data.

It suggests both social isolation is harmful,
or it really says, gosh, for all our evolution,

we lived in little clans, that included
grandparents, great grandparents, parents,

children, and even babies, and all together.

And what it -- but you could
possibly argue is that little babies

and toddlers continually have snotty noses.

They have flus.

And these are -- they're all by
different, in most cases, by viruses.

And by being exposed to that continuously
or episodically, we're getting a kind

of natural vaccination, and that may
then protect us from the COVID virus.

Because 30% of flus are Coronavirus,
which is in a similar family as the COVID.

So that's possibly -- and when we've
looked at what happened with COVID,

is that the greatest deaths occurred
with elderly, who were in in locations

where there were no little kids
around, and had comorbidities.

Okay.

But if we -- you know, let
me shift to different ones.

Reflect on the statement.

Thinking of the risk and
benefits of feeding a baby.

Formula is better because it allows
the mother to sleep and regenerate.

It evolves the partner in
the, in the baby's care.

Right? Pros and cons on that.

Just stop, and think about it.

Now, I'll argue a few reasons why maybe
breastfeeding is normal, natural and healthier.

And this data, I'll talk about, can be very
much criticized, because you could argue that,

by definition, people who can
breastfeed may be more affluent,

have different socioeconomic factors.

And then you control from those, the
risk, these data may slightly disappear.

Okay. But there's no way I can be
persuaded, from an evolutionary perspective,

and Pallop's [phonetic] perspective as well,
that a formula can be better than breastmilk,

unless there, obviously there's some
specific cases of sickness, or others.

Okay? But basically, the data is overwhelming
from this perspective, that children, babies,

who are breastfed, have a reduced risk
of asthma, obesity, type two diabetes,

ear and respiratory infections,
and sudden infant death syndrome.

It also, it lowers the mother's
risk of hypertension,

type two diabetes, ovarian and breast cancer.

You know, but it's so sad is that this is mainly
the chance of economic disparity, and in the US,

it's our public health policies, or public
policies which basically do not allow,

or give women time to breastfeed.

Namely, in some European countries, you can
have a year off or two years off, where,

after you give birth, you can be
at home and get your salary paid.

And I think we need to do that.

Basically in the US, what we want to do is
we want to not have costs at the beginning,

and then we're stuck with these
very high costs as we get older.

I would recommend we should do the
cost upfront, and support the women,

so their jobs are kept being
-- that they have equality

and they can go back to their job afterwards.

But if you look at the data,
the data is, I think, is clear.

Most children, most mothers, if
they can, in some cases you can't.

There's no harm in that.

You do the best one can do.

But in those cases, you can.

Most mothers want to breastfeed,
and try to continue to.

However, it's very difficult if
you go to work and then you have

to pump the breast, and do other things.

The system is just against us.

It's too much work.

And notice by, you know, after three months,

only half the baby is very
exclusive in breastfeeding.

And by 12 months, only 1/3rd, you know,
and most supplemented with formula.

The key is you don't want
to supplement with formula.

At best, what you do is you
want to breastfeed continuously,

and keep supplementing other foods,
enter other foods continually to it,

then you also reduce a massive
rate of any allergies to food.

The data is clear that if
you do both at the same time,

then there's very low allergy rates to foods.

However, in the United States,
this is really an issue

of economic disparity, and to me, it's immoral.

But the quick summaries, and I'll give
some data on these for the mother.

It distinctly reduces the breast cancer risk,
reduces stress, enhanced bonding for the baby,

hence, its body reduces allergy, reduces
obesity, probably enhances immune function.

But look, for the mother in detail, if you study
breast cancer for 10 years after pregnancy,

then you see those who, who had 34 more weeks
of breastfeeding had a cancer risk drop by 13%.

You know, and there is distinct, and
this is probably much higher than that

if that one gives birth in your early 20s.

This is a consensus of early
first birth, an increased number

of full-term birth are associated

with significantly long-term
reduction of breast cancer risks.

Okay? And I think this is really
something we don't talk about.

And for the benefits, for the baby,
as a group, and again, like I said,

the data is very difficult, because this is
so confusing by socioeconomic inequalities,

babies who are breastfed have higher
IQs as adults than formula fed.

You know, the people born in 1920s
and 30s, who are breastfed as babies,

achieve significantly upward
mobility, and they were in their 60s

and 70s, compared to formula fed babies.

Men and women, who were part
of this study in 1937, '39,

had a 50% reduction developing celiac disease.

That seems to be very common.

So as if, by being breastfed, and then
slowly adding food to it, you don't --

you can, you can continue
to be able to eat glutens,

and not develop celiac disease,
compared to breastfed babies.

And formula-fed babies are fatter
as children, and skinnier as adults.

I'm going to underline that.

And formula babies are fatter as babies --

I'm sorry, and as children
and adults, they're skinnier.

That's an error there.

Okay. But remember, the formula are
incomplete for the first couple of months.

It doesn't have all the appropriate fatty acid,
which are necessary for neural development.

Although, after a while, the brain will
replace it's all -- our body replaces itself,

so that we can all do it, but it still
means that for the first four months,

the baby is getting basically inappropriate
products, as well as all the immune cells,

and other things it gets from
the mother via the breastmilk.

And then, even when mother is very conscientious
about pumping milk, and sharing this,

and it's just great that can be done, that the
milk is different at different times of day.

So when the mother is going to sleep,
the breastmilk has a different quality,

has different substances, which
allows the baby to go to sleep more,

and the same thing in the morning.

And now what happens when you
mix things up for the baby?

So life is more complex.

And remember, babies, who are fed
formula, maybe a slight disadvantage.

I've already looked at that.

Babies born in 1970, and formula fed, are
twice likely to have neurological problems

at age nine, as compared to exclusive
breastfed for the first three weeks.

Premature babies who are formula fed achieve
significant lower IQ store scores at age eight

than premature babies who are breastfed.

Is this due to the breastfed milk?

The absence of body contact?

Is it due because by having the
privilege to be able to breastfeed,

it means you're already in
a more upper social class?

There are many of those, you know.

And I can keep going on these if you
look at formula, maternal milk is better

than formula for pre-term babies.

That data is quite good.

Okay? And then finally, which is the
most interesting part when you think

of the evolutionary perspective, it
isn't only the baby at this point.

We need to also think of the epigenetics.

And I'm not going to talk
about that today, or much.

But remember that the mother, the
pregnant mother's lifestyle has an impact

on the fetal -- fetus development.

If the mother is anxious, is stressed, taking
drugs, takes alcohol, it affects the development

of the baby, and that is a
burden the baby will carry.

However, it gets even more
significant that, in fact,

the sense that people say illnesses
skip a generation, they're sort of right

in a very funny way, because
a pregnant mother, woman,

impacts her baby, but also
her future grandchild.

Because the little fetus that's
developing, all the fetus's eggs,

that are developing during the time it's a
fetus, are impacted by the, by the mother.

And it means that when that --
the child becomes the mother,

its eggs are also have already
been shaped by her mother.

So the grandmother, in fact, impacts the mother.

And once you look at that, you
can really see how we do --

how our past transcends into the future.

And then let's look at totally about
some whole other areas, about foods.

And I cannot say enough about how, I would say
how bad, we know anyways, the US food supply is.

"Bad" as the wrong word to use.

How unnutritious [phonetic] in any way it is.

It's remarkable that we get plenty of calories,

and that's very important
if you don't have calories.

However, we are now becoming a world of
malnutrition, [inaudible] malnutrition.

And we often spend lots of money,
time, on foods that are not nutritious.

Here's a single case study, as
we're about to look out for fun.

If you drink 10 cokes a day for a month.

Now, it's not a study, it's a case report,
but I think it makes perfect sense.

When you drink a can, a 12-ounce can of
Coke, you're drinking 39 grams of sugar.

Now, that's a lot.

What happens?

Outcome after one month,
increased weight by 23 pounds.

Insulin levels, the person became prediabetic.

Blood pressure's increased.

The body fat increased by 9%.

And this equal -- and later on, a Harvard
study has also shown this drinking one can

of soda can lead to a five-pound
weight gain in the year.

And also drinking soda daily is so linked
to early death and increased likelihood

of having a heart attack or stroke.

It's also linked in women with an increase
in osteoporosis, even with athletes.

Okay. So I'm not recommending
drinking Cokes by definition.

But just when we don't listen to our
evolutionary diet, or background,

and we now do changes, it may backfire on us.

And I'm going to use a few -- I'm
going to give three examples of this.

You can think of many more, but I'm trying
to think of a way of thinking about this.

Okay. So what I look for is, when
you feed carnivores a herbivore diet,

or you feed herbivores a carnivore diet,

and when you feed rats foods they were
totally unfamiliar with in their history.

So that's allostatic load.

Okay? This goes back to 1985.

This is in the US zoos.

Cheetahs were not doing well.

They had many deaths.

Only 18 births.

Seven died.

Sixty % of Cheetahs had liver damage.

Only 10% of females produced cubs.

You could argue, well, they
-- because they're in a zoo.

It worked out it's not the
case, because in the zoos

in South Africa, the cheetahs were doing well.

Remember, the cheetahs are about the
fastest animals in the world, you know.

And so they had -- but in South
African zoos, they had no problem.

Why? Well, what does, what
is the food we're feeding?

Who knows what it totally is, but what
the major factors appear to be the diet

of cheetah's health in South African -- in
South Africa, the cheetahs ate all carcasses,

whole meat, just like they did
for their evolutionary past.

In the US, the cheetahs decide
to eat commercial,

prepared cat food because it's much cheaper.

That was horsemeat.

That's okay.

But they include a lot of soybean
products, are added for protein.

Soy contains daidzein and genistein,
which acts as weak estrogens.

And estrogens can affect liver, and increase
the size of uterus, possibly also carcinogenic

in excessive, if you're estrogen-sensitive
for breast cancer patients.

What is so interesting, when
they got rid of the soy,

and they gave the animals only meat their health
improved, and their fertility improved again.

I'm not saying that eating
soy causes this at all

in human beings, because we are not carnivores.

We are omnivores.

Although, I have my questions
about, you know, non-organic.

So I would not quite recommend that.

But then look at the opposite one.

This is the Mad Cow Disease episode
that occurred about 20, 25 years ago.

And this was -- happened mainly in Britain.

And what happened is that the animals
developed something called "Mad Cow Disease",

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy,
essentially degenerating brain disease.

It's a similar disease that is seen in
human beings, as Creutzfeldt-Jacobs disease.

It's a prion disease.

It's transmitted by eating
part of the brain tissue.

And that's also between human beings, because
the way, you know, when you go to New Guinea,

where, historically, there was a large
episode of this kind of disorder,

is because when the people would fight
each other in New Guinea, the tribes,

then the winning tribe would
eat the brain of their --

of the person they had beaten in the battle.

And if they were now infected with this
prion, they would then get the same disease.

Okay. So we know if you eat the nervous
tissue, then that could be an issue.

And most likely people hypothesize
that Mad Cow Disease in Britain started

when they changed the way, the way the
meat waste products were distributed.

Namely, what that people did, is
you would collect meat products,

and that could be from cows, from
sheep, from all others, you know.

And then you would process this to make a meat
powder, which you would then feed to the cows

to quickly have them gain
weight and produce more milk.

Okay? So now, basically, you're
giving the cows who are --

whose GI tract is really evolved to
eat grass, very low, low quality,

you could say food, low-calorie food.

You now feed it a carnivore diet.

And most likely, in that process, when you now
fed them these waste products, all ground up

and processed, that contains the prions from the
sheep, which, in sheep, it's called "scrapie",

and then that let it be expressed in cows.

And then when these cows were slaughtered
again, you would then take their waste products

as placeholders [phonetic], and you
would then feed it to other cows.

And so that's most likely
how Mad Cow Diseases start.

And the quickest way is to
stop by not doing that anymore.

But it's, you know, I'm not saying
that eating meat would be harmful.

But possibly, if you never were exposed to
it, then your GI tract may not be able to cope

with the scrapie, or with the prion
or other things that may be occurring.

So that's when you step outside of it.

And then let me do a different one.

This is a very interesting one about rats.

It's an old study by Campbell and
Campbell, or it's really about,

it's really by Wells, even older, in 1976.

You take rats and you give
them a low-dose aflatoxin,

which is a very powerful carcinogenic
agent that will induce tumors in cancer

in most people, if a dosage high enough.

But you give them a very low dose.

And what is interesting is you get these
normal rats, you get this low dose.

And then you have them eat the normal rat Chow,
and then cancer is expressed in all the animals.

Now what you do is you change --
and you change the rat chow to food.

Because basically, what the
what is the rat food?

It's a little rat pellets, but it's
also has a lot of milk products in it,

milk protein called "casein" in it.

But I think from an evolutionary perspective,
rats never drank milk or milk products.

I mean they eat everything, probably not
milk, so their body probably did not know how

to process this, then it's an allostatic load.

What is so interesting is when you reduce the
consumption of -- in the foods to 5% of casein,

then when you give them this
aflatoxin, it would induce cancer.

The cancer does not occur.

So you can see as if the casein
increases, or reduces the immune response,

or ability, and allows the cancer to occur.

Again, from my simplistic perspective, is
that rats never ate milk or milk products,

so this is a novelty, and
then there's a long-term cost.

There's some evidence, in human
beings, that eating lower animal --

lower levels of animal protein is
associated of lower cancer rate.

So the more veggies and fruits you
eat, the -- probably the better it is.

It is not as clear because the Inuit
people, in the, in the Arctic, eat mainly,

historically ate mainly animal
products, lots of fats

and blubber, and they did not develop cancer.

So that it may not be as clear as it all looks.

But you know, living in harmony,
with your evolutionary past,

may give hope for a number of disorders.

I'm going to make a whole
long list for a moment.

There's some suggested -- some
suggestions, that even epilepsy in children,

and epilepsy is a complex disease, it's not
simple, but for some, can be at least controlled

by eating a total ketogenic diet.

This is very hard to do.

And just eating -- and for them, if
you put them on a ketogenic diet,

then if they just eat one cupcake, which would
then be a refined flour, would trigger seizures.

There are many other factors, but this is at
least one, the person could have control over.

Two, I alluded to the cancers,
giving a low dose of Aflatoxin..

But this may also suggest that possibly,
what the foods we're now eating,

some of are so strange, and not
part of our evolutionary background,

that it may do something for
us as equally in a similar way.

We just don't know.

And then there's a case of, again, which you
will watch, multiple sclerosis, by Terry Wahls,

who has severe multiple sclerosis.

She adopts a hunting and gathering diet, and
then their diet reverses her M.S. totally.

You know, there are case examples,
but I think they give hints.

And then we need to think of foods.

I mean, we, you know, when look at your
tissue, look at your hand for a moment.

Look at -- remember, every cell in
your body, everything, your whole body,

is built, created from the foods we ate.

If you eat -- you know, think
of building a house.

If you have very good materials,
and you have a very good plan,

then the house will be very strong.

The plan could be your genetics
and the epigenetics.

But even with a very good map plan,
if you have poor materials, the house,

or the building you're making, will not be
as good, and would be in danger of collapse.

And think of it this way, and
now much of our foods for eating,

and partly because of the greener
revolution, which has been great.

It allows all of us to have
enough -- plenty of foods.

So this is there is always a balance, but
our Mona culture, and our processed foods,

may eliminate many important micronutrients.

You know, we're not aware of what we need.

Two, our pesticides and herbicides.

I'm just thinking of Monsanto's Roundup,
we'll do this later when we talk about food,

are carcinogenic and immune
suppressant, you know?

And then there's lots of
evidence that we -- that our --

the foods we eat may, or the lack of foods we
eat, may be a cause of a number of illnesses.

Just think of going back
during the ages of the --

-- you know, just think back of the age of
sailing, where sailors got scurvy, you know.

But why did they get scurvy?

Scurvy -- because the foods they
were eating was either pickled.

They were they were not getting enough
vitamin C, so they lost their teeth.

There's a massive death rate
of sailors due to scurvy.

It wasn't until the observation was made
that when they ate limes, citrus fruit,

which contained vitamin C, there are many foods
that have more Vitamin C, they don't say --

they start to eat those, then
they could solve that disease.

And then in the late 19th century, you know,
with the advent of the result of colonialization

in the -- in much of the world, and the
idea that brown rice was sort of, well,

that's for common people,
that white rice was best.

But the trouble was, by eating white rice,
you get rid of the Vitamin B1, thiamine,

and that led then to a very serious
neuro -- neurological disease, Beriberi.

You know, it was because we
started not eat the whole foods.

There's so many of these, we can think about.

Okay? Let me do another one
here about Spina Bifida.

Spina Bifida, you know, is really that the spine
does not close of the little -- of the fetus.

However, it can totally be almost
avoided, at least decreased, if the,

if the food contains enough folic acid.

But what do you get folic acid by?

By eating spinach, asparagus, turnips,
greens, legumes, many of these.

And organ meats, such as liver
and kidney, all can take folate.

You don't need to take a pill.

You have to eat the right foods.

So when I see these, that we need to
add these, these substance to the foods,

it's really telling me, we're
eating the wrong foods.

Okay? And I already talked about Vitamin C. Or
think of Omega 3, or fatty, you know, fish oils.

You know, the data looks very good,
that mothers, who are at high risk,

that's genetic for allergic disease, when they
got Omega 3 some 21 weeks of gestation to birth,

that there was a significant decrease
in eczema, egg allergies, and others.

Notice, it almost -- it went from 12% for the
controls, who didn't get it, to 7%, 15 to 9.

Most likely, if the mothers had had from the
beginning, at the beginning of pregnancy,

maybe these numbers would leave me much better.

And this a result at age one, so notice
the long-lasting cost by having a diet

that is low in Omega 3, at least.

And our diet right now is massively weighted
to Omega 6s, which is highly inflammatory,

because so much of the foods we eat are --
include corn oils, etc., which are all Omega 6s.

Okay? But even a changed behavior, if you
give Omega 3 supplements for six months.

And that's a double-blind
study for 8 to 16 year olds.

You know, overall, what you see
is that sort of reduction in --

significantly in behavior problems.

It's just really remarkable.

Okay.

And now I'm going to shift again to diet one
more time, going back to the exposure of getting

to food poisoning, which so often occurs
in our modern diet, where all of a sudden,

thousands of people die, or hundreds
of people die, and some -- or get sick.

And a few die because they ate
hamburgers, or even the romaine lettuce.

Here's one of romaine lettuce.

But the question really is, what caused it?

And in most cases, we would see it's caused,
basically, you know, by E. coli, right?

But look at -- but I would want to
argue that it's really what we have done

with the -- with our cows and our animals.

So let me take you through a
little story, why we get --

possibly one pathway, we get food
poisoning in one case, and not in the other.

Okay. The normal diet of a cow is
basically somehow grass, as is on the left,

but now we bring them to a feedlot
where they're getting a lot of grains.

The reason you do this, because
they'll bulk up very quickly.

However, the gastrointestinal
tract of a cow is not really --

it did, you know, from an evolutionary
perspective, it does not to have to process it.

And it changes the pH in the
cow, in the in the fecal mass.

Okay. And so if you look at that, at the --

if you look at the manure cattle
eating grass, is about 7.3.

Well, the manure of cattle at feedlots, with
grain, which is very high caloric value, is 5.3.

Now why is this important?

Okay. All the manure in cows contain E. coli,

but there are many different
versions of E. coli.

And they're the one that lets
us get sick, really get sick.

is the E. coli 0157.

That is an E. coli that's survives at a
very low pH, a much more acidic condition.

And notice, that if the manure of the cow is --

that eats grass is 7.3, there will
be a very low number of this E. coli,

because they would really survive
well at this higher pH. And then

when that cow gets slaughtered,
keep that in mind,

then probably sometimes the intestinal
contents contaminates the meat.

Now you eat your hamburger,
with the contamination in it.

But since it is the E. coli
that survives at 7.3,

when you now eat it, it goes into your stomach.

But the stomach is a pH of two, and
those E. coli essentially all get killed.

And so you don't get sick.

Now, on the other hand, if you're eating
-- if you're eating meat from the cattle,

from a feedlot, that has been eating
the mainly grain, its manure is 5.3.

And then it's in -- and you see a thousand
times more E. coli, you know, 0157,

which is the one that is really --
makes us very sick, as I pointed out.

And when you now -- and then I
multiply in the meter [phonetic] or so.

And now when you eat them, they go through
your stomach, but now they can survive this pH,

this acid [inaudible], and 10% survive that,

and then they start multiplying this
lethal infection in their intestines.

So that is really the big difference.

So the cure is probably not to try
to give antibiotics or anything else.

We would say maybe we should think
of the evolutionary background.

What should cattle be eating
to reduce [inaudible]?

So if we fed the cows hay or grass,
then the pH would stay up to 7.3,

and we would reduce the odds of having
this E. coli 0157, be present in the foods.

Because now, if the cattle that has the --

is from the feedlot is slaughter,
the meat is contaminated.

Now, when you eat it, you potentially get sick.

But moreover, the manure of this
cattle, at 5.3, drifts over fields

where there may be spinach is grown, or other
foods are grown, or a worker carries this

on their boots and goes to those
fields, or goes through the water.

Then all of a sudden, you are spraying some
fields or vegetables with this E. coli 0157,

and then you can get sick by
eating even the vegetables.

Okay, I think that's enough.

Okay? And then there's so many
other factors, I can keep going,

that the foods we eat also change our bacteria.

Remember, the foods we eat affect which
colonies of bacteria increase or decrease.

But most of the foods, we now eat, look
the same, and are totally different.

Almost all the grain, corn, soy,
processed foods and meats contain low level

of Monsanto's produced herbicides, Roundup,
and other herbicides and pesticides.

And those -- and they, in fact, suppress
some of the healthy human biome bacteria,

and allow the more pathological
ones to continue.

Possibly, this, we may have
messed up, they go back

and think how we're living in the first place.

Remember, we are an ecological system.

I want to underline this.

We -- and now move even more to a
slight different perspective on this,

to some illnesses that evolved with
parasites, bacteria and viruses, you know.

And when we eliminate some of those bacteria
or parasites, the balance is disrupting.

The pathology can occur.

Some of you have experienced that
already when you've taken antibiotics.

Often more women may have experienced that
more -- when they have no problems at all,

then they took an antibiotics
even, even maybe for acne.

And then the antibiotic not only killed a
whole class of bacteria in their GI tract,

but also in the vaginal barrel, and
then they developed a yeast infection.

Because when you remove certain groups
of bacteria, others will take over.

So what is critical is the
balance, and I want to talk about.

And that's all that you'll be
reading in the book by Blaser,

which really looks at the human biome.

But I want to go back now for a moment
about our parasites, bacteria and viruses.

We've lived with those forever.

We live in symbiosis.

That is really where the bacteria are
mutual, you know, we live together.

And they're in different categories.

In mutualism, we both benefit, and
many bacteria benefit by living

with us, and we benefit from them.

Then there's commensal, which is where one
benefits, but not the other one doesn't.

There's no harm, you know.

And the final one is very truly a parasite,
where one benefits and the other one is harmed,

and the harm can be very [inaudible].

If you're intrigued in parasites, specifically,
a great older book, which I really like is

by Rob Dunn, "The Wildlife of our Bodies".

It's really the epidemic of absence.

It's a way of understanding
autoimmune illnesses, you know.

But let me give this as an example.

In the 1930s and 40s, nearly
half American children had worms.

And if you go all around the
world, in third-world countries,

except in a weird [phonetic] world, that's
Western, educated, industrialized, rich,

democratic countries, many people
had little worms, you know,

sometimes like whipworms and others.

In most cases, they were very benign,
unless you had too many of them.

There are some bits you never want to get.

Okay. And one way that, in the 1930s, most of
people had it, just like your dog has worms

at times, okay, but to it -- but usually
the way you would avoid getting worms is

that you would not have to
walk on human fecal mass.

So what you then did is,
but you, if you wore shoes

and used indoor toilet, you're
less likely to get it.

But what is so interesting is that a disease
called "Crohn disease" did not exist in places

where people -- generally didn't have
place where people have intestinal worms.

But as the intestinal worms have become
very rare, which we have done in the US,

and many other places, all
of a sudden, we get this --

much worse, and the whole serious
illness called "Crohn's disease".

Now worms is always relevant.

Having a few worms in you, and
many of you -- they would --

you would intake them, and they would
multiply you, you would excrete the eggs,

and it would be one cycle
till you get reinfected.

Others could be very harmful.

But in many cases, they could be more, you
know, they would just do a tiniest harm.

It's only if you're highly malnutritioned,

and other issues were going
on, that it was very harmful.

And remember, I want to underline again,
most people had experience of worms

until the 20th century, but by
having better hygiene, wearing shoes,

and children are now growing up
without ever having had worms.

And the worms can live in our, you
know, GI tract, or a bloodstream.

I'm not recommending them in a bloodstream.

And to survive, however, to survive
within the host, worms must interact with,

and change those immune system, you see.

And some worms can cause disease, but
many are not possibly even harmful,

and may even be beneficial
for our immune system.

That's hard to believe, I know, conceptually.

But you could argue, if we live for as
long as we know, with some parasites,

our immune system would then be
in a kind of balance with the,

with these parasites, or with these worms.

And also, if you take these worms away, then
our immune system may not know how to cope.

So it is now believed that the inflammatory
bowel diseases, such as Crohn's disease,

is really partial -- is partially caused
by dysregulation of mucosal immune system.

You know, so we see this massive
increase in Crohn's disease.

If, on the other hand, if during childhood,
you get exposures to helminths, that's worms,

they somehow talk to your immune
system, or they produce something

which tells the immune system, "Hey, slow down.

I'm just here as a passenger.

I won't do too much.

Just keep it cool."

I'm making this up.

And then the as if it -- it
dampens down the inflammation.

But without that experience, the immune
system has no, has no way to change.

And this is one of the hypothesized
Joel Weinstock,

and he has done some very
interesting studies on using helminth,

parasitic worms, to help the immune system.

As I pointed out earlier,
the disease, Crohn's disease,

is a very difficult illness on our GI tract.

It's where our immune system is attacking,

and when it causes horrible
abdominal pain, skin rashes, right?

It's just truly difficult.

Okay? It's just a disaster.

And it now estimates 1/3rd, three million
people have this, at least in the United States.

And one of the ways, if you think about
it, how come Crohn's disease does not exist

in third world countries,
because people have worms?

That's a hypothesis, by the way, but people
have been doing episodic experiments on this.

And now in a more systematic study by
Joel Weinstock, he took chronic people,

with chronic Crohn's disease,
they now gave them worms.

Now, you know, whipworm, it's just benign.

It doesn't do any harm.

You know, you put little eggs in it.

You don't even know you're swallowing them.

And what happened in this study of these 29
patients, four patients, "Oh, yuck, worms.

I don't want to do this."

So they got a medication
to get rid of the worms.

But in 24 weeks, all by one patient was
doing -- 21 patients were in remission.

Now, that is remarkable.

Their bodies were much healthier than
when they had -- now, they had parasites.

And so, you know, this is very suggestive,
and it's a similar model you see later,

as you'll be reading in the book by Blaser,
about the whole part of our human biome,

that when they're empty, then there's absence.

And remember to underline, going back
again to the inflammatory GI disorders,

promising remedial acts against
irritable bowel disease,

and other allergic autoimmune
illnesses, is helminth therapy.

It can also be probably bacterial
therapy, or human biome therapy.

Cure with helminth therapy seems
to me that was effective therapy

in the irritable bowel disease
currently proposed.

Okay? And now I'll jump even more
that the human biome is active

and a vital participant in our lives.

Remember, more than a half of your -- of the
DNA in your body are bacteria, our human biome.

And that's critical.

So do look at the book like Blaser.

And we get these exposures to these
different ones, in many different ways.

You know, kids play in the dirt.

Eating dirt is very helpful.

You know, you know, our GI tract,
these bacteria produce serotonin.

And many, in fact, interestingly,
many of our antibiotics are derived

from material, you know, grown in dirt.

So play the dirt.

It's much better.

Okay? And maybe we shouldn't be
using so many antimicrobial soaps.

You know, possibly, yes, if you know
someone is infectious, do wash your hands.

And after bathroom, use -- wash your hands.

But most likely, don't use antimicrobial
soaps, because basically, you are developing --

you get rid of the healthy bacteria, and
maybe leave a place for unhealthy bacteria.

And as I said earlier, our human body is made of
many cells, at least half of those in our body,

so more are bacterial, non-human cells.

It's most interesting.

And there's so many factors that affect the gut
bacteria, which includes the birthing process,

the breastfeeding exposure,
dirt, antibiotic exposures, diet.

And they all are interactive.

And I think, on that note, I will stop.

But keep thinking of the
evolutionary background.

What are you doing now, that your great, great,
great grandparents would have no idea about?

It -- and it's likely that those novelties could
be harmful, or increase in allostatic load,

and it could be a co-contributor to many
of these inflammatory diseases we have now.