I’ve been talking to you about one of your most important organs…your gut.
I was lucky enough to visit one of Africa’s last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes.
And today, I want to tell you how you can use the gut secret of the healthiest people on earth.
Primal Diets In Other Parts Of The World
They’re called the Hadza — and they are one of the lasT remaining hunter-gatherer groups in all of Africa.
During my travels in Tanzania, I was fortunate enough to meet them.
This tribe provides an excellent glimpse into how our ancient ancestors lived. And the kind of food they ate for more than 90% of our existence.
They have no crops and no livestock. They eat what they can kill and gather from their land.
They’re living proof that eating a primal meal plan leads to optimal health.
And they remain so healthy because they have the world’s strongest guts — the community of hundreds of billions of microscopic bacteria, viruses and fungi that live there.
These microbes aren’t human cells. In fact, they outnumber your human cells by at least 10 to 1. Your body is their host and they interact with your human cells in ways that we’re just beginning to understand.
Researchers used to think that gut microbes were there to help you digest your food. That’s true, but there’s more to it than that…
Your gut plays a key Role in your body’s defense against disease.1 It’s no coincidence that at least 80% of your immune system lives in your gut lining.
You see, a healthy gut is made up of both “good” and “bad” bacteria. The number and richness of different microbes in your gut is directly linked to a lower risk of chronic disease.
In other words, the so-called “bad” bugs are an integral part of your microbial community, too. And they have some — yet undiscovered — important purpose.
US Wellness carries primal foods from nose to tail including these Beef Marrow Canoe Bones
When researchers analyzed the gut microbes of the Hadza, they found thriving communities of Prevotella and Treponema. In the developed world, these so-called bad bacteria are responsible for respiratory infections and diseases like syphilis and yaws, an infection of the skin, bones and joints. Yet in the Hadza, they work as good bacteria, aiding the breakdown of fiber.2
In fact, the Hadza have a 40% more diverse gut microbiome than the average Western person.
When your gut microbes break down fiber, they produce a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate that protects you from several modern diseases — including cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
But we have a problem…
Our modern world is constantly attacking our gut. The biggest Issue is what we eat. Our Western diet, which has unnaturally been loaded with starches and refined sugars, is wiping out entire species of bacteria from our gut.
But food is just one of our problems. Chlorinated drinking water, an overabundance of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs are all microbiome killers.
Those so-called high-fiber cereals and such contain so much sugar, starch and additives that the benefit of any fiber that might be in it is canceled almost immediately.
We need real fiber from fruits, vegetables and beans. Real high-fiber in your foods encourages the growth of new bacteria populations in your gut.
And Primal health depends on mass populations of good and bad bacteria living together in a balanced harmony.
Fortunately, you can change your meal plan to alter the composition of your microbiome. This will repopulate Beneficial bacteria that disappeared from the developed world generations ago. Unfortunately, yogurt and most probiotics won’t get you there.
Get a Hunter-Gatherer “Hadza Gut” with My 4 Easy “Rs”
You can get a healthy Hadza gut in four easy steps:
1. Remove gut-destroying toxins from your eating plan
The top offenders destroying your microbiome include carbage — the starchy processed junk that passes for food today: grains and starches, refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, GMO products, gluten, excess alcohol, emulsifiers (chemicals that help foods stay together), unhealthy oils (canola and corn), and proteins that contain antibiotics and hormones.
2. Repair your gut with both pre- and probiotics
Help your gut bugs flourish by feeding them a prebiotic called inulin. This special fiber reaches the large intestine intact and feeds good microbes. Good sources are bananas, asparagus, onions, garlic, leeks and artichokes. The baobab fruit — a staple in the Hadza diet — is another important prebiotic.
The best probiotics come from fermented foods like kefir, kvass, sauerkraut and kombucha tea. Cooked seaweed is another good gut choice. Good microbes hitchhike into your gut on raw seaweed.
3. Re-establish your Primal power with the right workout
Research shows that exercising improves your gut balance. In one study, researchers put 32 sedentary adults on an exercise program for six weeks. Gut samples before and after showed that working out produces more good gut bacteria. And those bugs produced butyrate. This short-chain fatty acid promotes aids digestion, generates energy, reduces inflammation, prevents leaky gut, wards off diabetes, prevents depression and protects against colon cancer.
I advise my patients to boost their gut bugs with a simple 12-minute routine from my PACE exercise program. With PACE, your goal is to hit a peak of intensity in a short time frame and then rest. Tune in to my YouTube channel for a complete set of gut-boosting workouts.
4. Restore your missing food group
Like the Hadza, our ancestors ate an entirely different food group than we do today… One that helped them to thrivE in very challenging environments.
I call this the “missing” food group because it has pretty much disappeared from our modern diet.
Your body evolved to derive nutrients from almost every part of an animal. When your primal ancestors went hunting for a woolly mammoth and big cats, nothing of what they caught was wasted. They ate everything.
From nose to tail, brain to bones, they devoured it all. And it turned our ancestors into the humans we are today. Some of this missing food group includes organ meats like liver, kidney, heart and gizzards, bone marrow, collagen, cartilage and skin. These “forgotten” foods are packed with every key nutrient your body needs.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS
DID YOU FIND THE RED LETTERS?: TRIBE
Now you’re ready to fill your shopping cart with tasty, nutritious grass-fed, wild-caught, and free range favorites! Use the Red Letter Discount Code to save. This Discount Code is valid Sunday, May 5 – Wednesday, May 8, 2019. That’s 96 hours to save!
- Discount code cannot be applied to previous orders.
- Applies to any order under 40 lbs.
- Excludes sale items, volume discounts, and gift certificates.
Please note, discount codes cannot be applied to items that are already on sale or discounted.
Visit our Discover Blog to read more Dr. Sears articles.
Books & DVD’s: Al Sears MD
Healthy Supplements: Primal Force
Natural Beauty Solutions: Pure Radiance
References:
1. Lozupone CA. “Unraveling interactions between the microbiome and the host immune system to decipher mechanisms of disease.” mSystems. 2018;3(2):e00183-e00217.
2. Schnorr SL, et al. “Gut microbiome of the Hadza hunter-gatherers.” Nat Commun. 2014;5:3654.
