Chapter 2: Clues to Optimal Gene Expression Flashcards
What is the primary human fuel source?
Through selection pressure, we evolved to use fat as our primary fuel source—both ingested fat from animal products and stored body fat when meals were inconsistent, such as in the wintertime or during times of famine.
True or False
As long as we obtain our foods from the tremendously broad categories of meat, fish, fowl, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, we can be healthy and obtain maximum pleasure from our meals.
True
Law #2: Avoid Poisonous Things
71 percent of the calories in the Standard American Diet come from foods that were entirely absent prior to civilization: sugary foods and beverages, refined grains (wheat, corn, rice, pasta, cooking grains, and breakfast cereals), and industrial/chemically altered vegetable oils.
True or False
Chemically altered fats can lead to systemic inflammation, heart disease and death.
True
Harvard epidemiologists estimate that chemically-altered fats are responsible for between 72,000 and 228,000 cases of heart disease and 50,000 deaths each year
True or False
Engaging in regular, structured workouts can enable you to avoid getting “active couch potato syndrome.”
False
Even a devotion to regular, structured workouts is insufficient to protect against a general pattern of prolonged sedentary periods and lifestyle circumstances, such as commuting, working a desk job, and indulging in digital entertainment.
What is “Chronic Cardio?”
Cardio workouts that occur too frequently at a pace that is slightly too difficult and for too long in duration, thus leading to fatigue and burnout.
Law #4: Lift Heavy Things
Brief, intense exercise sessions involving functional, full-body movements support muscle development and delay aging. You can get really fit doing only two 10- to 30-minute strength training sessions per week in conjunction with frequent movement and occasional all-out sprints.
What are the 4 Primal Essential Movements?
- Push-ups
- Pull-ups
- Planks
- Squats
True or False
The longer your strength training sessions are, the faster progress you will make towards your strength and fitness goals.
False
Spending an hour in the gym several days a week doing assorted isolation exercises to build huge guns or calves can stimulate the prolonged release of stress hormones that have a catabolic (breakdown) effect on your body.
True or False
The longer and more frequent your strength training sessions are, the faster progress you will make towards your strength and fitness goals.
False
Spending an hour in the gym several days a week doing assorted isolation exercises to build huge guns or calves can stimulate the prolonged release of stress hormones that have a catabolic (breakdown) effect on your body.
Two 10- to 30-minute strength training sessions per week in conjunction with frequent movement and occasional all-out sprints are sufficient to get really fit.
Law #5:
Sprint Once in a While
Engaging in an all-out sprint (or a no impact all-out effort, such as on a stationary bike or other cardio machine), the fight-or-flight response is activated and a cascade of adaptive hormones enters the bloodstream.
True or False
Sprint workouts should be brief and intense.
True
A workout lasting only a few minutes triggers your genes to work for hours or even days building muscle, improving energy production inside your cells, accelerating fat metabolism, and generally delaying the aging process.
Law #6:
Get Plenty of Sleep
Minimizing artificial light and digital stimulation after dark, and instead engaging in calm, mellow evenings filled with reading, socializing and evening strolls, you recalibrate your hormones to better align with your circadian rhythm.
True or False
The hormones Melatonin and Cortisol are secreted into the blood stream when it gets dark to enable you to transition to sleep.
False
Melatonin is secreted when it gets dark, and Serotonin and Cortisol are secreted in response to light in the morning to prepare you for the day.
What is Dim Light Melatonin Onset (DLMO)?
The process whereby the genes trigger the release of the hormone melatonin into the bloodstream, prompting the familiar sleepiness that allows you to transition into bedtime and an optimal cycling through all phases of sleep.
True or False
Play has not been proven scientifically to enhance our health and well-being.
False
Play has been scientifically proven to increase work productivity, improve our ability to manage stress, and enhance self-esteem, social competency, and creativity.
True or False
Experts believe that our ancestors engaged in far less play than we do now due to the dangers of selection pressures and the constant time demands of foraging and gathering food.
False
Studies of the !Kung bushmen, modern day hunter-gatherers in Africa, reveal that around six hours per day are spent engaging in unstructured play and social bonding. Experts believe that play served important purposes for our ancestors, such as helping to unwind from the stress of everyday primal life, improving social bonding in clans, and gaining valuable rehearsal of skills that were applicable to actual life-or-death challenges, but under risk-free and pressure-free circumstances.
True or False
Sun is by far the preferred method for obtaining healthy levels of Vitamin D.
True
Is Vitamin D obtained from the sun stored longer in the body than that obtained from supplements?
Yes.
True or False
Regular suntanning is a great way to overdose on Vitamin D.
False
Overdosing from Vitamin D obtained via the sun is virtually impossible.
What are some of the problems associated with Vitamin D deficiency?
Vitamin D helps regulate growth in virtually every cell of your body, increase cancer risk by compromising the function of the P53 “spellchecker” gene that is responsible for regulating healthy cell division, can also cause cardiovascular illness, cognitive impairment, poor bone health, sex hormone deficiencies, and renal difficulties.
True or False
Even small parts of the body, such as the face, neck and hands, can generate sufficient amounts of Vitamin D to meet the minimum daily requirements.
False
The goal is to expose large surface areas of your skin to moderate amounts of direct sunlight during the appropriate times of day and year to achieve optimal vitamin D production.
True or False
A primal-aligned eater consuming oily, coldwater fish, leafy greens and shitake mushrooms can get as much Vitamin D as a 30-minute sunbathing session on a summer day.
False
A 30-minute sunbathing session on a summer day can produce around 10,000 International Units (I.U.) of vitamin D, while a primal-aligned eater consuming vitamin D-rich foods might only get 1,000 I.U. on a good day.
Law #9:
Avoid Stupid Mistakes
Our ancestors were constantly aware of potential dangers in their immediate environment, while we have been anesthetized to modern environmental dangers by distraction, overstimulation, and a false sense of security.
True or False
Multitasking is a great way to remain hypervigilant and focused.
False
Multitasking nearly always results in a failed effort to increase productivity.
Law #10:
Use Your Brain
Engage in creative and stimulating activities to nurture your mental health and overall well-being
According to Robert Heinlein, should humans strive to specialize?
No. Heinlein believed that “Specialization is for insects.”
True or False
Survival of the fittest is the most apt term to describe how humans evolved over the course of 2.5 million years.
False
Darwinian evolution suggests that species adapt to environmental selection pressures by the process of random mutation and natural selection. The genetically fortunate then pass their unique traits onto offspring, and eventually the longer beaks or lighter skin proliferate in the gene pool over ensuing generations.
True or False
The random mutation of lighter skin pigment provided a competitive advantage over dark skin in obtaining Vitamin D from the sun at higher latitudes.
True
What were the two main selection pressures humans have faced throughout our history?
Starvation and predator danger.
True or False
We have not evolved as a species since primal times because civilization has eliminated our most important selection pressures.
True
True or False
Hominids are the last surviving human sub-species
False
Homo floresiensis is believed to be the last surviving subspecies, having become extinct around 13,000 years ago in the area that is now Indonesia. Hominids are our pre-human ancestors who split from apes seven million years ago.
When did Homo Sapiens first appear?
The earliest evidence of our Homo sapiens mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome ancestors came out of from East Africa around 160,000 years ago.
What is meant by the term “gene-culture evolution?”
Our accelerated evolutionary timeline occurred because the increase in brain size that characterized the progression to Homo sapiens delivered huge rewards to successive generations, better tools, more mastery over the environment, and more flexibility to adapt to climate changes.
What is “variability selection?”
The process of adapting to climate change skillfully
Where is the Levant?
The eastern Mediterranean, the location of present-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel.
Describe what is meant by “environmental gates.”
Climate swings such as glacial movement that enabled migration to thrive for limited time windows. Over the centuries, gates opened and closed all over the globe, and humans followed accordingly.
True or False
Weather gates throughout history have served to enable humans to expand into new areas and thrive.
False
As weather patterns change, weather gates can trap humans in areas with unfavorable climates and stifle their progress with not only migration but also survival.
How many humans were estimated to be alive approx. 85,000 years ago?
There were only an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 African humans living at that time
True or False
The original human migration from Africa into Europe was driven by weather gates that prompted them to travel in this direction.
False
Weather gates prompted the original successful human migration out of Africa to travel east, through present-day India and into Indonesia.
True or False
Marine food sources were easier to obtain than hunting big game on the African savannah and were particularly important for the development of the distinctive human trait of a complex brain.
True
When and why was the eruption of Mt. Toba and important factor in the story of human migration?
Approximately 73,000 years ago, it triggered an instant six-year nuclear winter and 1000-year ice age that halted human expansion across the globe
True or False
One major difference between humans and Neanderthals is that humans had more robust builds that made them better suited to handle ice ages and colder temperatures.
False
Neanderthals’ robust builds were well suited to handle ice ages and colder temperatures further north of the equator. However, they were less locomotive than humans were and therefore unable to hunt successfully through some severe weather fluctuation periods that coincided with their extinction.
True or False
Nearly all living humans carry some Neanderthal DNA.
True
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred when they crossed paths in Europe, from around 50,000 to 30,000 years ago. Today, scientists confirm that virtually everyone in the world except indigenous sub-Saharan Africans carry some Neanderthal DNA.
Despite their physical heartiness, what factor likely made Neanderthals less locomotive, and therefore led to their rapid extinction, than Homo Sapiens?
Neanderthals required an estimated 30 percent more energy to run or walk than Homo sapiens due to lower limb proportions.
What are SNPs?
Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms are genetic mutations akin to minor spelling errors within the written instructions (nucleotides) of genes that quite often have little or no effect on the final protein product for which the gene encodes.
True or False
Lactose tolerance among Scandinavians is evidence that evolution, in the form of genetic drift, has continued since the dawn of civilization effectively eliminated all selection pressure.
False
Lifelong lactose tolerance is more the exception that proves the rule. The basic ways we all metabolize food, respond to exercise, or otherwise deal with challenges of our environments remains the same.
True or False
The ability to procreate successfully means that almost all products of random mutation are incorporated into the genome without penalty and passed onto the next generation.
True
How do parental lifestyle choices impact the health of offspring?
Research suggests that lifestyle choices can have a direct genetic impact on offspring. For example, parents who had adverse lifestyle factors during the time of conception (in the case of the male, affecting the vitality of the sperm) and throughout pregnancy impacted the health and genetic expression of the fetus. Maternal and paternal circumstances like post traumatic stress disorder, nutritional deficiencies, sleep deficiencies, and sun exposure deficiencies are revealed in the health of the child.
True or False
Among our Primal ancestors, only the weak, lazy and unfit succumbed to illness, injury, predator attack or other Primal misfortune.
False
Weak, lazy, unfit, or sick humans simply did not exist, as everyone in the clan had to carry their own weight and be able to survive rigorous daily life challenges and responsibilities.
True or False
Human fossil records from 10,000 years ago reveal larger average body size than that of today’s humans but brains that were the roughly the same size.
False
Human fossil records from 10,000 years ago reveal larger average body size than that of today’s humans, a LARGER brain size (1,200 cc cranial capacity compared with 1,010 cc today), and a virtual absence of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dental decay, and other modern afflictions related to current diet and lifestyle practices.
What is the goal of a Primal-aligned lifestyle?
To implement and adapt the Primal Blueprint attributes into the context of our comfortable and safe modern life.
True or False
The average lifespan of a paleolithic human who lived until the age of procreation was 54 years.
False
Life expectancy during the Paleolithic era (2.5 million years ago to 10,000 BC) was around 33 years. If a Primal human was able to overcome primitive hazards and reach puberty, life expectancy increased to age 39. And if one reached 39, he or she could expect to live until 54
Why did lifespan drop so significantly after the advent of agriculture?
From age 33 in pre-civilized humans, life expectancy reached a historic low of 18 during the Bronze Age of 3,300 BC to 1,200 BC due to infectious diseases, warfare, and inferior nutrition to the hunter-gatherer diet.
True or False
From its low during the Bronze Age, human life expectancy didn’t return to its pre-civilization levels again until the 20th century.
True
Life expectancy remained low (between ages 20 and 30) through 1,500 AD and then climbed only gradually over the next few centuries. It hit around 30 in 1800 and around 40 to 50 by 1900 in the United States and Europe.
What factor(s) led Jared Diamond to characterize the advent of agriculture as the “worst mistake in the history of the human race?”
It brought on large-scale disease, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and an inexorable progression to global warfare. He credits this to the “abuse of free time” resulting from the specialization of labor and the pursuit of power over resources, humans, and geography goals that were previously irrelevant in the largely egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies.
Where was wheat first cultivated?
In the Mediterranean Fertile Crescent In Egypt
True or False
South America was not only the last land mass that early humans migrated into but was also the last to witness the development of agriculture.
False
North America was the last geographical area to witness the development of agriculture approx. 4500 years ago.
How might “aging” be best defined?
As a decline in strength, power, speed, endurance, flexibility, and organ reserve, and as an absence of disease or disease risk factors
True or False
According to the principle known as the Hayflick Limit, in the absence of misfortune, our natural maximum lifespan could be characterized biologically as our species/ upper limit on the number of times our cells can divide.
True
What is “apoptosis?”
Programmed cell death
What are “telomeres?”
Short sequences of genes located at the tips of chromosomes.
What does the length of a cell’s telomeres indicate?
The number of times a cell can divide before expiring by apoptosis (programmed cell death).
True or False
Heart and Nerve cells do not divide.
True
Why is telomere length used as a biomarker for aging?
There is evidence that oxidation, free radical damage, glycation, and inflammation, which are all driven largely by poor dietary habits, shorten telomere length.
What is the ultimate goal of Primal living?
Robust health and fitness throughout a maximum life span!
