Medical Associates Clinic

 Quality Care Close To Home

Gettysburg Medical News
 The Clinical View
 by P.E. Hoffsten, MD
 12 April 2006

WHAT WAS IT LIKE 10,000 YEARS AGO?

            The gentleman was 58 years old and had returned from a trip to the cardiologist/cardiac surgeons where he had just had double coronary artery bypass surgery after a heart attack.   He was very fortunate to have survived the heart attack and the surgery without any permanent damage to his heart.  But he was in turmoil now, resentful that he was being advised to take medications, change his diet and change his lifestyle.  He was a governmental official with substantial responsibilities that he took very seriously.  He obtained relatively little sleep and ate excessively “to keep going.”  Like most South Dakota males, he was invincible and had not seen a healthcare provider for 15 years prior to his heart attack.  In his mind, there was nothing wrong with him and he hadn’t needed “check-ups”.  He said that he had lived in South Dakota all his life.  He had always felt that it was a healthy place, not one of those big city places with its air pollution.

            Now he was being asked to take a pill for his cholesterol and a pill for his high blood pressure.  He was advised that he needed to change his diet and lose the 40 pounds that had crept in on him over the last 30 years.  In his 20’s, he had been proud to be an athlete playing city league basketball but that all stopped when he got serious about his job in his 30’s and thereafter.  He said that he just couldn’t understand how it all got so complicated.  Why did all this happen to him?

            He seemed an intelligent individual and was an amateur archeologist.  He had read extensively about what little was known of the Native American population 1000’s of years ago.  This seemed to be a handle on which to try to reason with him.   The first question I asked him was, “How often do you think our Native American ancestors 10,000 years ago had a candy bar for lunch on the run?”  He had already told me that was something that he did frequently.  He was just too busy to stop for lunch so he would have a candy bar or two candy bars if he was really hungry.  He laughed and said he knew that our ancestors never did that.

            I asked him, “How often do you think that the women of the family 10,000 years went to the grocery store to get all the ingredients of that wonderful lasagna that you love?”   He had volunteered that he would eat three helpings of at supper.  He already told me that he often ate large amounts at night when he came home for supper because he had eaten so little during the day.  In his mind, he needed to catch up on what he was eating at night because a person simply had to have three meals a day.

            Nest I asked him, “How often do you think our ancestors sat down for three meals a day on schedule” and he said, “All the time.”  I told him to think about that and project back what it was like living in a cave or a tent.  There was no evening news to tell you what the weather was going to be like the next day and there wasn’t a garden in the back yard.  There was no freezer full of meat and no refrigerator with fresh milk.  I asked if he thought they got a standard three meals a day.  He agreed that it was probably unlikely that our ancestors ate on a regular basis.

            I then asked if he then had any thoughts about the theories of evolution.  He acknowledged that the concept seemed to have some merit although Darwin’s theory is still being debated and seems to have some inconsistencies that don’t explain all of what we see about us today.  But modern scientific studies of DNA have established what appear to be some very incredible findings.  Specifically, we have found human beings that, by accident, were incased in ice 1000’s of years ago.  Their DNA can still be analyzed.  When compared to our own today, there doesn’t seem to be a particle of difference in the last 10,000 years.  One portion of Darwin’s theory that does seem to be correct is that the genetically fit species survive.  This means that the most genetically fit humans were best adapted to their environment and their diet 10,000 years ago.  But as pointed out above, their diet was nothing close to what ours is today.

            They didn’t have concentrated sweets such as candy bars, cake and pie.  They didn’t even have concentrated sugar.  Data from manufacturer records and population studies indicate that the average sugar intake in 1815 in the United States and England was around 10 pounds per year.  Today, it is over 150 pounds per year.  That concentrated sugar puts a strain on our pancreas that our ancestors from 10,000 years ago never experienced.

            Our ancestors didn’t have a salt shaker.  They didn’t have a shaker of Morton’s salt in the cabinet.  Their daily salt intake is estimated to be less than 2 grams per day.  A low salt diet in our society is 6 grams per day and a normal salt diet in our society is 10 grams per day.  We already know that high salt diets are associated with high blood pressure.  Examination of those unfortunate few who were frozen 10,000 years ago shows little or no atherosclerotic change in their arteries but our unfortunate war casualties of today show that there is already atherosclerotic change in our 20 year olds.

            I explained to the gentleman that his genetic makeup was the same as and came from “hunter gatherer” humans that lived 10,000 years ago.  That genetic makeup that they had was in no way adapted for what we do today.  We have overcome the things that resulted in their early deaths such as infections, accidents and injuries, drought, famine, and attacks by wild animals.  Our overcoming those obstacles in today’s world has unmasked the diseases that kill us today.  Specifically, over-nutrition with concentrated sweets and too much salt, not enough exercise and the resulting disease of our blood vessels gives us strokes and heart attacks.  Our genetic makeup in no way prepared us for the plethora of food that we have today.  Next week’s column will address a study to test the idea that limiting excess nutrition does make a difference.