Transcriber: A. Bentahar Reviewer: Denise RQ
If your doctor had a prescription
that will allow you to avoid 70% of all illness,
would you follow it?
As a physician who has spent her life studying medical science,
the healing traditions of the world and most importantly, my patients,
I want to share with you this one simple prescription:
we need to get into alignment with our evolutionary nature.
Almost everything has changed about our world in the last 10,000 years,
except our basic physiology.
We are earth animals,
we were created to live in 24-hour cycles of light and dark,
to work hard physically, on a daily basis, to provide food and shelter,
and eat mostly plants.
It's not really surprising then that many of us are not well
in a society that runs on artificial light,
long work hours at sedentary jobs, and processed food,
not to mention regular exposure to more than 80,000 chemicals
that we have added to our environment since 1950.
By the way, only 10% of those are actually tested for safety.
What we eat all day, what we do, and what we're exposed to
can leave us feeling tired, depressed,
ill, and isolated.
And in that state,
it's hard to want to do much more than just reach for the remote.
It's hard to be motivated.
We have forgotten what we need to be healthy.
There is a chasm
between the life and environment that we evolved to thrive in
and the life and environment that most of us are living in.
Perhaps the most shocking example of this
is that we will live longer lives than our children will.
For the first time in our country,
our children are expected to have shorter life spans
than their parents.
Our children will suffer and die
from an epidemic of the diseases of civilization:
high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes.
As a mother of three, I find this frightening,
and as a physician, I know this does not need to be our future.
Revolutionary medicine recognizes that we are not isolated organ systems
nor are we even isolated organisms
but we are part of the environment that we live in.
We need to take our evolutionary wisdom
and add it to the necessary revolution in medicine.
So, how do we do this?
If we think of ourselves as human animals, we have basic needs,
and there are five fundamentals that underlie our health:
eating, moving, sleeping,
loving, and making meaning.
Let's start with eating.
Our forebears found calories hard to come by.
We worked hard for food,
and we were evolved to eat small quantities of fresh food.
Our great-grandparents should recognize what we eat as food!
(Laughter)
Hot Cheetos do not qualify!
(Laughter)
The chemicals, pesticides, hormones, salt, fat, and sugar
that we add to processed food
is toxic for us and is toxic for the Earth.
Moving -
we did not evolve to sit behind the desk at a computer all day,
which is why 80% of us have back pain in this country,
and only 10% of people in traditional cultures do.
We need to move on a regular basis; we've forgotten how to hold ourselves.
Moving daily would prevent
every single one of those chronic diseases of civilization.
Coffee -
You can sleep when you're dead!
(Laughter)
I think this is the one that we're worst at,
and it has a profound effect on our health.
We evolved to sleep in the dark,
and to sleep until we're rested.
As late as 1890, people in this country slept 10 hours a night.
Can you imagine? When is the last time you slept 10 hours?
We now sleep less than seven.
It leads to obesity, depression, poor school performance in our kids.
We need to sleep when it's dark, and sleep until we're rested.
Perhaps the most important thing I'm going to tell you about today
is how important love is for your well-being.
Love is essential to every aspect of chronic disease, believe it or not.
We are human animals that were created to be close to one another;
it was necessary for our survival,
and when we receive affection,
a whole cascade of healing neurotransmitters suffuses our body,
helps us be calm.
Loneliness will kill you faster than cigarettes
so get connected to your family and your community like here at TED.
Meaning - we are meaning makers, we can't help it.
What we believe has a profound impact on what we do and how we feel.
Having a sense of meaning and purpose in your life
can actually extend your life span by years.
Our collective sense of meaning is equally important.
If we look at the stories of the native peoples of this Earth
from whom we all originate,
they all believed we are not separate from the earth from which we arise.
We co-evolved with the Earth over thousands of years.
When we get into alignment with our evolutionary nature,
not only are we healthier,
not only are we happier
but we can heal the diseases of civilization
for ourselves and for our future generations.
And when we heal ourselves,
we heal the Earth, as well.
That is revolutionary medicine.
Thank you.
(Applause)