What if you could live to be 100 and be pain and disease free with all of your mental faculties in tact, would you want to extend your life and keep doing what you are doing?
Most people dread the thought of living to be 100 seeing many of the diseases of civilization, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and many others claim their family and friends as they age.
But this is not the way it has to go. There’s a concept called “Compression of Morbidity” which means erasing chronic illness from 95 percent of your life. So you live a healthy life year in and year out until you expire from natural causes.
Although the latest science on longevity points to the Paleo diet and exercise as the key to reaching this fountain of youth, it’s important to keep in mind that our genes evolved with one goal only, the reproduction of the human species. In other words, Mother Nature wants us to survive just long enough to reproduce, but then once we have passed our reproductive years, she loses interest in us. This design is not especially supportive of healthy longevity.
But by implementing intermittent fasting we can take advantage of certain biological mechanisms that have evolved over time to beat Mother Nature at her own game.This
is how it works.
Insulin levels go down, when food is scarce, which causes genes to get turned on that have the job of doing repair and maintenance of cellular damage.
During evolutionary times, this allowed humans to remain healthy long enough to survive and reproduce, by extending their lives during times of famine.
In the modern world, we can lower our insulin levels by implementing intermittent fasting to insure that our cells are kept in good repair and maintenance over time. It’s a way that we can take advantage of the evolutionary “famine” loophole and increase longevity.
Intermittent fasting can be done in a number of ways. You can do a 24 hour fast once a week, once a month or whenever you decide on an unplanned schedule. Or you can skip a meal on a planned or an unplanned basis.
I skip dinner on occasion which gives my body about a 16 hour fast, which can help to trigger the repair and maintenance of damaged cells and increase longevity.
To learn more about Primal Longevity, see Chapter 3 (Live to Be 100 and Die Disease Free) in my book, Your Primal Body.