Emerging from Winter to find Violet

Violet


Botanical name: Viola odorata, V. tricolor, V. yezoinsis


Family: Violaceae


Parts used: flowers, leaves, roots (sparingly)


Properties: cool, sweet and moist, alterative, demulcent, anti-inflammatory, lymphagogue


Used for: hot inflamed tissues, sore throats, swollen lymph glands, cysts, breast health


Plant preparations: tea, syrup, tincture, food


My first experience with violet was on a retreat with Paul Bergner. We were hiking around the Mt. Hood area of Oregon when we came upon an open meadow. Delighted, Paul dropped to the ground exploring the foliage. All around him were plants with heart shaped leaves with small yellow flowers. He gently pulled out a plant from the ground, wiped off the mud, and began to nibble the roots. Because there was such an abundance of plants in that area, Paul invited all the students to do the same. 

I found a small plant and gingerly uprooted it. It tasted quite pleasant. Fresh, sweet, salty, and then... quite mucilaginous. (Before you eat lots of violet roots note that they are emetic in high doses.)

My first impression of violet was that it is a very delicate plant. It lays close to the ground, some small flowers looking up and some looking down. These flowers that you see in the springtime aren’t true flowers as they don’t produce seeds. Later in the year small nondescript flowers form underneath the leaves and fulfill the reproductive duties of a flower. It is commonly said that violets flower in the spring for the sheer exuberance of doing so. 

Don’t let violet’s delicate nature fool you, however. This plant is a powerful ally in disguise.  


For colds and flus
Violet is an important addition to your medicine chest during the cold and flu season. A syrup of the flowers can soothe an irritated and hot throat. It’s also a powerful lymphagogue that can relieve congestion and swollen lymph glands. Cooling and mucilaginous, violet can be used for a dry cough and for ear infections. 

Violets growing in the French Alps

To reduce cysts
Violet’s most famous use is to dissolve cysts, lumps, and fibrotic tissue of the breast. Herbalist Matthew Wood recommends a fresh poultice of leaves and flowers for cancers of the lymphatic system, breasts, lungs, and skin. I’ve heard many stories of oil infused with fresh violets being used for dissolving lumps of the breast or simply as a preventive. 


A fresh violet poultice can be used externally for a variety of reasons. Abscesses,
acne, arthritis, minor skin irritations, sores, and swollen glands are just a few of the possibilities. 


Anti-inflammatory
Violet eases pain. It is used externally and internally for pain associated with arthritis and it especially indicated for arthritis accompanied by dry hot tissues. 


I often recommend violet leaf infusions for people who have dry, rough and itchy rashes (sometimes diagnosed as atopic dermatitis or eczema). Along with other recommendations I've seen many people who have experienced this discomfort for years, watch in wonder as it all disappears. 

Viola palustrus

As food
Violet is a culinary delight. Its fresh leaves make for a delicious salad. Violet flowers are edible and gorgeous, making them a nice garnish to any meal. Besides visual appeal, the flowers can be made into a variety of herbal goodies including syrups, candies, and jams. 


Violets do more than taste good, they are also a nutritious addition to our diet. The flowers and leaves contain very high amounts of vitamin C - some say higher than any other plant. The leaves are also high in vitamin A. 

"it stimulates waste and secretion, relieves nervous irritability, and improves nutrition" 

John Scudder 

Eclectic physician

Violet for the heart
Another name for violet is hearts-ease. It has been used for the physical and emotional heart for thousands of years. Violet is high in a constituent called rutin. Rutin strengthens capillaries, prevents platelet aggregation, and is anti-inflammatory. 

Viola tricolor

Botanically speaking
The official violet used in medicine is Viola odorata, but as far as I know all members of the Viola genus will work in a similar manner. Viola odorata originally comes from Europe and has naturalized across much of the United States. The North American continent also contains many native species of violets. 

Viola odorata

Violets belong to a family of their own called Violaceaea. According to Tom Elpel, author of Botany in a Day, there are 16 genera and 850 species in the Violoaceaea family. The African violet, which is often grown in pots here in the US, is not a member of the violet family. 


Violets have irregular flowers with five separate petals. 

Pansy growing in my garden

The pansy is a cultivated violet whose flowers can be eaten as well. 


Violets have an exploding seed valve. 

You can easily grow cultivated violets like pansies in your garden. Wild violets grow abundantly in the northern hemisphere. Look for them in damp and shady meadows. 


Violet offers many different ways to explore its gifts. If you have access to fresh violets, try making a syrup, infused oil, infused vinegar, and a poultice. Add the greens and flowers to salads or garnish any meal for a beautiful and wild flare. 


If you aren’t able to find violets growing near you, you can order the dried leaf from Mountain Rose Herbs. Violet leaves make a great nourishing herbal infusion and can be used in this way for many of the benefits listed in this article.

Natural Supplements Cocktail Extends Health and Life of Mice

I came across this interesting report of an experiment done at McMaster University. They fed mice a cocktail of vitamins (B-complex, D3), minerals (zinc), and herbal supplements (e.g. garlic, green tea, ginseng). Compared to controls, the mice fed the cocktail lived 10% longer, were spontaneously twice as active in old age, appeared to get smarter as they aged, and, unlike the controls, did not turn gray or bald (at least true of the example animal in the video).

You have to watch the video to see the vast difference between the supplemented and the unsupplemented animals. The supplemented animals don't even look or act aged.

This is the first report I have seen documenting extension of lifespan with nutrient enrichment in animals. The scientists are now testing the combination of supplements on crickets, and those fed the supplements apparently have doubled life spans compared to controls.

This supports the hypothesis that a high nutrient density, equatorial analogue (i.e. herb-enriched) paleo diet might extend lifespan in humans without caloric restriction. Take a look at Art DeVany for an example of the possible results.

CBC News - Health - Old mice run faster with supplements

Paleo Diet pH and Eskimo Health – Part I

Since the human genome developed primarily in adaptation to an African equatorial ecological niche over the course of more than 2 million years, and other hunter-gatherer diets developed subsequent to the diaspora out of Africa some 50K years ago, I think that contemporary African or equatorial hunter-gatherer diets more likely represent the human evolutionary diet than, say, the Inuit diet.

Put otherwise, if the human lineage developed for 2 million years in Africa, then (for sake of argument) began living in the arctic 50 thousand years ago, the genome spent 98% of its developmental time in Africa, and only 2% in other ecological niches.  Since the primate lineage leading to humans really extends back more than 6 million years in Africa, the time “out of Africa” amounts to far less than 2% of the time during which the human genome has evolved.

When we look at contemporary African or other equatorial hunter-gatherer diets, we find a significant intake of plant foods.  For examples take a look at the following table:

Tribe	Latitude	% Animal Food	% Plant Food
Efe	2° N	44	56
Gwi	23°	26	74
Hadza	3° S	48	52
San (!Kung)	20° S	68	32
San (!Kung)	20° S	33	67
Aborigines	12° S	77	23
Aché	25° S	78	22
Nukak	2° N	41	59
Onge	12° N	79	21

Note that this table has two different reports for the San (!Kung) because two different researchers—Yellen (1977) and Lee (1968)—have reported different values, possibly reflecting seasonal or geographical variations.  The variation of these two reports on San diet emphasize that equatorial hunter-gatherers generally had variable intakes of plant and animal foods.  If you average the two reports for the San, you get a diet that hovers around 50% animal and 50% vegetal.

On average, these equatorial tribes obtained 46% of energy from animal food and 54% from plant foods. A hunter-gatherer diet providing 46% of energy as animal food and 54% as plant food will have a net alkaline residue due to the large amount of K-bicarbonate provided by plant foods.  

To illustrate, I created the following example of a 2000 kcal diet which derives 44% of energy from animal foods and 56% from plant foods, using the San (!Kung) diet as a model (they get about one-third of their energy from mongongo nuts; I substituted walnuts).

 

This slide shows the plant:animal subsistence ratio of this diet by caloric contribution:

This slide shows the plant:animal ratio by weight of the foods:

This slide shows the macronutrient distribution of this diet:

Note that although more than three-quarters of the weight of this diet consists of plant foods (1212 g), it provides only 122 g of carbohydrate which supplies only 23% of energy.  Although animal foods form only about one-quarter of the weight, they supply nearly half of the energy.  Fat provided 52% and protein 25% of energy; 77% of energy comes from protein and fat.  A diet can have three times as much plant food as animal food by weight, yet supply more than three-quarters of its energy as protein and fat and have a relatively low carbohydrate content. (For reference, on average, U.S. citizens consume about 50% of calories as carbohydrate, double the value of this H-G diet analogue.)

Finally, this slide shows the acid:base ratio of the diet:

If we take this perspective, then we would expect to find evidence of maladaptation among hunter-gatherers eating diets that diverge significantly from the African standard.  Inuit diverge more than any other tribe, with a diet providing 90% of energy from animal foods.  Compared to the African hunter-gatherer, the Inuit diet contains much less of some nutrients (e.g. vitamin C and potassium) and has a net acid, rather than the African alkaline, residue.  The question then arises, did Eskimos suffer any negative health consequences that might support the idea that the human genome adapted to a diet more like the equatorial hunter-gatherers?

I’ll deal with that in my next post.

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My Meals 2/22/2010

Breakfast

Had this one after my usual 17 hour fast.  Today I did my strength training at the end of the fast then ate this:

Broiled yellow fin (about 8 ounces) (marinated in lemon, ginger, and soy sauce)
Stir-fried bok choy, celery, carrots, and red pepper (with olive oil, ginger, and garlic)
Baked kabocha squash with 2 tablespoons of coconut butter
Some raisins and a few tablespoons of almond butter mixed together

I prefer kabocha squashes to all other winter squashes, and even to sweet potatoes, but they generally cost more that sweet potatoes and take a little more time to prepare, and too often I find that the grower did not let it ripen long enough.  They look like this:

 

Photo courtesy of Tainongseeds.com  

Lunch

 

Steak tartare (again, I really like it, and easy to prepare!)

Half an avocado with chipotle salsa

Stir-fried vegetables (same as breakfast)

1 orange

1 apple

Yes, I eat a fair amount of fruit.  Same as equatorial hunter-gatherers.  Yes, the human body can handle fructose in the amounts we get from fruit.  We have specific biochemical pathways for doing it, a legacy of a paleo diet containing significant amounts of fructose.

Evidence contradicts the claim that all wild fruits are "small" and not sweet.   Ward Nicholson at Beyond Vegetarianism describes many of the plant foods eaten by the !Kung, including the wild orange, which averages nearly one pound per fruit:

Wild orange

Description:

10 cm diameter, 438 gm average weight. Lee [1979, p. 482] describes it as follows:

The fruit looks superficially like a large Sunkist orange about 10 cm in diameter. But the rich orange-colored rind is hard and woody, and the pulp inside is quite unlike an orange, consisting of 30 lozenge-shaped pips surrounded by a sticky brown pulp.

The fruits are in season from September-December. However, the common custom is to collect unripe fruits by knocking them down with sticks or snagging them with a probe. The unripe fruits are then buried at a depth of 0.5 meters in the ground, where they remain for approximately one month. Burying the fruit speeds up ripening and protects the fruit from insect attack. The wild oranges are popular with other local tribes, and are a trade commodity. Consumption: The fruit is cut with a knife and the pulp eaten out-of-hand or with a spoon. The fruit is sweet and has a nice fragrance. The seeds are discarded; only the pulp is consumed.
There is another form of the wild orange; it is not buried but roasted. When tree-ripened, it can be eaten in the raw state.
The !Kung understand that unripe wild oranges are unsuitable as food. Lee [1979, p. 482] reports:

The !Kung older people caution the children to never eat either species [of wild orange] unripe, saying that doing so will make them vomit.

Primal Feet Update: Biomechanics of Barefooting and My Results So Far

Harvard University's Skeletal Biology Lab has an informative site describing the results of their research on comparing the biomechanics of running barefoot (or with a midfoot or forefoot strike) to running with a heel strike as usually done when wearing shoes with a cushioned heel.

Biomechanics of Foot Strikes & Applications to Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footwear

Although they focused on running, their findings equally apply to walking.  I don't run, but I walk often. Since I have switched to using Vibram Five Fingers shoes almost exclusively, I have spontaneously transitioned from heel striking to mid/fore foot striking when I walk quickly. 

When I started this, I could only walk about 5 minutes at a time on concrete in the Five Fingers.  My feet and calves got quite sore from the unaccustomed use.  Gradually I have increased the time spent walking.  After 3 weeks, I can now walk more than 1 mile with a fore/mid foot strike before my feet get too tired to continue and I revert to a midfoot/heel strike (but still softer than what I would have done before Five Fingers).  I also feel the my feet building up new cushions/callouses on the forefoot.

This practice also made me aware that I used my left and right sides quite differently in walking. Some years ago, when I got some Feldenkrais Method "Awareness Through Movement" education sessions with Jeff Haller, he noticed that I spent more time on one foot than the other when walking, but I could not detect it myself -- at least not enough to see it correct.  Walking on concrete in Five Fingers made me acutely aware of different stride on my left and right foot -- whereas the right foot contacted softly and the heel made minimal contact with the pavement, the left foot came down harder with less control and the heel jarred against the pavement (after midfoot contact).  As I walked along for about five minutes spent just noticing this, it gradually diminished and apparently self-corrected.   I've noticed more muscular soreness in the left foot and calf than the right, and had some transient soreness in the left groin not present on the right.

I first learned about this way of walking about six or seven years ago from a book titled Tai Chi Walking: A Low Impact Path to Better Health by the physicist and Tai Ch'i Chuan teacher Robert Chuckrow.  Chuckrow describes how to walk "softly" as in Tai Chi, even on concrete, wearing minimal footwear (as recommended by Tai Chi masters).  He described how he makes his own moccasins and uses them as his exclusive footwear, and he encourages his readers to make the same footwear.  I however continued to wear conventional "walking shoes" and found it difficult to practice the low-impact walking in those thick-soled shoes that have cushioned heels.  The shoes virtually forced me to heel strike.

So far I consider this experiment positive.  I will keep wearing the Five Fingers as my primary footwear for the foreseeable future.  I have in the past three weeks (since starting the experiment) worn my New Balance walking shoes only a couple of times.  Before wearing Five Fingers I didn't notice that the New Balance shoes confine the front of my foot and feel uncomfortable, compared to the Five Fingers.  Now I prefer the Five Fingers even to my Birkenstocks, which have a pretty wide forefoot bed compared to other shoes.  I'll update my report as time passes. 

Eskimo Osteoporosis?

Just a quick one today.

The February 2010 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition contains a new report by Alexander Ströhle, Andreas Hahn and Anthony Sebastian, entitled Estimation of the diet-dependent net acid load in 229 worldwide historically studied hunter-gatherer societies.

They conclude that 40-50% of those 229 hunter-gatherer groups listed in the Ethnographic Atlas ate diets that had a net acid residue, due to the reliance on animal protein.

In the same issue, S. Boyd Eaton, Melvin Konner, and Loren Cordain published an editorial response entitled "Diet-dependent acid load, Paleolithic nutrition, and evolutionary health promotion".

Eaton et al point out that humans evolved in Africa, where the typical hunter-gatherer diet supplies 50% of calories from animal sources and 50% from plant sources, and has a net alkaline residue as a result. They argue that this sets the standard for human nutrition, and that deviations from this occured in many recent hunter-gatherer diets. In their words:

As humans migrated over the globe and cultures changed, nutrition increasingly diverged from the ancestral pattern. Genetic evolution was unable to keep pace, and, consequently, various pathologies developed (6). In contemporary affluent nations, complex degenerative diseases such as atherosclerosis, numerous cancers, and hypertension reflect discordance between ancient genes and current diets, whereas the "epidemics" of obesity and diabetes can be largely attributed to our unholy (and unpaleolithic) alliance of sedentism and hypernutrition (7).

The striking prevalence of osteoporosis in Inuit skeletal remains from the early contact period (8) is especially pertinent to the observations of Ströhle et al (1) because plant foods are necessarily scarce in circumpolar environments. In East Africa, late Paleolithic plant-to-animal energy intake ratios would have approximated 50:50, and diet-dependent net endogenous acid production (NEAP) would have been alkaline—the norm for human biochemistry, physiology, and bone health. In contrast, for traditional Inuit HGs, whose subsistence derived overwhelmingly from aquatic and animal sources, NEAP would have been acidic, contributing to their osteoporosis.

So, they argue that the high rate of osteoporosis among Inuit demonstrates that humans are adapted to an African hunter-gatherer diet high in plant foods that would provide alkaline residues. To document the incidence of osteoporosis among the Inuit, Eaton et al cited a paper by Richard Mazess entitled "Bone Density in the Sadlermiut Eskimo", one I have seen cited before for this purpose.

So, I received the Mazess paper today, and I was astounded to read it. This paper did not demonstrate a high incidence of osteoporosis among Inuit. Mazess compared the bones of the pre-contact Inuit to bones of Americans and Peruvians. He reported:

 

 Mazess also states:

"The ash percentage in the Sadlermiut Eskimo bone sections is significantly higher than from most those other samples examined..."

However, the samples from the Eskimos were from considerably younger individuals than the American samples:

  

Mazess explores a nutritional explanation for the elevated bone density of the Eskimos and finds it a little wanting:

 Anyway, this exercise demonstrated again how hearsay gets passed around the scientific community.  It seems likely that neither Eaton, Konner, nor Cordain read the Mazess article, or they would have realized that it did not support their claim of lower bone density among Eskimos.  Like me, they must have seen this article cited before as support for the claim, but never took the time to read it.  

The Mazess paper does not demonstrate osteoporosis among the Eskimos, nor does it demonstrate stronger bones among Eskimos.  It placed the Eskimos in an intermediate position, and since they were younger bones, we can't know how older Eskimo bones looked. 

I will add that we can't reliably use the bone mass of exhumed ancient bones to claim high bone masses for hunter-gatherers.  This evidence suffers from survivor bias.   Over long periods of time, stronger bones are more likely to survive than weaker bones.  We unearth the strong bones, and conclude that all ancient people had strong bones; but we don't see all the bones that did not survive the passage of time and weather, etc.  The weak bones don't get counted because they didn't survive! 

Check the references!

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My Meals 2/4/2010

Breakfast

Grass-fed beef roast from Kenny Aschbacher
1 whole avocado with some chipotle salsa
1 orange
1 apple
And I did a little pastoral eating today, had a cup of whole milk yogurt


Lunch

Same grass-fed beef roast with butter dressing
Broccoli, red peppers, and carrots tossed with olive oil and black pepper
Bowl of walnuts (about 1/2 cup) and raisins (about 1/4 cup)
One apple

Paleo Life Expectancy

Critics of paleodiet often claim that Paleolithic people died at 30 years of age or similar young ages, and suggest that this proves that paleodiet (basically, a grain-, legume-, sugar-, and dairy-free diet) does not support health or longevity. 

I would like it if these people would provide some evidence that meat, vegetables, fruits, and nuts lack some  critical nutritional factor necessary for longevity and found only in agricultural foods -- grains, legumes, sugar, or milk.  I do not know of any such factor. 

In fact, we can state certainly that paleolithic diets supplied humans with all the nutrients humans require, because if they did not, the human species would have expired due to malnourishment.  Further, as I showed in my post Primal Diet On A Shoestring, a paleo diet composed of modern foods can easily supply required nutrients.  This means that even if paleo people did have a short life expectancy, it was not due to some nutritional weakness of the paleolithic menu.

I consider the idea that paleo people died at 30 years of age (or so) a “just-so” belief derived from the stories that Mother Culture tells us.  I have never seen any evidence to support this claim.  On the contrary, critics commonly present this as something “everyone knows.”   So, how does “everyone” know this?  They learn it as a part of a pack of stories we get told about preagricultural people, all expressing the Hobbesian claim (made without evidence) that human life in the absence of agriculture and the State was “nasty, cold, brutish, and short.”

In short, "everyone knows" this the same way that "everyone knows" that cereal grains are essential to nutrition -- it is not knowledge, it is simple mythology.

As a matter of fact, we have evidence that hunter-gatherers had low adult mortality rates and achieved ages comparable to civilized people, despite the absence of the legendary longevity powers of agricultural foods and the tyranny of the State.



Recent Hunter-Gatherer Evidence

According to Between Zeus and Salmon: The Biodemography of Longevity, a publication of the National Academy of Sciences Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (National Academy Press, 1997) (pages 176-179):

"The most reliable estimates of adult mortality rates available for a pre-contact hunting and gathering group are derived from Aché research (Hill and Hurtado, 1996), because of the research focus on producing accurate measures of age and accounting for all adults that lived during the twentieth century."

So what can we learn from the Aché?

Well, among them, 30-40% of people die before the age of 10-15 (most of these before 5). 

These early deaths draw down the average lifespan in hunter-gatherer tribes.  To simplify the mathematics, if you have a cohort of 100 babies, 40 of which die before 10 years and 60 of which die after 60 years, the average life expectancy for this group will fall under 40 years, despite 60% of the population living more than 60 years.

Among both ancient and modern hunter-gatherers, these and most adult deaths occurred from hazards of childbirth, infections, accidents (e.g. falling from a tree, drowning, etc.), animal attacks (insects, snakes, etc.), poisonings (toxic plants), inclement weather (floods, snowstorms, etc.) and other dangers affecting all age groups but especially children growing up in a wild environment.  They did not occur from diseases of civilization, like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and the like.

Among the Aché, once people passed puberty, in the adult age range of 20-45 mortality rates appear low, about 1.5% per year.  In comparison,  adult wild chimps have a mortality rate of 7.9% per year.  The text states:

“Adult mortality rates remain low and do not rise significantly until the seventh decade of life, where the rate climbs to 5 percent per year and reaches 15 percent per year by age 75.”

This text supplies the following graph of the age-specific mortality rates among the Aché:

 

Aché age-specific probability of death, smoothed with logistic regression.

From this you can see that among the Aché, children under 10 and adults over 60 years of age have the highest death rates.  Some Aché people live into their 7th decade of life, despite lacking the assistance of civilization.  Males have a higher mortality rate than females due to accidents in hunting, more testosterone-induced reckless behavior,  and possible altercations.

This text also provides the following graph comparing probablities of surviving to ages up to 80 years among several human tribes--!Kung, Yanamamo, Aché, and Hiwi -- and wild chimpanzees at Gombe:

 

Age-specific probabilities of survival among human foragers and chimpanzees. 

You can see that wild humans can live about twice as long as wild chimpanzees, even have a chance of living past 80 years.  Regarding this data, the text states:

"Although sample size and methods of data collection vary among the four human groups, the survival curves show remarkable convergence, Although infant mortality rates vary, with Hiwi being the highest and Yanomamo the lowest, adult mortality rates between the ages of 20 and 45 are almost identical, about 1.5 percent per year. For that reason the survival curves are parallel to one another during the adult period. Chimpanzee survival curves, however, diverge dramatically from the human curves, due to a quite distinct adult mortality profile. For example, while both Hiwi and chimpanzees have about equal probability of reaching age 15, the conditional probability of reaching age 45, having reached age 15, is near zero for chimpanzees in the wild and about 75 percent among the Hiwi."

So modern hunters live well past 45.  What about ancient people?

Migration and Population Expansion Evidence

In preagricultural times (between 50, 000 and 10, 000 years ago), humans migrated out from Africa around the globe.  By 10, 000 years ago, humans had reached and populated the Americas.  Given human reproductive function, this could not have occurred if people died at 30 years of age.

In The Paleolithic Prescription, S. Boyd Eaton, M.D., Melvin Konner M.D., Ph.D., and Marjorie Shostak present data on reproductive milestones among recent hunter-gatherers.  Among three recent hunter-gatherer tribes (Agta, !Kung, Ache), the average age of menarche (onset of menses) is about 16 years of age, the average age of first live birth is 19.5 years, the average birth spacing is 3.45 years, and the average number of live births per woman is between 4 and 5.

In order for the human population to grow to populate all continents over the period 50K to 10K years ago, each woman (on average) would have had to have had more than 2 children who made it to adulthood and reproduction.

Taking the first live birth at 19.5 years,  an average birth spacing of 3.5 years, and a 30-40% mortality rate for children under 15, we can see that the average paleo woman had to live at least 60 years in order to see a growth in the total human population.

Lets do a thought experiment.  Say Patty Paleo has her first birth at 19.5 years of age.  This child, named Peggy Paleo will have a 60% chance of making it to adulthood.  If Peggy does make it to adulthood (menarche), Patty will be 35.5 years of age when Peggy first menstruates, and 39.0 years of age when Peggy has her first child.  Since Peggy will have to learn how to birth and care for a child from Patty, Patty will still be largely essential to Peggy’s survival until 39 years of age.

Patty Paleo will have her second birth at about 23 years of age.  If this second child, Rick reaches physiological adulthood (capable of reproduction, 16 years of age), Patty will have reached 39 years of age.

Two births only replace Patty and Paul, the parents of Peggy and Rick, assuming that both Peggy and Rick make it to adult hood.  Let’s say that Peggy and Rick do make it to adulthood.  To expand the population, Patty has to have at least a third child and raise it to adulthood.  So Patty has her third child, Darth, at 23+3.5=26.5 years of age.

Since about 1 in 3 children die before adulthood among the Aché, our thought experiment should include this aspect.  We will imagine that Darth makes it to 4 years of age, then dies of a snake bite.  Patty is now 30 years of age, and has her fourth child, Star. 

Patty will spend the next 16 years raising Star to adulthood, at which time Patty will be 46 years old. 

Data collected on the !Kung indicates that the average !Kung woman has 4 to 5 live births during her reproductive lifetime, with the last birth occurring in the woman’s third decade of life [1]. Therefore, we can imagine that Patty has a fifth child, Apogee, at 33.5 years of age.  Apogee will  reach 16 years of age, when Patty reaches 49.5 years of age.

The Menopause Evidence

Further evidence that paleo people, at least women, reached ages well beyond 50 years of age exists right now in the phenomenon of menopause, a reproductive milestone unique to humans among primates (elephants also have a menopause, and can live 70 years in the wild). 

According to evolutionary theory, menopause would not exist unless it conferred some survival advantage for offspring.  The fact that human females go through menopause around 50 years of age tells us that our ancestral mothers did in fact make it to 50 years and beyond, and that those mothers who ceased menstruating at about 50 years of age left more offspring (children and grandchildren) than those who continued to menstruate.  

In short, the fact that present-day human females go through menopause provides living testimony that our prehistoric ancestors had lifespans greater than 50 years, and that paleo people who lived more than 50 years made their offspring more successful (reproductively).

Photographic Evidence

Of course I could have simply showed you this photograph of Chief Seattle, a lifelong hunter-gatherer, made when he was somewhere near 85 years of age. According to the Wikipedia entry on his life, the Chief was born about 1780, and this photograph dates to 1865.

Clearly, those who say that paleo people didn’t live past 30 just don’t know the subject well enough to have an opinion.

For more on this topic, read Ron Hoggan’s excellent article, Life Expectancy in the Paleolithic.

P.S.  If you like this post and want to see more like it, please consider making a small donation or a recurring subscription payment using the PayPal buttons in the right hand column.  Fighting fallacies is a full time job I love to do, but I need support to continue doing it.  Also consider sending a link to this post to all of your Facebook and other friends.  



Notes:

1.  Frisch RE, Fatness and Fertility, Scientific American 1988 Mar;258(3):88-95.

Rosemary

Rosemary has a rich history thatspans more than a millennium. It has been used in cooking for flavor and preservation, as a medicinal tea, as well as a token of loyalty, friendship, and remembrance.

Rosemary’s nomenclature, Rosmarinus officinalis, means “dew of the sea”, perhaps because it is often found growing near the oceans. The common name is derived from an association with the Virgin Mary. It’s said that on the family’s flight to Egypt, a rosemary bush sheltered and protected the family. When Mary laid her cloak upon the bush the white flowers turned blue and thus became the “rose of Mary”.

Most of you will probably identify this herb by its smell and taste: aromatic and spicy. Rosemary tends to be warming and drying and is often used for cold conditions.

As the herb of remembrance, Rosemary has been used to increase memory and brain power by scholars for thousands of years. Students can keep a fresh sprig of this herb to smell while they study and again if they are taking a test.

Scientific research has validated this traditional use by testing student performance with the aid of rosemary fragrances and without. Those smelling rosemary while being tested felt more alert and brighter and performed better than those who went without any fragrance.

You could call Rosemary the Queen of Anti-oxidants, as she boasts at being one of the strongest herbal anti-oxidants. In other research, scientists have pinpointed that Rosemary contains the constituent carnosic acid, which can prevent free radical damage in the brain. Carnosic acid has been shown to protect the brain from stroke, Alzheimer’s Disease, and other effects of aging on the brain. Furthermore, as a circulatory stimulant it can dilate blood vessels and increase blood flow to the brain.

As a nerve tonic, rosemary can gently give us a little boost when we need it. Not quite a relaxing nervine like lavender, nor a stimulating nervine like coffee, rosemary is somewhere in between, increasing our mental functions without too much overt stimulation. Its action on the circulatory system can release internal pressure and gently reduce tension. It has often been used for hypertension.

Rosemary has quite the affinity for the head. It has been used topically to stimulate hair growth, or to maintain healthy hair. To stimulate hair growth an essential oil of rosemary is used, while many people swear by vinegar infused with rosemary as hair rinses for vibrant and healthy hair.

Herbalist Gail Faith Edwards used an oil of rosemary on her children’s heads whenever lice were rampant at school. She reports that it would keep the lice away, but wouldn’t get rid of it if already infected.

In the 14^th century, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary used rosemary infused in wine externally to successfully relieve pains from rheumatism and gout. Now called Queen of Hungary Water, it has been usedfor hundreds of years, not only to relieve pain, but also to embellish beauty.

Today, rosemary essential oil is added to another oil base and then rubbed on arthritic joints to increase blood circulation and decrease pain.

Like other culinary herbs in the mint family, a cup of rosemary tea can ease slow digestion that is causing gas, nausea, cramping, or bloating.

Rosemary blends really well with various meats. Before the widespread use of refrigerators, rosemary was rubbed into meats to prevent them from spoiling, indicating it has strong anti-bacterial properties. Modern research has shown that marinating meats with rosemary prevents the meat from forming carcinogenic compounds known as HCAs (heterocyclic amines) when meat is cooked at high temperatures.

Rosemary is a strong anti-bacterial herb. You can use the tea or diluted tincture as a wash for wounds or fungal infections.

Its astringent properties lend it well to a swollen sore throat. Simply sip on rosemary tea or infuse the fresh or dried herb into a honey and take it by the teaspoonful. Hot rosemary tea is also a warming or stimulating diaphoretic that is useful for the first stages of a fever when you feel cold and are shivering.

Rosemary is native to the Mediterranean and is cultivated in gardens around the world. With the right conditions this woody perennial shrub can grow as high as six feet and dense enough to form a hedge.

It boasts fragrant evergreen leaves that resemble needles you would find on an evergreen tree.

A member of the mint family, it has square stems and opposite leaves.

It readily flowers and depending on the climate may even flower all year round. Rosemary’s flowers can range from blue to white to pink depending on the variety. As a member of the mint family, they have “lipped” flowers.

For many years we bought a small potted rosemary tree during the holidays instead of the traditional cut tree. Growing up I always appreciated having a living tree to admire during the holidays. These rosemary trees can easily be found online if you don’t find them being sold near you, however I would suggest finding one that has not been grown with commercial pesticides and fertilizers if you plan on using the sprigs in cooking.

If you'd like to star incorporating rosemary into your life you can try sipping some rosemary tea or try a vinegar hair wash. Rosemary infused in white wine makes a fantastic beverage, or even a marinade for meats. It can also be used as a tincture, or infused into honey. Combine the two of those mixtures and you've got a spicy rosemary elixir.

I'd love to hear how you enjoy your rosemary.