This blog does not pretend to offer expert medical advice for the simple reason that I have no medical qualifications and have a limited capacity to understand the depths of our physiology and any responses to external factors, whether food, medicines or supplements.

However, I do have a keen interest in my health and the associated contributing aspects. I also have the capacity to read and understand many things. That includes information from all sources and the open-mindedness to consider credibility of the information offered on the internet and sources alternate to the established authorities ‘established’ procedures and practices.

There have been numerous incidences where established theories and practices have been, with hindsight ( and an open mind ), shown to fall short of perfection in all degrees of seriousness, for a number of reasons. These reasons include innate human fallibility, (there is no such thing as perfection in our make-up and behaviour), our inability to completely separate ourselves from influences of personal desire and goals, income and job security, pride and prejudice, peer pressure, respect and subjugation to higher authority etc.

The higher authority factor seems to play an inordinately large part in the professional behaviour of even the best of intellectuals, the very persons most capable of individual thought and conceptualization. Yet these abilities are often overridden by our human susceptibilities.

Thus, when it comes to analyzing mankind’s behaviour regarding, in this case our medical industry, these above influences sometimes rear their ugly heads. Not quite burying their heads in the sand, but I respectfully suggest failing to maintain impartiality.

To be set in their ways is, largely, to be expected. To not give serious consideration to alternative theory and practice is, in my opinion, a failure to adhere to what surely should be the aim of achieving best possible health outcomes for the public.

This outspoken opinion is supported by the clearly ignored importance of diet and food quality, even to the extent that regulatory authorities actively support dangerous food processes and additives. And the almost blind reliance on pharmaceutical drugs to solve health issues.

The question is – is it fair and reasonable?

So we come to the subject of this post, written by Dr. Kelly Brogan, M.D. and Sayer Ji, Founder,  (“GreenMedInfo“), which opens our eyes to an interesting view of how our medicine dependence may be over-rated.  It focuses on the vaccination scene but has applicability to medical procedures generally.

Keep in mind the importance of availability of clean water, healthy foods, cleanliness, excercise and the education of these factors, in judging the effectiveness and need for medical intervention.

Didn’t the modern miracle of vaccines eradicate the plague and pestilence our Paleolithic ancestors succumbed to? Think again…

Paleo-oriented researchers, foodies, and clinicians seek to honor a wisdom in evolution that has been forsaken in the modern food era.

The human genome is best expressed under conditions of plentiful macro and micronutrients, an absence of foodborne and manmade toxins, and an acknowledgement of our coevolution and inextricable interdependence with other animals, plants, and microbes. If we get out of our own way, and follow ancestral practices, we can hope to optimize the genetic potential of our bodies to produce a robust and sustainable state of health and vitality.

Does that mean that those with ancestral dietary aspirations are glorifying a time long gone that was in actuality riddled with pestilence and plague? Weren’t people dying prematurely of diseases we have long since eradicated through the miracle of vaccination? Isn’t vaccination the best way to have it all – Paleo principles plus suppression of those nasty bugs that threaten our very lives from the moment of birth? Are we cherry-picking modern epigenetic exposures – yes to a traditional diet, no to evolutionary immunity – in favor of ‘high tech’ medical interventions?

Paleo Immunity

Why are we eating ancestrally in the first place? Isn’t it to evade or undo the immune-disrupting, inflammation-generating, and infection-promoting effects of the modern grain-based diet, also featuring genetically engineered vegetable oils, synthetic additives and flavorings, grain-fed meats, and processed dairy? Our present dietary trajectory was initiated around 10,000 years ago in the transition from 2.5 million year old Paleolithic to the so-called Neolithic periods. Our Neolithic predecessors were the innovators of today’s grain-based, animal breeding and milking, sedentary, city-dwelling mode of subsistence, whose glorious technological innovations (written language, science, engineering, pyrotechnology, pottery, etc.) came with an ultimately steep price: epidemic levels of so-called ‘diseases of affluence,’ including metabolic syndrome, heart disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and cancer.

Our radical departure from sugarless, low-starch, high-nutrient, and mostly raw foods, to cooked grains (and their secondary reiteration in grain-fed animal products) marked a transition that had profound implications, affecting not only human physiology, but the very structure of human consciousness itself. Plenty of evidence now exists that far from being an optimally healthy part of the human diet, or a so-called “staff of life,” grains are like a crutch — highly addictive,^[1] life force draining – which while capable of supporting population growth by getting bodies through the critical reproductive window in one piece, end up contributing to chronic, degenerative disorders that profoundly reduce the quality of human life..^{[2] [3]}

The ‘Paleo approach’ is based on acknowledging that our body is the product of a deep metabolic pre-history – millions of years of foraging, hunting, living off the land in such a way that – nutrigenomically – the genetic infrastructure of our very cells hungers daily for the dietary compounds that had nurtured them for eons. Our genes are not expecting to see oxidized ‘vegetable’ oils, sugar, grains, or lectin-infused legumes.

Paleo respects this fact.

What does this intention to preserve a relationship with the natural world teach us about our immunity? Through exposure to soil, fermentation, the elements, and each other, we engaged in an epic journey of evolutionary adaptation – one marked by a countless responses to the microbial world. We birthed vaginally and breastfed to communicate what a mother’s body had learned about its bacterial and viral friends and foes, and we preserved our own microbiome with respectful integrity. When we got sick, our bodies formed a memory of the experience, and brought that memory to subsequent and related encounters. The exact details of our immunologic evolution are something we, even with our modern minds, techniques, and resources, have not come close to fully elucidating.

Has vaccinology misconceived immunity?

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