If I stopped you on the street today and offered you a million dollars to improve your health or fitness, you would immediately think of diet and exercise. Of course you would be right — but only to a point. These two factors are fundamental to health, fitness, vitality and longevity. However, if you only focused on diet and exercise, you wouldn’t be reaching your full potential. Not by a long shot.
As important as food and exercise are, they are only two of the inputs that affect gene expression. There’s a bigger picture to consider, another pillar included in the Master Plan—one that’s often overlooked even by people who are sincerely committed to building healthy habits and taking care of their bodies for the long haul. These are the Laws of the Prime Plan Way of Life.
If I had to nominate the law of the Prime Plan that is most neglected in the modern world – and it would be difficult to pick just one – it would probably be sleep. At least with diet and exercise, most people talk about how important they are, recognizing that they should be cared for even if their daily choices say otherwise. However, how many times have you seen super-successful people brag about how little sleep they get on a daily basis?
Too many people glorify an “I’ll sleep when I die” mentality, ignoring the fact that too much sleep is ironically pushing them toward an early grave.
Our genes expect and need consistent, restful sleep and plenty of sleep. Our ancestors slept a lot. Even after the fire was discovered, it wasn’t like they stayed up to party. From sunset to sunrise it was safer to huddle together and rest. Long days of hunting and gathering and otherwise hard work for every morsel of food also required considerable time for repair and recovery. Studies of modern hunter-gatherers show that it was not necessarily always an uninterrupted nine or ten hours. It is possible that they slept together as families or small tribes, watching out for predators, nursing the baby, or simply sleeping in and out throughout the night.
Of course, a restorative afternoon nap was also available when the urge struck, guilt-free about what else they really had to do. Our modern penchant for poor quality, insufficient sleep has devastating consequences for physical, cognitive and emotional health. However, better sleep is almost always achievable with a few simple (and sometimes not so easy) behavioral modifications.
Read more about Primary Law #6.
(Primal Law #7 is Play. You can read about it at Primary Movement position.)
Cavemen weren’t really men (or women) who lived their lives in caves all the time. Most of the day they were out in the open pursuing various survival tasks. Regular sun exposure provided lots of vitamin D, a very important vitamin (really more like a hormone) that they couldn’t easily get from food and that their bodies couldn’t make without direct sunlight.
Fast forward to today, and most people spend almost all of their time indoors—at home, at work, in the car or on the subway, at the grocery store, at the mall, at the movie theaters, at the bowling alley, and on and on. Even most exercise is now done inside gyms, dance studios or garages. The net result is that an alarming percentage of the population is not getting enough sun exposure. Couple that with widespread public health messages about avoiding the sun and wearing sunscreen whenever you go outside, and Vitamin D deficiency is now widespread.
Not to mention, we lose the other benefits of being in nature. While it’s never a good idea to burn, I think the far greater danger for most people is too little sun, not too much. Respect basic sun protection practices, but embrace the sun as the life-giving force that it is.
Read more about Primary Law #8.
You do all these other things to live a long, healthy life—eating right, exercising, getting plenty of sleep, nurturing your social relationships—but it can all be cut short in the blink of an eye with one silly, preventable mistake. This is why Primal Law #9 reminds you to be careful when navigating this dangerous world.
In the time of our ancestors, this primarily meant avoiding trauma that could lead to immediate death or serious injury that would prevent them from being active, participating members of their hunter-gatherer tribe. Today it still means essentially the same thing, except the dangers we face are a far cry from the ruthless tiger or poisonous mushroom the Grok might have produced.
That doesn’t mean wrap yourself in bubble wrap and never take a chance. On the contrary, this law urges you to do so use that highly evolved human brain of yours to calculate risk and take wise precautions as needed.
Read more about Primary Law #9.
Speaking of your big brain, the final Prime Law reminds you to use it. Use it to solve problems. Use it to create. Use it to imagine. Use it to dream big dreams and make them come true. Use it to reminisce about the past. Use it to learn from past mistakes. Use it to create the wild and wonderful life that is your birthright as a human being.
Read more about Primary Law #10.
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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and is not intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring as you pursue a healthy, fulfilling life.
