What if I told you that if an individual fish hatching from one of a billion eggs in the ocean simply ate right, exercised and practiced situational awareness, he or she could reliably live out a full natural lifespan?
You’d laugh, right?
You’d laugh because fish, like every living thing — animal, plant or protist — is subject to complex forces over which it has no control. It is subject to the whims of genetics, the results of mutations, the appetites of the other fish around it, the weather, the list is nearly endless. The idea that eating right and exercising, or any other simple plan, could ensure a long life free of disease or disability for a fish is nothing short of absurd.
It’s nothing short of absurd for human beings, too. That’s because they are subject to the same forces as all other living things. That’s why you should beware anyone who offers simple solutions to living out a natural lifespan. Human health is extremely complex, because human beings are extremely complex, and any simple solutions are reliably guaranteed to be wrong.
True, human beings have technology that can keep us from being prey for wild animals, can protect us in large part from freezing to death, and in first world countries our luck and technology protect us from starving to death. Our technology protects us from those central realities of the life of our ancient and not so ancient ancestors. We even have antibiotics that can keep us from being prey to wild bacteria and viruses, anesthesia and surgery that can keep us from being felled by routine internal failings like appendicitis, and the preventive technology of modern obstetrics that can reduce the naturally high death toll of childbirth. But although technology, through routine use has come to be seen as simple, it is quite complex in reality.
That’s why any time anyone offers you a simple solution for staying healthy and living out a full natural lifespan, you should run in the opposite direction. They may mean well; they may believe (desperately!) what they are saying, but they are inevitably wrong.
Eating right (“nutrition”) is the key to long life, safe childbirth, and freedom from viral and bacterial disease? If only! It can no more guarantee long healthy life to us than to a fish.
Popping vitamins and supplements, boosting your microbiome, avoiding GMOs and non-organic food is the key to long life, safe childbirth and freedom from viral and bacterial disease? If only. Those things can no more guarntee long healthy life to us than to a fish.
Essential oils, cranio-sacral therapy and homeopathy is the key to long life, safe childbirth and freedom from viral and bacterial disease? If only. Those things can no more guarntee long healthy life to us than to a fish.
Why? Because we, like fish, and all living things, are products of evolution and evolution leads to the survival of the fittest, NOT the survival of everyone.
In contrast, the central conceit of all pseudoscientific health movements, from anti-vax to homebirth, from organic food to demonizing sugar, from restriction diets to essential oils, from raw milk to fear of GMOs, is the belief that everyone who is currently alive is perfectly adapted to avoid all health dangers and live to be 80 or older.
The sad, incontrovertible, unavoidable truth is that we are not perfectly adapted for our current environment or for ANY environment. There is literally no such thing as a living thing that is perfectly adapted, and, in any case, there is no such thing as an environment that is static. The environment is constantly changing offering better or worse odds of survival depending on the organism’s genetic legacy.
So why do people persist in believing that there are simple ways to guarantee health? For the exact same reason they continue to believe in life after death; because the alternative is too scary. Just as it is too frightening to contemplate our demise, it is too frightening to contemplate that we are subject to the vagaries of genetics, bacterial and viral predation, and simple bad luck.
The fish swimming amid the school who ends up eaten by the predator could not have averted his fate by eating better, exercising more, gobbling supplements, using essential oils or getting “adjusted” by a cranio-sacral therapist. He got eaten because he wasn’t the fittest fish in the school.
Similarly, the human being who dies in childbirth, gets cancer or succumbs to tetanus could not have averted his fate by eating better, exercising more, gobbling supplements, using essential oils or getting “adjusted” by a cranio-sacral therapist. Those things happened because he or she wasn’t the fittest individual in the specific situation in which he or she ended up.
The reason people are diseased, disabled or die prematurely is not because we have used technology to fool and anger Mother Nature and we can eat and exercise our way back. The real reason is we are living things subject to the same evolutionary laws as every other animal, plant or protist. We can’t all be the fittest and even those who are the fittest in one environment can turn out to be unfit in a different environment.
Yes, complex, sophisticated technology can and does avert the evolutionary decree, but simple solutions are utterly useless. Indeed simple solutions may be worse than useless, since their very ease and simplicity can fool us into rejecting the highly technological measures that actually work.
Alternative health is nothing more than glorified wishful thinking and it has as much chance of preventing disease, saving your life or guaranteeing a full lifespan for you as it does for a fish; none at all. Beware of those who claim that there is an easy way to avoid disease disability and death. They are lying to themselves first and foremost, and therefore they are lying to you.
