Cavemen in Fast Cars!

Grog doing his taxes!

WARNING: This blog will involve microbiology, anthropology, and dark humor. Parental discretion is advised!

So, the name of the blog is “Cave Men in Fast Cars” and it is about non-traditional ways of thinking about health. This may lead you to wonder “What does that even mean? How do these cave men or cars have ANYTHING to do with my health”? You may say “Hank, what the hell is wrong with you? Did you just have a stroke?” No, I didn’t have a stroke. As to, what is wrong with me?… We will need to wait and see.

“Cave Men in Fast Cars” is an analogy. We are the cave men, and the fast car is the world that we find ourselves living in today. Biologically, we have evolved from and are designed to live in a world that looks NOTHING like the one we live in.

So, now you say, “Hank (That’s what they call me. It’s only one syllable and less to remember), why should I listen to you?” The answer is, because I will tell you things that your doctor will not. My name is Darryl Hankins. I am a family Nurse Practitioner. I live in Southern Ohio. I have been in the medical field for over 40 years. I started as a Paramedic in the 80s, became a Registered Nurse in 1990. 5 years ago, I received my master’s degree as an FNP. I have spent my life in primary care and emergency medicine. I have a “Functional medicine” private practice. Functional medicine is an approach to healthcare that focuses on treating the root causes of illness, rather than just managing symptoms.

Viewing chronic illness through the lens (and by not accepting insurance) I am able to research and embrace practices that are not part of main-stream medicine.

The medical system is run by corporations, insurance companies, big pharma and medical device manufacturers who make billions from you being sick. Finding and treating the root causes of disease does not fit their financial model.

I however am not beholden to the cabal that is corporate healthcare so I am able to speak the truth whereas many of my colleagues in “The system” cannot.

So, follow along, try some or all of the simple habits that I suggest and tell me if you benefit from them! Spoiler alert, you will.

So, like I said previously, “Cave men (and women) in fast cars is an analogy. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are all still cave men. Our bodies have evolved over millions of years and adapted to the environment that we were exposed to, but in the big picture, we are still, biochemically the same as a caveman (not the overly sensitive one on the commercial).

Picture Grog on the savanna, spear in hand, stalking a gazelle. Clad only in a loin cloth, he has a lot of his skin exposed to the sun. He is barefoot and dirty. His entire body is covered with bacteria. If he is lucky enough to spear the gazelle, he will drag it back to his cave, rip it apart with his stone knife. Cook parts of it on a rock beside the fire. He and his family will eat this entire beast. They will eat the meat but also the liver, brain, intestines, bone marrow, fat and skin.

If, on a rare occasion, Grog wanted to clean his body, he jumped in a stream. A stream of very cold water. If grog did not successfully kill the gazelle, then his family would gather tubers and other edible items they had discovered (often the hard way) would not poison them. If they could not find a gazelle or a turnip, the family went hungry. It was okay though. Grogs body is also adapted to go for long periods of time without eating. He has fat stored in his liver for just such an emergency. Grog will most likely die from a broken leg or getting eaten by a lion.

This is how we lived for millions of years. Our bodies evolved to fit this environment. We lived this way for 99% of human time on Earth.

THIS is the caveman in our apt analogy...

Enter Bob. Bob was born in 1965. Bobs body has the same structure and function as Grogs. The difference is that Bob wears shoes all the time. He rarely touches the soil with his bare skin. Bob rarely sees the sun much less exposing skin to it.

Bob gets out of his nice, warm bed in his nice warm house that is filled with millions of chemicals to make it a nice, sterile environment that smells good. Bob takes a nice, warm shower. He uses soaps and shampoos that are filled with hundreds of different chemicals, to clean all the bacteria from his body. He shaves and brushes his teeth. He puts on deodorant lest he smell bad to other people that he encounters. He gets a drink of water from the faucet that has been chlorinated, sterilized and had fluoride added to protect his teeth. Then Bob puts on a jacket and walks to his car that he had remote started so that he wouldn’t need to be cold or scrape frost from his windows. Bob drives to work, stopping at a fast-food joint on the way to grab a bacon and egg biscuit with deep fried hash browns. Bob works in a nice, warm office where he sits in front of a computer all day.

Bob is a victim of chronic, toxic comfort and overconsumption.

If Bob is the average American, he is overweight or obese. He has high blood pressure, prediabetes, and is probably working on a heart attack or stroke. Depression and cancer are strong possibilities as well. THIS is the fast car. The fast car that we are not equipped to drive.

Here is a fun way of looking at the problem (It may not be fun for you but I’m a nerd, so I think it’s fun!)

To put it in perspective; If all of humanity was condensed into one hour, for the first 58 minutes, we lived like grog. We started farming less than 2 minutes ago. The industrial revolution started about 2 seconds ago and it has been about 2 milliseconds since 1960 when a lot of our chronic, toxic comfort and overconsumption began.

So, you see, we have not had adequate time to adapt to the world that we live in. Our bodies can’t keep up!

On a daily basis, we are exposed to up to 80,000 chemicals. 1400 of which are known carcinogens. Although our bodies are very good at detoxifying and eliminating waste, we are NOT prepared to deal with the overwhelming onslaught of the toxic soup that we live in.

We like to think that we are simple creatures but in truth, we are the most complex entities in the known universe. It takes literally trillions of chemical processes every second to keep us alive. Not to mention that we UNDERSTAND that we are alive. Want to see a miracle? Look in the mirror!

When we break it down to a cellular level, the environment that we live in has a profound effect on everything we are. Our health, our outlook on life, how and who we love, the shape of our body, how long we are likely to live. Basically, everything about us is influenced by the chemicals that we are exposed to. What we are exposed to is having a devastating effect on us! Do you realize that for the first time in a hundred years, the average life expectancy of American in actually decreasing?

Although, these chemicals may not kill us outright, they will very much, kill us over a matter of years and decades of exposure. Add our lack of exercise, our poor diet and our lack of exposure to anything uncomfortable and you have the very basis of 90% of health problems on this planet.

Wow! This is all depressing, isn’t it?! Here is the good news. There are things that we can do to offset some of these so called “Diseases of Civilization”.

Through this blog, it is my goal to spread this information so that we may regain much of our health. Most of the health-related advice that we have been told for the past 50 years is just flat wrong. I plan to discuss these things in detail and explain why they are wrong. All you need to do is look around. In a nation that spends more money per capita than any nation on Earth for healthcare, why don’t we feel “better”? The US spends almost 5 trillion dollars a year on healthcare, and we spend approximately 33 billion on diet and fitness each year. Why are we fatter and sicker than we have ever been? Two thirds of Americans are overweight or clinically obese AND WE FEEL LIKE CRAP!

I plan to do something different in this blog. In the very next post, I will be laying out a plan for regaining much of our health and our ability to feel “well”. This plan involves a variety of free or nearly free things that you can start doing today that can significantly change your life for the better. In subsequent posts I will discuss WHY these things work.

ANOTHER spoiler alert: These things do NOT involve healthy, whole grains, depriving yourself of fats or calories, hours of cardio workouts or any of the things that the healthcare cabal has told you over the past 60 years!

Some of the practices that I support, my wife lovingly calls “Hippie medicine” but rest assured, everything that I propose is based on scientific research.

Upcoming articles include:

• Grounding

• Breath work

• Cold exposure

• Sun light

• Gut health (SIBO)

• Mitochondrial health

• Dopamine

• Glutathione

• Muscle-centric medicine

• Time under tension (TUT)

• High intensity interval training

• Intermittent fasting

• Elimination of seed oils

• Slow carb diet

No, I am not selling anything. My only request is that you follow along with this blog and if you find value in it, share it with your family and friends. I will a be opening an online store in the near future to provide high quality supplements and equipment, but the information is free, and you don’t HAVE to buy a darn thing from me!

If you are interested in Functional medicine, call me to set up an appointment. I promise it will be NOTHING like going to your doctor's office! We will draw labs, talk about diets, exercise and lots of other things to keep you from dying!

So, hang with me. We will have some fun, learn some stuff and live forever! (Or at least a couple of more years).

Lets do this!!

Hank