hi you lovely people. Iv just watched a very interesting documentary on modern day wild tribes that still hunt their food and also gather fruits and berries etc. I saw that they all looked very fit and healthy, even the older tribe folk did.
after Googling hunter gatherers afib incidence I noticed there is a extremely low level of it compared to us and many other richer countries.!!
I’m not going to start trapping rabbits and trying to find the odd lost monkey in my local woods but it does make me wonder wether some of our AFIB is connected with our food even though alot of us eat healthy, are we eating healthy enough.????
best wishes.
Ron.
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Jetcat
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Sounds a bit like Tesco’s on a Friday night! 😉.
I think there will be a good few who will agree with you. The benefits which come with lifestyle improvements are amazing, it’s being able to maintain the willpower to keep it up that’s the challenge!
As we so often tell people, less reliance on meat a more plant based diet and no processed foods has been shown to greatly reduce AF burden. Those primative tribes might catch and kill an animal once a week or so but not every day.
I’m certain my low meat, high veg, fruit, nut and pulses diet has been a major factor in maintaining good health over the years. And greatly lessened the severity of my AF.
Actually, I have read of archeological digs at various locations around Britain ( over the years ) and soil analysis which revealed the nature of human waste , as well as human skeletons, suggest that humans in Britain around 500 AD and onwards by many hundreds of years lived with this sort of diet and were much bigger, sturdier, fitter peoples than those who lived around 17th century onwards.
Would not like to sound odd, but once again, too much attention is payed, by almost all the members of the forum, to food habits.
If your guts remain sound at 70+, you will be able to consume all the foods you liked in your young days, without limitations (my case, except for wine ... 😁).
There is so much prejudice related to food, especially "white death food" (white sugar, wheat flour, animal fat, milk). With ageing, people do start having stomach (and food) issues, but it is only because, with the time, they get different disturbances in the food processing system, in their body. When the process line is out of order, processing of some infeed materials may be problematic. Gluten makes problems to many and I understand that it is a big problem to them, but it is not gluten that is to blame, it is their disturbed stomach.
The fact, that the mentioned tribes have less arrhythmia problems may be explained the other way round - natural selection. Whoever of them has any health issue as young, does not reach the age to reproduce (poor health system service, lol). With the time, the community gets healthier and healthier, like it happens in a pack of lions. Than, they have probably far less stress (except for anger with a poor internet signal, lol) living in what many of us consider to be a faery-tale.
As you age it is natural for your stomach acid to become less acidic and that leads to less nutrients from your food as they are not digested as well. It's why old people burp and fart a lot.
Yes I agree food is a big contributory factor. Buying quality food takes years to find localish good sources and change your habits including accepting we have to go back a couple of generations and accept more of our income will be spent on it. Never to late to start though....🤪
Entirely possible, but excusing the obvious question of how long hunter gathers live anyway and do they on average grow old enough to get diagnosed, there could be other factors, pollution, stress, exercise (they may possibly get more of it than us sedentary types, from birth), etc.
When tribal communities and health are discussed we often get overly obsessed by their diet or activity.Yes , a simpler, fresh food diet without the additives and indulgences of a developed society and the constant necessity of well paced activity to survive in their environment are important.
What most of us forget to discuss , however, is probably the biggest contributor to simpler societies lower levels of certain illnesses.
That is , of course , Stress.
Although these communities do need to work hard to survive they usually score far more highly on Happiness and Mental Health score tests than developed countries with all of their trappings and distractions.
They live simply , rest well when action isn't required , work together and follow simple lifestyle rules to reduce stress, and have close knit and cooperative relationships with their families and community.
By not being weighed down by the Stress and over ambitious daily aims of modern high tech life they don't suffer the same anxieties , disappointments and fears of judgement which eventually find most of the World suffering illnesses and burn out.
There is also the fact that they don't have regular check ups and health care in the way that we do and so often any of the illnesses we are treated for aren't diagnosed at the same level within these communities. So , just like many of us , they can look fit and healthy and keep busy but still suddenly drop without warning from a cardiac event.
I read an article about lowering blood sugar this week which was endorsing eating more red meat and eggs fried in butter daily.
While yes , eggs and complex foods can help lower blood sugar spikes no modern day Diabetes Consultant would suggest that type of diet ( no matter how nice that may taste).
One comment I noted in the writers reasons to suggest this as a healthy option was that eating more saturated fats didn't do the Inuit Community any harm so why should we avoid it.
I was intrigued , so I looked up the statistics. Turns out their high cholesterol diet isn't as good as the writer thought. As , after removing the numbers that die from accidents and attack the Inuit Communities still have a mortality rate ten years lower than the rest of the Canadian population.
I suppose that it's not what we eat but how much, allied to the levels of energy we expend in our daily round. A high calorie, low energy lifestyle seems to lead to too much of the wrong kind of fat finding its way to our major organs. This then increases certain inflammatory processes and leads to a form of premature cardiovascular ageing, producing such issues as AF, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes.
I went to a presntation by a cardiologist who volunteered somewhere in Africa from time-to-time. He said AF was very rare and he attributed it to their typically lower BMI values.
My former husband hunted birds, goats, pigs and deer. When on our Tuscan bus tour of South America we both put on weight eating bread, cheese and ham for breakfast and lunch. He lost his but mine being female was difficult to move out.
yes I bet.? They said they can cover many miles a day especially when following bigger animals like deer etc. sometimes their prey is shot with a poison arrow then it runs off and they follow it until the poison takes effect. They were eating monkey, berries, roots, birds etc. the cooked monkey looked quite appetising to be honest.
You've hit the nail on the head there.With many hunter gatherer and nomadic communities it is the low impact steady state walking style and breathing techniques they use while doing it that help them walk so far . The Masai walk as much as 20 km a day on average.
Afghan Nomadic communities have been known to walk as far as 700km in just 12 days.
The breathing method they use creates a steady controlled heart rate as they move. They breath through the nose and out through pursed lips. They have a general breath rate of inhaling for three steps , holding for one step , then breathing out for three steps and holding for one. If they are going uphill or need to increase their pace they breath 2:2 with no held breaths. It takes time to learn but it does increase your endurance and energy when you walk or exercise.
Even when appearing to move at a slow run walking communities never look like they put their bodies under strain or push it beyond their physical limits , which is the key to their consistency, but also another lesson about how over exertion can be a common trigger for AF in people whom are very physically active prior to getting cardiac problems.
Daily walking with good posture and a light foot , and fluid movement in their physical activity as well as life in the open air helps them to maintain a healthy BMI , small waistline , low lipids and a controlled blood glucose level, all useful ways to prevent cardiovascular problems.
And it also shows that deep breathing and good oxygen consumption is a major key in keeping your heart in control.
You actually googled " hunter gatherers afib incidence" ? Sorry but I do find that hilarious.
I think our diet, exercise, stress & modern medicine like flu jabs etc plays a huge part of it.
But don't forget they also died from tooth decay!
I found this when I googled what you did, very interesting.
"Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia in post-industrialized populations. Older age, hypertension, obesity, chronic inflammation, and diabetes are significant atrial fibrillation risk factors, suggesting that modern urban environments may promote atrial fibrillation. Here we assess atrial fibrillation prevalence and incidence among tropical horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon with high levels of physical activity, a lean diet, and minimal coronary atherosclerosis, but also high infectious disease burden and associated inflammation"
I’m glad you found it hilarious tony, it must have put a smile on your face bless you. thats how people find out about things in life by researching. I just thought I’d look to see if there was any stats on afib in tribal people who live a total different lifestyle to us lot. 👍
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