Life spans have increased, not due to diet, but in spite of diet. The increase has been made possible by the eradication and control of infectious diseases, plus improvements in diagnostic capabilities. Bear in mind that the science of medicine didn’t exist at all in the paleolithic era. As for progress, while we’ve come a long way in many respects, the basis of the societal shift we call agriculture was actually a dietary wrong turn; i.e., a mistake. I like to think we would have organized societies around other things, eventually, though the hunter-gatherer lifestyle didn’t lend itself well to this arrangement.

Had it not been for that dietary misstep, we might be living more primitively and might be less advanced, but we’d be healthier for it. “Civilization” has it’s trade-offs.

When I began, I went “cold turkey,” throwing out all my old food and replacing it with lean meats, veggies and fruit, and also walnuts and almonds. I drink only purified bottled water. I walk daily, for about thirty minutes (an hour a day on weekends).

What got me started was being diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. My doctor prescribed Metformin, a highly dangerous drug that can cause lactic acidosis, a sometimes fatal conditon. I never filled the prescription, since I was already reading Loren Cordain’s book, The Paleo Diet and knew I could whip my diabetes with just a change of diet. As of yesterday, my blood sugar is now just about normal again. I also had high triglycerides, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and all of these are also reversing naturally, in response to the diet.

Those of you who haven’t yet tried the Paleo Diet should definitely do so. This is not some “fad” diet - it is the diet we evolved on, the diet mankind ate for 2.5 million years, until agriculture introduced the “foods” (grains and dairy) that are slowly killing most people today. Whatever diet-related diseases you’re suffering from, from allergies to heart disease and diabetes, will be cured for good by the Paleo Diet. Depending on how far gone you are, it can take as little as six months to a year. But, I stress that this is a diet for life (as any diet should be) and it is so easy to do and so easy to stick with. You may find it overwhelming to give up your favorite foods, but, when you realize what those foods have been doing to you, it’s easy to leave them behind. Everyone should be eating this way(indeed, 500 generations ago, everyone WAS!).

I never thought about the possibility of colorblindness being related to diet. I appreciate your story, Chuck, and wonder if there are other stories like this out there.

Thank you too, Janene, for the info on your past paleo year. It’s interesting that both of you are able to maintain on a modified diet with some civilized foods. It’s really good news, actually, because my wife is considering joining me on the paleo band wagon, and there’s no way in hell she’d give up cheese.

My wife Beks and I have also been about 90% Paleo, going on 6 months now. We allow ourselves to eat whatever we want when we go out. (We call foods like corn and beans and peanut butter ‘bastard Paleo’, and consider it better to eat foods like these than to eat wheat or milk, etc.)

So far, the results have been pretty shocking for both of us, but especially me. On top of my skin clearing up pretty much instantaneously, my color vision has improved. I have an intermediate green/brown color deficiency; sometimes I can’t see very close shades of brown or green apart, and often, I’ll confuse brown or green completely. Or, I should say that I DID have an intermediate green/brown color deficiency.

I have these pale green corduroys that I swore for years were light brown. A few weeks ago, I looked at them and blinked a few times, trying to figure out what was wrong with my eyes. Then I realized that I was looking at pale green corduroys, and not light brown ones. It was quite a shock for me.

Beks, the medical junkie that she is, assured me that while rods and cones take a long time to regrow, they could under the proper circumstances. Looks like I found the circumstances.

The same day, I took the “number in the colored dots” test for green/brown deficiency that I had failed miserably 5 years before. One or two took a little squinting, but I could see every single one.

I can’t prove it was paleo, but my mind is running the logic of, “It happened after, therefore it happened because.”

I also lost about 5 pounds of fat and gained about 15 pounds of muscle. Of course, paleo has done nothing for my Ugly - Beks says that Paleo doesn’t cure Ugly, or that Ugly is untreatable, or something like that. But I’ll settle for being one among the very small percentage of men who have perfect color vision.

- Chuck

I’m sure Jason will answer as well… but I think he has not been maintaining the diet.

I, on the other hand, have been about 95% paleo since last January and my husband joined in last summer. I have trimmed off almost twenty pounds and have only been sick once in that time, and I continue to slowly lose weight and muscle up… I feel *really* good, energetic, clear headed. My husband lost about twenty pounds almost immediately and is looking better than he did in high school.

Full disclosure: we do, also, work out regularily, including weight training….

Janene

*** 90%: I cook almost totally paleo, but we occasionally will have a little corn or rice, some cheese, beans and potatoes — but none of these are anything like staples as they once were. And virtually no wheat, no white sugar and no corn syrup at all…

I just noticed that is has been a year since this post. I’m curious as to whether you are still eating paleo and what the results are now (and/or what they were when/if you stopped the diet).

I appreciate your empirical approach, btw.