I discuss:

• What we can learn from an ancient civilization called the Korowai people who lived in tree houses
• How to develop a system for change that works for you
• The power of Kaizen

I am really excited to start you on this journey and I hope to add a lot of value to your life as a whole. Show Transcript: Nutrition is remarkable in its ability to have people with completely opposite views saying they have science to support completely opposite views. Frustrating isn’t it? What are we supposed to believe? Nutrition isn’t just about what you eat. Nutrition has to do, not only with food, or how well you eat, it has to do with how well you move. And in this training, it has to do with how well you Think. You know, if you think about it, like the rest of our science system. The bulk of human psychology research also came from rats. We all know about the carrot and stick principle, the rat maze. Think about that. Again, we can’t determine the health of human beings from rats. To determine health for humans, we need to tap into our inner aborigines. In terms of developing a healthy mind and health psychology, we need timeless strategies, a system that works. I’m gonna talk about such a system found in some of our current ancient people from Papua New Guinea, through lessons from them, we’re gonna talk about how to develop a system that works for you. It’s one thing to learn about how to get and stay well, it’s a whole nother enchilada on actually doing it. And that leads us to Dynamism Biohack: How Do You Eat a Dinosaur?

THE KOROWAI PEOPLE

The Korowai people live close to the border of Papua New Guinea. The majority of their clans live in tree houses on their isolated territory. The Korowai are hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists who practice shifting cultivation. They have excellent hunting and fishing skills. Until 1970, they were unaware of the existence of any people on Earth besides themselves. This lack of awareness makes their culture an interesting group to study because it proves to be less adulterated. Their extensive views of 140-foot high tree dwellings seen towering over other trees in the Indonesian rainforest make it hard to believe that they were unaware of other humans. However, when you are living in one of the least explored jungles in the world, these things can happen. The Korowai people have been building their towering treehouses since long before we ever had skyscrapers, on the isolated island of New Guinea, part of Papua in the Indonesian Rainforest. I remember growing up dreaming about having a treehouse. My brother and I would try to experiment with our versions, which usually consisted of one or two 2x4s placed high up in our tree in the backyard; not much of a treehouse. But for us, we built it, and we were proud. The Korowai people built their tree houses with banyan or wonbom trees, which made excellent working materials similar to modern support beams. They had a system they borrowed and perfected from their ancestors, not just in hunting skills, but also in tree-dwelling. The treehouse building skills are one of the fascinating examples of continual improvement ever seen in any tribe observed to date. These treehouses were constructed not with load-bearing machinery, but rather using the most basic, almost prehistoric, of tools and with expert climbing skills of the Korowai. Treehouses were filled with as many as a dozen people, along with all sorts of additional family pets. The Korowai people battled the harsh environment of the rainforest, so they built their homes high up in the trees which allowed the tribe to escape the often-unbearable disease-carrying mosquitos and other invaders.

Korowai Treehouses The Size of Skyscrapers

The treehouses also protected from flooding and in their religion, gave protection from evil spirits or troubling neighbors. These trees were built in a relatively short time, with a small crew guided by a leader who seemed to have specialized knowledge as to how to place each pole and bind them together. Watching them build a treehouse is very much like watching an NFL football game, complete with specialized players, coaches, and specific play designs for each unique circumstance. Not all of the houses are level with the treetops. Some are between 8-12 meters high with a single notched pole they used as a ladder. The homes could last up to five years, as long as they don’t perish in an accidental fire. The BCC traveled into the most private part of the Indonesian jungle to examine and film the Lahaou clan of the Korowai tribe building their treehouses. The beautiful footage they captured was video documented for Human Planet, along with a fascinating behind-the-scenes look. I have already talked about our need to tap into our inner aborigines in terms of how we eat and move. But should we really try to mirror our ancestors in terms of how to Think? I mean, we have advanced in our brain chemistry; haven’t we? If we look back at our past, yes, our advances in education, our industrialized way of life helped us put a man on a moon, and one day on mars. You’re not gonna find anyone building a treehouse that will get them to the moon. Of course, we all get that. But in all honesty, we really sit down and think about this, our ancestors teach us a lesson about our brain. We have toxins all around us in our air, water, soil, and environment from both the food and chemical industries that are insulting and damaging our brains. Even the grains we eat today, our toxic to our brain as we learned about Dr. David Perlmutter’s work in grain brain in a recent show. So, compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, they have healthier and bigger brains than you and me. Quite frankly, I talked in a different show about how the human brain has shrunk significantly compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Of course, we don’t want to go back to the outback in terms of their limited education, but in terms of brain development; because we currently live with smaller brains, it’s worth learning a thing or two about our past and mimics patterns that may help us heal our brain in the present. With that said, could you build a treehouse the way the Korowai people do? I bet you couldn’t. They may not have had the luxury of going to school the way we did, but inside their skulls, is a healthier and bigger brain than us. So we want to pay attention to that, to understand where we came from, and what we need to do, how we need to interact in nature and in our lifestyle that resembles the body and mind of an ancient. Again, trying to implement a system of living that mirrors our ancestor’s lifestyle like the craftsman of the Korowai people of our ancestors can be overwhelming when we live in a comfort-oriented culture. I think at this point in this training, everyone can agree that understanding humanity and implementing a healthcare system that deals with humanity by mimicking the lifestyle of an ancient rather than dissecting rats and mice; tapping into our inner aborigine is the key to the future of health promotion for humans. Remember, we all have a hunter-gatherer genome, we have the same genetic requirements as the Korowai people. Living a life that is genetically congruent for humans should be the focus of our healthcare system. And I know it can very difficult in today’s society. knowing what we should do, and doing it, is very perplexing. So, to overcome the obstacles to developing a living and active knowledge of this ancestral way of life, we are going to turn to one of our key concepts the Korawhy people mastered: it’s called kaizen.

Kaizen: Constant and Continous Improvement

Kaizen is Japanese for continuous improvement. Kaizen is the soul of the Think driver, the third pillar of Dynamic people. The Korowai people are one of the greatest examples of Kaizen at work in human civilization. Therefore it is important to gain a deeper understanding of the larger concept and how we can unleash it for robust results in our modern lives and communities. Kaizen is a continuous improvement based on certain guiding principles our ancestors have been doing since man first walked on Earth: They are:

• Efficient processes bring great results
• Understand the current situation
• Speak with data, manage by facts
• Take action to contain and correct root causes of problems
• Work as a team
• Kaizen is everybody’s business

The Korowai people certainly understood the most notable feature of kaizen and that significant results come from many small changes which accumulate over time.

Small Incremental Changes

But, small changes have been misunderstood to mean that kaizen equates to minor changes. In fact, kaizen means everyone involved in making improvements. Dynamic people don’t use this as an excuse to go with the flow of the community. They use this idea to gather the community, to educate and implement a strategic method like a food coop, a gym group, a political rally, or some other like-minded group inspired to make community changes. Kaizen is a long-term approach that seeks to achieve small, incremental changes. Each change can be so small and straightforward that it seems insignificant at the time, but as you accumulate these little changes together over time, they become enormous. In the kitchen, maybes it’s taking out an ingredient and adding a healthier one. Instead of weekly grocery shopping, you shop every three days like the Europeans, getting fresh veggies. Just adding fresh vegetables to the dinner table is something we all can do. Should you decide to run a marathon, you wouldn’t just get up one day and go. The first thing you would do is research how to train and prepare for it. There are many different approaches, but the one I am advocating is based on Kaizen because it is a lasting game changer. Most of my patients who start training joke with me about how they can’t even run for five minutes. I assure them that that is okay, and they should stick with the program. I usually start with something very simple. The first week I would tell them to run for three minutes and then walk for two minutes, alternating for forty-five minutes. The next week I would tell them to run for five minutes and walk for two minutes. Sometimes, they wouldn’t have a desire even to go to the gym. So I would ask them to lay out their clothes the night before. Not to worry about going to the gym, just lay out the clothes and shoes. Then in the morning, they would see the clothes laid out. Then I would ask, “why not put them on?” Still not mentioning anything about the gym. After they get dressed, maybe they feel a little more up to it, maybe they don’t. So I would ask, “why not go to the gym just to watch people, you don’t have to work out, just watch?” Most people, if they take the time to dress and go, will also engage in the activity. What you will find, the hardest part of this is dressing and showing up. In fact, in my experience, it is over 95% of it. You see if you can make small incremental changes each week for the next six months, you will finally be ready for the marathon. That’s the spirit of the Korowai people and the power of kaizen. The hardest part of doing anything new is getting started. The same goes for each of the five pillars of Dynamic Health. A space shuttle uses 96 percent of its fuel during takeoff. It’s getting started that is difficult. That is why we need systems put in place. The process the Korowai people use to build a treehouse is a system that involves incremental improvement to help accomplish an enormous task little by little. Each system in the treehouse evolved over trial and error over time. It performed a difficult task slowly. After investing over a decade of my life in practicing holistic medicine, the same recurring problem kept coming up. Our culture says we are sick or getting sick because of predetermined genes, or genetic destiny; the idea that we are born with health that comes to us, not from us. It teaches people to live without the consequence, and it is making the sickness/crisis industry, the food industry, and its wedding partner, Big Pharma very rich! I realized that if I am going to write a book or start a podcast, it must involve a simple system that anyone can implement, and it must be a complete game-changer for the American Healthcare System. I wanted to explore new ways of treatment that would increase the results and the sustainability of our work. The priority, and after a decade, was the research behind this training.

Science of Humanity Under Scrutiny

If you think about it, before the Human Genome Project, over 86% of our medical research comes from laboratory efforts on rats, mice, and animals. According to the standards set up in 1910 when they standardized the practice of medicine, they instituted that evidence-based science; the random control trial would become the gold standard for medicine. The fact is, at present, we have zero human trials. If you look at these rules, to have true random control trials on humans, we would need to breed human beings in a lab and study them over generations. That is true. Now I am not advocating such barbaric practice or standards. When we have over 30 million women, and children forced into sex slavery, and when more than 75% of humanity were slaves until the late 18th century, I could imagine someone or government could set up such a research facility. God forbid. I only am bringing awareness that rats are not miniature humans and that most of modern medicine today comes from rats. Each year’s Nobel Prize winner gets selected from their research conducted on rats and other animals. There is no algorithm, computer program, or technique that will guarantee that chemicals exposed to rats and animals, will have a similar effect on humans. None. Not a single shred of evidence in any peer-review journal. Not one. and there never will be, because it turns out every single species on planet earth has a specific set of genetic instructions specific to that species. If you study a dolphin, you wouldn’t study a shark; you would study the dolphin. The bottom line. We want to tap into our own inner aborigine, we want to live like an ancient without leaving our modern world. In the spirit of the Korowai people, we can follow their example by creating a system that works for us. In the upcoming training, I’m going to expand on how to do that. The first step in creating lasting change is to learn how to eat a dinosaur. How do you that? With one bite at a time… Understand. I’m Dr. Matt Hammett reminding you to lighten up, move better and live fuller, until the next Dynamism Biohack.