Benefits of the Paleo Diet

If you are going on the Paleo diet to lose weight, you know its benefits there. But did you know that it can help you with chronic diseases and disorders as well? Diseases or conditions as diverse as asthma, diabetes, kidney stones and osteoporosis can be improved or even cured with the Paleo diet. Let's go over some of its benefits:

Losing Weight with the Paleo Diet

To lose weight we must burn more calories than we take in. We've been told for years that the best way to do this is to eat a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. However, most people on low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diets struggle with it. They are hungry all the time, and weight lost is often regained rapidly or within a few months after they lose it. Low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets were hot for a while, but were nothing more than a short term fix, because in the long run this diet is unhealthy because of its reliance upon fats at the expense of fruits and vegetables.

The Paleo diet imitates what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate - a high-protein, high-fruit and vegetable diet with moderate amounts of fat, but with high amounts of omega-3 and monounsaturated fats. Protein has two to three times the fat-burning effect of either fat or carbohydrates, so it revs up your metabolism, speeding up your weight loss. Also, protein has a much greater satiety value than either fat or carbohydrate, so it lowers your appetite. Higher protein diets have been proven over and over to be more effective than low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets in promoting weight loss.

Syndrome X diseases

The diet that the average person heats is high in sugar and grains. This raises insulin and blood sugar levels. Excessive insulin and blood sugar levels are known to promote a cluster of diseases called Syndrome X. These diseases include obesity, hypertension, high 'bad' cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, and gout. You do not eat grains and sugar on the Paleo diet, but you do eat carbohydrates in the form of unlimited fruits and vegetables. The carbohydrates in the Paleo Diet are  low-glycemic, meaning that they cause a slow rise in your blood sugar and insulin levels. The high fiber, protein, and omega-3 fats in the Paleo Diet will also help to prevent Syndrome X diseases.

Other Disorders

Because of the unlimited amounts of fruits and vegetables permitted on the Paleo Diet, your body will be slightly alkaline, so diseases and disease symptoms caused by an acid/base imbalance will improve or even be cured. These diseases include osteoporosis, kidney stones, asthma, hypertension, and many others. Also, the high amounts of soluble-fiber in the Paleo Diet will improve most diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, and the high omega-3 fat content will improve most of the inflammatory diseases.

The Paleo diet is a great way to improve our health and become lean and strong. While is certainly true that hunter-gatherers in ancient societies died young, most deaths were related to a life spent living  without modern medical care. They didn't have the chronic degenerative diseases that run rampant in our modern society. In hunter-gatherer populations today, the elderly people are generally free of chronic disease. Obesity, high blood pressure are virtually unknown. But when these people adopt western diets, their health declines, and they show all the same 'diseases of civilization' that we have in modern societies.