ReEvolution is dedicated to providing the premiere health, fitness, and lifestyle resource on the web - or anywhere - free of charge. But ReEvolution is about more than just health and fitness. It’s about a new way of looking at our life on this planet. At some point all of us face the question: “how should I live my life”. We search for answers in books, school, friends, and religion, and all of these things can help. But ultimately, we have to find our answer within ourselves.

To really figure out how we should live, shouldn’t we first try to define who and what we are as physical, mental, and emotional beings? How can we hope to get the most out of our lives if we don’t understand our own biology and psychology – the ways that our bodies and minds work and what they require to work at an optimum? No one ever bothers to teach us about these things. We learn a lot in school about math, history, chemistry, etc… but virtually nothing about how the human body and mind work and what a human being requires to be at his or her best

This is our passion at ReEvolution. To help everyone better understand their nature - body, mind, and spirit. Armed with this understanding, we can take better control of our lives, recognizing and meeting all of our physical, mental, and emotional needs and living at our full physical, mental, and emotional potential. Every aspect of our lives - our performance in school or work, our relationships, and certainly our happiness - are inextricably bound up with our physical and psychological health. When we maximize our health and vitality the positive effects ripple through every sphere of our lives. And the first step to maximizing our health and vitality is to develop an understanding of our nature.

Our nature as biological beings is a legacy of the world we were designed to live in; the world as it was thousands of years ago. Whether you believe this design came from God or from evolution, a number of things are certain. The world we were designed for was a world without polluted air, water, and food. A world without sedentary office jobs, TV, or motor vehicles. A world in which we moved around through a good part of day, ate exclusively healthful, unprocessed foods, rose and slept with the sun, and were free of all of the mental stressors and distractions of modern life.
 
Through most of history, our ancestors lived in this simpler world in sync with their nature. They ate the foods their bodies were designed to eat, exercised the way they were designed to exercise, and rose and slept with the sun according to their natural body rhythms. In so doing, they enjoyed a high level of health and fitness, free of so many of the problems (obesity, diabetes, heart disease) that plague us today. We know this thanks to anthropological studies of so-called “modern stone age societies” – people in the world today who live without any modern technology in a fashion similar to that of our ancestors. Counter to popular dogma, many of these societies enjoy better health and longer life spans than we do here in the West. In a number of these societies diseases like heart disease and diabetes are virtually non-existant*.  

Our basic nature, body, mind and spirit, is still the same as that of our ancestors who lived thousands of years ago. Here in the modern world, our nature is confounded at every turn. Endless stress, inactivity, and processed foods deplete our energy and sabotage our physical, mental, and emotional health.

Of course technology and civilization have, without a doubt, improved human life in innumerable ways. Advances like modern hospitals, electric lights, and the internet, are things for which we should all be grateful. But imagine having the best of both worlds: All of the benefits of technology that we currently enjoy, along with the robust health and vitality that our ancestors experienced, and which would allow us to live so much better, happier, fuller lives.

Maximizing our health, happiness, and life potential requires living in harmony with our nature. This begins with the understanding that our nature is not going to change to accommodate our culture. If we want to improve our health and vitality as a society, we have to change our culture to work with our nature. We’re not suggesting that people throw out their laptops, ipods, and cars, and renounce all of the very real benefits of modern civilization.  Rather, what we need to do is to find a way to live in harmony with our nature in today's world. We must - literally - ReEvolve a way of living that works with our biological design and maximizes our health and vitality here within the context of modern life.

At the same time, we have to redefine our relationship with the earth. At present, we abuse our planet without much concern for the long term consequences. If we don’t change this, we are living on borrowed time. Our bodies are not designed to deal with constant assaults from air, water, and soil pollution that contaminates food. Further, our food chain is part of the global ecosystem, and environmental insults to keystone species like plankton, bait fish, and insect pollinators like bees are already having detrimental effects on our food supply. All of us need to recognize that in the long run our health and the health of our planet are inseparable, and that in finding a more natural, healthy way of living day to day, we must also accept the need for each of us to commit to making the world healthier.

Imagine what life would be like if we made these changes. We could all live fitter healthier, more productive, happier lives. The economic benefits would be immense. We currently spend over two trillion dollars a year on health care, which is by far our largest industry, and most of what we’re treating is preventable. Imagine how much easier it would be to pass meaningful environmental legislation if the whole country came to see that our health and happiness ultimately depends on the health of our planet? All of this change starts with the recognition that getting the most out of every aspect of our lives requires understanding and living in harmony with our nature.

The change to this world can start with you. Commit yourself to understanding your nature and how to live at your best. Maximize your health, your vitality, and your potential and start to achieve your goals and dreams. Then, at the very least, serve as an example to others of what we can all achieve when we come to understand who we are and begin living the way we are meant to live. Better, become an agent of change. Help others to see what you see, and spread the understanding that the quality of all of our lives depends on our health and the health of our planet. Begin today. Start Your ReEvolution.

-- Vaughn Gray. Founder and EIC, ReEvolution.com

* - Skeptics frequently claim that the only reason chronic diseases are so common today in America is that people are living longer. It is true that average life spans are probably longer today than they were in the distant past. But this is largely a result of reductions in infant mortality and deaths from infectious disease and trauma. Of course we have modern technology to thank for this. Antibiotics and emergency surgery save countless lives. But technology has really been a two edged sword. As deaths from infectious disease and trauma have decreased, the age adjusted incidences of diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, and depression have soared. In addition, people are developing these diseases at progressively younger ages every year. Conditions like Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and autism, which were virtually unheard of or unrecognized 50 years ago, are now common. Some of this certainly owes to increased diagnosis of these diseases, but there is little doubt that the actual incidence of these, and many other conditions, is rising precipitously.

Modern stone age peoples in the Hunza valley in the Himalayas, the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, in Vilcabamba in Ecuador, and in many other places frequently live well past 80. On autopsy their bodies are largely free of atherosclerosis, tumors, and other conditions which are virtually endemic in the elderly here in the west. Fascinatingly, these people generally suffer from much higher incidences of chronic infections than we do (owing to our superior sanitation methods and antimicrobial drugs) and yet they still outlive us. Strikingly, anthropological records show that when hunter gatherers and pre-modern farmers begin adopting a western way of life, eating processed foods and reducing their levels of physical activity, they very quickly start to develop the same diseases that plague our society. Animal studies have shown that cats, dogs, and rats raised on processed food diets and deprived of exercise develop diseases like cancer at a vastly higher rates than wild rats. The evidence that our modern lifestyle is destroying our health really is overwhelming.