EP 297 What Our Historical Origins of Being Can Teach Us about Our Fertile Nature| Jenny Powers
Jenny Powers is an accomplished writer, scientist, and athlete. She earned her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of Colorado, Denver; her journey as a collegiate basketball player taught her to push physical boundaries even as she continually expanded her intellectual horizons. She is deeply inspired by the exploration of human nature and the study of our ancestors; her role researching and co-authoring On the Origin of Being marks the culmination of this passion to date. Jenny balances her professional endeavors with her roles as a wife and mother in Colorado.
In this episode, we discussed the evolutionary mismatch between our genetics and contemporary lifestyles, how this mismatch impacts our health, and how learning our evolutionary journey can help us return to a state of thriving.
Her co-authored book, "On the Origin of Being" covers sleep, nutrition, work and rest, and our relationship with nature.
Takeaways:
Our circadian rhythms, which evolved over millions of years, play a crucial role in our health and fertility.
Prioritizing sleep and maintaining a regular sleep-wake cycle supports our natural rhythms and overall well-being.
Our modern diet, high in processed foods and sugar, is not aligned with our evolutionary needs.
Returning to whole, unprocessed foods can support our overall health and fertility. Processed fats and sugars are prevalent in the modern diet and can have negative effects on health.
Fiber is important for gut health and helps regulate insulin levels.
Understanding the evolutionary reasons behind our cravings can help us make healthier food choices.
Overworking and a lack of rest can have detrimental effects on our well-being.
Being present in the moment and finding work-life balance is essential for a healthy and fulfilling life.
Website: https://www.ontheoriginofbeing.com/
Check out Michelle’s latest book here: https://www.michelleoravitz.com/thewayoffertility
Follow Michelle on Instagram @thewholesomelotusfertility
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/ for more tips and updates.
For more information about Michelle, visit: www.michelleoravitz.com
The Wholesome FertilityFacebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/
Transcript:
Michelle (00:00)
Welcome to the podcast, Jenny.
Jenny Powers (00:01)
Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Michelle (00:04)
Yes, I'm excited to talk to you about this amazing topic and your new book. And I would love for you to first start with introducing yourself and your background, how you got into writing this recent book about where we came from.
Jenny Powers (00:18)
Yeah, okay. Well, my name is Jenny Powers. I grew up as an Air Force brat, so I kind of moved all over the country and got to play basketball at the University of Colorado when I studied chemical engineering. But then I went back to school to study immunology and that's what I got my PhD in.
studying the innate immune system, macrophages and cell signaling and stuff like that. But I felt while it was interesting and fascinating, I felt like there was just, I wasn't doing what I think was in my heart, which was to be a writer. So when I had my kids, it was really kind of a nice time to make a break from academic science and move into trying to become a writer. And I actually started writing
not fiction books for kids, middle grade books for like eight to 12 year olds. So I have a couple of finished manuscripts. Nothing's been published yet. But, you know, I needed some sort of part time easy, you know, kind of fit in my schedule job. And it was incredible that I found this job opportunity with my co author, Luke Comer. He actually was looking for someone to research one of his other books, which is a nutrition book.
And when I called to interview with him, he's like, I already found a nutritionist. I'm like, man, you know, this is that's too bad. You know, this sounds like a really good fit for me. And he's like, well, what about this idea? And so something that he had been like holding in his head for the last 10 years. And it kind of started when he was looking at nutrition, like how far away are we from how how how we are living right now? How far away are we from how we evolved to live?
And it kind of applies to all so many different aspects of our lives. In this first book, we cover, you know, kind of the basics, sleep, nutrition, work and rest, and our relationship with nature. But we actually have other parts, other books in the series, hopefully that will come out that cover more like social groups and cultural things and all of these things. We're no longer living in accord with our biology and
it sounded fascinating to me because there are several parts of that where I had already started feeling not quite connected. So the one that really stood out to me when I was writing this was the work because I was a PhD student and then the postdoc and I worked 70 hours a week and I was exhausted and then I had also,
in my late teens, early twenties started suffering from depression and then feeling really connected to the environment, but then seeing what's happening to the environment. So I had already had some of these things like really affecting my life. And when Luke presented me with this idea, he's like, well, what do you think about researching this and collaborating with me for a book on this? I was like, this sounds amazing because not only do I get to use
Michelle (03:30)
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (03:34)
my experience as a researcher, but I get to write and I get to write about something that I grew more and more passionate about as I researched it. I like to think that I was, I'm kind of just like a reader at the very beginning when you pick up the book, you don't know anything, right? And so, but so when I picked up this project, it was a total blank slate and it was amazing to be able to have the freedom.
to research and write until I learned so much about myself and about why maybe I was feeling depressed and the things that I can do to change. And it felt really good to be able to bring this into the world. And it's been a really exciting ride. You kind of don't necessarily plan something, but you kind of like take the next step. And then there's these like little breadcrumbs that you follow. And...
I had no idea when I started this project that I'd be on podcasts and we'd have a book in the world. And it's just been an amazing, amazing ride.
Michelle (04:35)
I bet. And I'll tell you, I mean, personally, I feel very drawn to this topic and I'll tell you why. I mean, this is a fertility podcast. I'm very much into that, but Chinese medicine is really my background. And Chinese medicine is really, you know, it's interesting because you look kind of back in the history and it's very old. You know, Chinese medicine has been around for thousands of years.
Jenny Powers (04:44)
Mm -hmm.
Right.
Michelle (05:00)
and they still don't really know the origins exactly. They estimate about 3000, but they think it's longer. But there was a lot of book burning that has happened over the years. And it's really based on Taoism, which translates as the way. And the way is living in accordance with the laws of nature and how over time, like when we lose that direction,
it can cause disease, dis -ease disease. And yeah, it's really fascinating. So I think it's really cool because this is kind of like modern research on something old, but like coming at it from a different angle, but similar, but it's deriving really at the same essence, which is.
Jenny Powers (05:29)
Right, right.
Yeah, it's at the heart of what you do. Yeah. How the laws of nature, what did nature do to get us here? Because nature, I like to call it nature and evolution, they were like biohacking, right? That's like this big catchphrase nowadays, like biohacking, but you're making small incremental changes over time and then see like what...
Michelle (05:58)
Yes.
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (06:15)
improves how you feel and what doesn't. And so that's what natural selection does. Like the things that improved our survival and improved our, you know, our wellbeing and our equilibrium are the things that stayed and the things that didn't serve us, you know, got selected out. And so I really feel like nature knew what it was doing and it had millions of years and lots of small little incremental changes that made us who we were.
Michelle (06:17)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (06:43)
for various reasons, for all of the environmental selection and what we needed to do to survive. And yeah, I totally see the ancient, how ancient medicine, ancient peoples, indigenous peoples, how they approach wellbeing. It's not just treating symptoms, it's treating the holistic, the whole body.
all of these different things that I think thankfully now more and more people like yourself and your functional medicine doctors and holistic doctors, you know, people who kind of bring the old and kind of combine it with the new. I think that is really where healthcare needs to go.
Michelle (07:22)
Yeah, it's really fascinating. And I think to myself, like just really how nature is. And what we've been seeing is that fertility has been on a decline and nobody really understands exactly what it is that's causing this for men and women. And there are many ideas of just environmental factors, toxins, like EMFs we don't even see, you know, we're not even aware of what's going on. It's not natural to the body. The body's not used to it. Like our DNA doesn't...
Jenny Powers (07:40)
Mm -hmm.
Michelle (07:50)
respond well to it because it doesn't know what it is and it doesn't know how to react. So really the basis of Taoism and all of that is that we in our nature are fertile. Nature is fertile. There's a seed in everything. Everything that grows has a seed because it wants to keep reproducing. And yeah, it's pretty fascinating. And I think to myself, some of the things that you guys wrote about were things that I talk about like sleep.
Jenny Powers (07:53)
Right.
I like that.
Michelle (08:18)
and the circadian rhythm. And so I would love to really start picking your brain on this because it's really fascinating. It's like really kind of coming home to ourselves and our, you know, the origin of being going back to that origin and how we can do that. Sometimes it feels like an uphill battle.
Jenny Powers (08:19)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Michelle (08:35)
So even though fertility has been on a decline, that shouldn't make us lose hope because there are definitely things that we can do to bring ourselves back to our origins. So with that being said, I just want to always give a message of hope because there's always something that you can do. It might take a little extra work just because like the stream is a little strong right now in a certain direction that may be kind of moving us away, but there's definitely things that we can do.
Jenny Powers (08:44)
Exactly. Yeah.
Right.
Michelle (09:03)
And this is why I love your work so much because it sheds light on things that I think are so important. And so let's, let's cover all of it. Let's start with like the first part. And I believe the first part of it is sleep.
Jenny Powers (09:14)
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, that's the kind of the first fundamental way of being that we cover. It was interesting because I've listened to a couple of your podcasts and one stood out in particular to me, the one with Alison Locke. You talked about all kinds of environmental things and sleep and I found myself like nodding along because I was like, well, yeah, health contributes to fertility. But then learning about what you guys talked about in that podcast, I'm like, my gosh, so many.
Michelle (09:31)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (09:47)
of the things that we talk about in our book can be applied to fertility. Because it's just in order to be fertile and like you said, to access what we're naturally supposed to do, we need to be in a state of well -being and we need to be able to be in equilibrium. Because that's what nature designed us to do. And the very first thing when you started talking about circadian rhythms, I'm like, yes, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle (09:52)
Totally.
I loved it when I read it in your book. I was like, yeah, I felt the same way.
Jenny Powers (10:16)
Because so many people don't necessarily understand that the very first organisms on Earth evolved for circadian rhythms. Because in the sea where everything started, the organisms knew, like, OK, well, what time of day are the nutrients most available? What time of day is the safest to undergo cell division?
You know, you don't want to necessarily undergo cell division when you're at the surface, when the sun shining on you and you might get, you know, DNA damage. So those cells evolved to respond to the rhythms of the earth, because at the very beginning of time, at the very beginning of the earth, there was night and day. You know, we had we had sunlight and we had well, later we had the moon. But so like from the very, very origins of life, we had this this rhythm that
tied us to the earth. And so even with the smallest cell. And so every living thing has circadian rhythms, has genes. I mean, someone won the Nobel Prize for, I think it was for medicine, discovering that these genes that regulate the rhythms of your body are in everything. And what's interesting is circadian rhythms are
Michelle (11:38)
everything in your body or just in nature.
Jenny Powers (11:40)
Well, everything in nature, but also, I think what's important is some people like, well, we're evolved past that. Like humans don't have circadian rhythms, you know, because we're sophisticated beings. And what's interesting is we haven't evolved away from circadian rhythms, but our culture has pushed us away and our technology has pushed us away. So we might not think that, we don't need these to tell us what to do because.
But the problem is our society and our individuals, we override what our body is trying to tell us. We override the signals that circadian rhythms are trying to give us. So.
Michelle (12:19)
You're speaking my language. I literally say that all the time. We override it. It's, wow, I just love this.
Jenny Powers (12:24)
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I feel like I mean, that's one of the main things in the book is, yes, the modern world is great and modern culture brings so many great things, but we have to be aware of like our bio, like we have to be aware of what our bodies are telling us. And people are so they're so focused on.
the future, or they're so distracted, or they want to stay up and watch another three episodes on Netflix and not sleep, or stay up and work until 2 in the morning. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And like you said, it all starts with a good night's sleep. And what was interesting when we were studying this is that a lot of the
Michelle (12:59)
Yeah
Yeah, those things are designed to be addictive. I feel like it's like the fast food of like, of shows.
Jenny Powers (13:19)
Indigenous peoples who are still surviving in these far out, you know, they've been pushed to the fringes, to not even the best, the most hospitable places on earth. They're kind of been pushed to kind of, you know, the places that we didn't want, like the modern people didn't want. But studying them, it's not like they got so much sleep and it's not like they, but what was really important was
they were completely in tune with the sun rising and the sun setting and their bodies responded to that. So when you think about nowadays, you know, we get up and we kind of have, there's someone in our book that I can't remember who was, it's like we live a twilight existence, right? We never get the same amount of light that the sun would give us, but we get it all straight through the day, right? Whereas if we were living,
according to our natures, we get lots of sunlight in the morning, really intense bright sunlight in the morning. And then it goes down. And then once the sun goes down, there's no exposure except firelight and moonlight. And what was interesting about what I love to know about blue light, because blue light is this big thing right now, right? But but the reason why we're so reactive to blue light is because that
is the wavelength of light that penetrated the sea. And so that's where life started. So the reason why we could have been attuned to any wavelength of light, but we were attuned to the blue light because of where our origins were. So getting lots of blue light, sunlight in the morning, but then not getting blue light after it goes down, after the sun goes down, it helps our bodies like reset, like, okay.
This is when our melatonin hormone is going to go up. And then once the sun goes down, the melatonin starts to be produced. And then there's this window where you're tired. And if you're listening to your body, that's when you go to sleep. And then if you're in tune with the Earth, the Indigenous people that were studied, they woke up at the same time every day and got that bright sunlight in the morning.
So it was just really amazing to see like these people, they sleep on the ground or on some skins and they sleep on their arms. And if you look at the difference, I think there's a picture in the book, like our beds are so comfortable, but they didn't even know what insomnia was because they didn't really experience it. It wasn't a problem. They were so in tune with the natural rhythms of the earth and they listened to their bodies.
Michelle (15:59)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (16:07)
that they just didn't have problems with sleep. And so that was a huge like eye -opening thing to me. Like you think like, humans have always struggled with sleep. And there are some people who struggle, but that what's really cool about people who have different genetics, different circadian genetics is that, you know, those night owls, people who can't fall asleep till late in the evening and have really have trouble getting up.
Michelle (16:14)
Yeah.
Thank you.
Jenny Powers (16:36)
that was an evolutionary advantage because there needed to be people to be sentinels to keep the rest of us safe. And because we had these amazing brains, we needed to have really good, high quality, deep sleep. And some of the reasons why, you know, maybe animals in the wild don't necessarily get really deep sleep is because
Michelle (16:44)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (17:04)
they have to be kind of aware of their surroundings. But humans, we got together into big groups and we protected each other. And so as our brains evolved and as our sleep evolved, we were able to get really dense, good quality sleep in a very short time. And because when you're asleep, you're pretty helpless, you know, especially some of the cycles of sleep, you're like parallel, you're literally paralyzed, your body's paralyzed.
Michelle (17:24)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (17:32)
So the people who are early risers or late, you know, the night owls, they're actually helped us survive because they were alert at times when the other people weren't. So I've talked to a researcher and he said, well, oftentimes people who have these delayed sleep phases or advanced sleep phases, once they realize that it's evolutionary and like, it really helps them, like put it into perspective. Nothing's wrong with them.
Michelle (17:44)
It's fascinating.
Jenny Powers (18:01)
It's just part of how they evolved. So all that stuff just fascinates me.
Michelle (18:02)
Right.
That's interesting. That is so fascinating. Yeah. It's really interesting. But as you're telling me, it's really the regularity of that. It's that pulse, that rhythm and sticking with that rhythm. And interestingly enough, there's definitely a correlation with circadian rhythm, dysfunction and menstrual cycle health. So, and that's kind of our larger rhythm for women. And that would be an interesting topic for you to kind of go into is maybe make
series on this with women's health and the cycles and how that impacts it because it's really fascinating. I mean, we need that rhythm like our bodies really respond to that rhythm of nature. And once it has that really intact, then our bodies get more regulated. I had the same thing myself and this is how I got into Chinese medicine.
Jenny Powers (18:34)
Yeah.
Okay.
Michelle (18:53)
is because I had irregular periods, but I also had irregular sleep and so many irregularities. And I feel like it's almost like a train getting derailed. You have to put it back on track and then have that rhythm set again.
Jenny Powers (19:06)
Right? That's exactly right. And what's amazing is that, so in the book, we don't necessarily talk about fertility, but some of the reasons why we have these diseases of modernity, and I guess you could say like infertility and endometriosis, what you and Alison talked about, which was fascinating to me, was that all the things that women struggle with, PMS, pain,
mood swings, all of those things are kind of unnatural. Like the big, the severe symptoms of menstruation that women get are unnatural. And that like blew my mind. So, but, but we don't necessarily talk about fertility, but inflammation, stress, you know, cortisol levels, your gut health, all of these things we talk about in the book and all of those things that you talk about.
Michelle (19:45)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (20:04)
impact your fertility. So getting a good cycle start or getting back on track is like a really good place to start. Because you know when you don't get a good night's sleep. You feel tired and being tired for your whole day just sets everything back. You can't eat properly when you're tired. You don't want to exercise when you're tired.
Michelle (20:26)
Yeah. And when you're overtired, it's hard to sleep. That's the weird thing. It's kind of hard to get back into that rhythm like one way or the other.
Jenny Powers (20:30)
Yeah.
Because your body is in a stress state. When you have a sleep deficit, your body starts to be in more of a fight or flight. And then your body keeps you awake because there's like, well, there must be a reason why I have to be awake right now. So I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you be awake. And all the diseases that come from, I heard you talk about shift work. People who do shift work have infertility.
Michelle (20:38)
Yeah, it's very heightened.
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (21:02)
You know, shift work has been classified as a carcinogen because of their dysregulated circadian rhythms. Like humans weren't meant to work at night. That's not, that doesn't tell people like, cause shift work is really important. There's so many professions that it's important to, but people who do that just need to be aware so they can compensate for that. It's, you know, it's not like, shift work bad. You know, shift work is vital for some people.
Michelle (21:05)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Right, exactly.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (21:28)
But they need to know that that is going to predispose them to some things and they need to take preventative measures to make sure that their shift works and their circadian rhythms aren't, or their circadian rhythms being not in sync with the earth. They just need to remember that they need to try to mitigate some of the effects from that.
Michelle (21:46)
Mm -hmm.
So when they have breaks getting like more early morning sunlight or something to kind of like quickly anchor them out, like earthing, putting your feet on the earth, like how you were saying, I thought about that when you were saying people used to sleep on the earth and how that lowers inflammation. And then also the natural aspect of really connecting with like soil and the microbiomes that impact our gut health. So let's talk a little bit on the nutrition.
Jenny Powers (21:57)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm, yeah.
Okay.
Michelle (22:19)
aspect of it. So what are some of the things that you uncovered that are really more natural to us? And I saw, I noticed that you talked all the highly processed food and how that is like really not in line with our own digestive system and our body's ability to process them.
Jenny Powers (22:36)
Yeah, well, if in the book we talk about how from when we have the common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos. So we talk about kind of what their diet would be like and how changes in the environment changed our diet. And so, and then changes in the environment and then changes in our diet actually were some of the things that allowed us to evolve bigger brains because
when the environment changed, when the great rift came in Africa and split Africa into East Africa and West Africa, the East African side, the climate changed so much. It lost trees, it became more savanna, it became more grassland. And in order to survive, the animals, the early primates that were stuck on that side needed to evolve or they wouldn't survive. They lost their tree food, which was mostly fruits.
leaves and things like that. Food became farther apart. So we lost our ability to climb through trees, but we gained bipedalism and stature and being able to hold things in our hands when we walked. And we needed to find new sources of carbohydrates. So we started finding really high quality dense carbohydrates in like roots and tubers and things like that.
we really didn't need when we lived in the trees because we had all this fruit to feed our brains. But some of the cultural things that we needed, like now, so now all the animals, there were bigger animals and, you know, on the savanna. And so we had to increase our intellect in order to be able to eat, you know, eat the larger animals and to figure out how to dig up those tubers. So our brain size evolved, our intellect evolved.
But then in order to support that brain and our intellect, we had to find the foods that supported the evolution. So like the story of nutrition and the story of evolution, especially the evolution of our brains is so tied together. So, you know, it's like if you talk about nutrition, you have to talk about the evolution of our nutrition if you want to talk about the evolution of our bodies, because our big brain and another...
Michelle (24:52)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (24:55)
reason why we got big brains is because we were able to, our guts were able to shrink. So we have very short guts compared to other primates. And that's for two reasons. One is you were able to, all the nutrients and resources that are required to maintain gut, your gut can now be shifted over and maintain your brain. But we had shorter guts. So we needed to find
Michelle (25:17)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (25:21)
more energy dense food that was easier to digest. So we needed to find, we started to eat more and more animal meat and animal fat because those are easier to digest. Plants have things that are like don't eat being here. We need to kind of get rid of some of those things. But again, we got to use our intellect to learn how to hunt these bigger creatures, but also to process food. Like we, you can't eat a potato raw.
Michelle (25:37)
huh.
Jenny Powers (25:50)
You know, but we learned how to process food to make it easier to digest. So our guts could remain small and we'd still get all the nutrients that we need, but our brains will still also get what it needs. So we started to process foods. And when I mean process, it doesn't mean like the modern day processing of foods, because when our ancestors processed foods, you know, cooked it or grounded or fermented it, they still ate the entire food. They still ate the whole food.
Michelle (25:51)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (26:20)
There was nothing that got thrown out. And so they processed the food to make it easier to digest. All of the nutrients of the food came into our bodies. And for our gut health, that was really important. The fiber was really important that we would eat. And so now these ultra processed foods that we have nowadays, there's just no fiber in them. It's just sugar.
Michelle (26:20)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (26:46)
The consumption of this much sugar, it doesn't have any precedence. Yeah, and yeah, let's not even start talking about all the artificial stuff that gets put in there. So yeah, you were saying like our bodies just don't know how to handle it because over the last 300 years, so the agricultural revolution changed eating forever. But I feel like in the last 200 years since the industrial revolution, things have changed so quickly.
Michelle (26:50)
and chemicals.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (27:15)
I mean, we're eating, I think we went from eating like four pounds of sugar a year, like 300 years ago, and now people eat 150 to 200 pounds of sugar a year, which is just totally crazy. And something you talk about in the book, it's like we have this evolutionary mismatch because genes can't evolve that quickly, right? We can't rely on our bodies to adapt to this much sugar intake.
Michelle (27:26)
That's just crazy. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (27:45)
But something that's really cool about humans is a lot of these big things in our life, big hurdles that we needed to get over, we didn't need to evolve because we have our intellect and because we have culture. And so we could bypass evolution to fix problems. So what the good news about this is we can still bypass our lack of evolution to fix this problem, right? Because if we know
But the way we're eating, our bodies literally have not adapted. It takes hundreds of thousands of years for adaptations to make its way through an entire population. But if we know it, we can intellectually make the changes we need to make. So that's the good news. We don't have to be like, well, I wish our bodies would catch up so I can continue to eat this highly processed food. No, just stop eating it.
Michelle (28:35)
you
Jenny Powers (28:40)
eat the whole foods. And then you don't have to worry about, you know, that your body's not, that your body's mismatched because now you're now living more in alignment with what your body wants.
Michelle (28:41)
Yeah. Right.
Yeah, I mean, it's just so important because it is something that a lot of people are talking about now. Luckily, I think it's becoming like more front and center. For a little while there, nobody even paid attention to it. And it was also as interesting because people were like afraid of fats and everything with sugar. For a I think we were completely as a society blind to it. Until recently, I think people are starting to wake up to it.
Jenny Powers (29:01)
Yeah.
Right?
Right?
Yeah, yeah, and when those studies came out, that demonized fat.
Michelle (29:27)
they were funded by sugar companies.
Jenny Powers (29:29)
Exactly, yeah, because its own findings came out about sugar, but for some reason, the establishment focused on fat. And so, and there is, we do have a problem with fat, not because we're eating necessarily too much of it, it's because we're eating all the wrong kinds of fats, in the wrong ratios. And so, but also we're eating like, the fats we're eating are like,
Michelle (29:41)
Mm -hmm.
right trans fats and yeah.
Jenny Powers (29:55)
processed fats, you know, vegetable, all these oils that are processed, that you stick some of that oil and all this processed sugar together and pretty much 90 % of the things in the grocery store are made up of these things. The sugar that we never used to eat and the type of fat that we never used to eat, all of these processed fats. So, yeah, I'm glad that now sugar is coming out as being a villain in and of itself, but it's also to say, well, we need, our bodies need sugar.
Michelle (30:24)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (30:24)
But we need to have it in a form that digests slower, that also that goes into our bloodstream slower, that helps our insulin levels be more regulated. And we need to have the fiber that's still in there to help our gut health. Because if we just eat straight processed sugar all the time, it's like, I read somewhere, it's like, you know, a fertilizer runoff causes these algae blooms. Like one type of algae just takes over an entire ecosystem because it's
Michelle (30:28)
Right.
Right.
hehe
Jenny Powers (30:53)
if that's the one algae that like really liked that fertilizer. But if we're just eating sugar, all the beneficial gut bacteria, they're like, no, I want fiber. But this one gut bacteria is like sugar, sugar, give me more sugar. So you lose, you know, one dominates and you lose the diversity of the bacteria in your gut.
Michelle (30:56)
Right.
Yeah.
Well, when you were talking before and you were saying about how they ate the whole fruit or the foods and they didn't take parts, it wasn't like, like it was really eaten with a fiber. So usually the things that have naturally sugar have fiber as well. Most of the time you'll find, you know, fruits, most of them have fiber. So having even the juice of just natural fruits.
Jenny Powers (31:31)
Yeah.
Right?
Michelle (31:41)
is not quite the same as having it as its whole, like in its whole nature.
Jenny Powers (31:45)
Right, right, exactly. Because, I mean, it's funny because our whole goal, evolutionary goal, in order to feed our brains with our shorter guts, we needed nutrient -dense, easily digestible food, right? But we took it way too far because when we were doing it right, it was just us preparing the food, right? As soon as we had the technological advancements, for now, now we don't prepare the food.
and the industrial complex prepares this food, it's no longer in our control. And so what sells most? The things that are most palatable, the things that are energy dense, and the things that are easy to digest. And so with the advent of technology and the Industrial Revolution, we took that evolutionary goal way too far because it was a goal of ours.
Michelle (32:18)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (32:41)
There is a reason why sugar is addictive because when we ate sugar, as our ancestors ate sugar, you would receive dopamine because you needed to have glucose in your body. Your brain needs it to function. Your brain just uses sugar. Some of the other parts of your body use other things to fuel it, fats and things like that to fuel it.
Michelle (32:54)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (33:09)
primarily, but our brains need sugar. So there's an evolutionary reason why sugar is addictive. We just couldn't get our hands on it. We ate honey occasionally and we ate fruit. But this much sugar and process and basically like white flour, all the fiber is stripped out of it. That's pretty much just eating sugar because of the way that it just gets absorbed into your bloodstream.
Michelle (33:17)
That's interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's empty calories. It's just not really like, it doesn't give you much bang for your buck at all.
Jenny Powers (33:42)
Right, right, right. But it does give you a release of dopamine and you feel good because we need to have that. But now again, we needed to have this instinct, but now we have our intellect. And so like, yes, we need to have a well -roundeddiet with carbohydrates and fats and proteins. But now we know intellectually, I'm craving that because I evolved to crave it.
Michelle (33:47)
Yep, right.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (34:10)
But I don't need to eat it. Like I can eat other things that gives me the same thing. And I find them, and I've found this and I've heard lots of people say once they start eating whole foods, the cravings for the potato chips and the brownies and the cookies, you just don't have those anymore. Right?
Michelle (34:10)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Correct. Yeah, it feels like I think the difficult thing is that it feels like it's going to be forever. The suffering or the discomfort of the cravings or the withdrawal, it feels like it's going to be like that forever. It's really not. I would say two weeks, about two weeks, maybe three, but like really even the first week is a big one. And then once you get through that, you're feeling better. And then once you overcome that, it doesn't feel like anything. You don't miss it. So, and it's just...
Jenny Powers (34:36)
Right.
No. Yeah.
Right.
I don't, yeah, it's pretty amazing. I don't miss it. And then when I do, you know, have to have dessert, you know, when I'm out with friends or, you know, special occasions, I don't feel very good the next day. Like I enjoy eating it. But sometimes it's almost like, whoa, it's too sweet. But then, you know, you just have to realize, yeah, it's okay to indulge once in a while, but know that you're going to feel awful. But that also just reinforces that you're doing the right thing. Yeah.
Michelle (34:58)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
it totally does. Yeah. No, I have a lot of my patients when we talk about diet and then they go to a cruise and that's when they feel it. They're like, my God, I never realized like how this made me feel. And then they feel the difference. And I'm like, that's actually a good thing. I'm happy you went through that because it really shows you like you could really legitimately feel the difference from feeling good. When you're used to feeling bad, you almost don't know the difference until you feel good again. And that's kind of like another interesting. Yeah. You don't know better.
Jenny Powers (35:29)
What?
Right?
Exactly, you don't know any better.
Michelle (35:50)
But it's crazy how your body resists too much sugar. And then it starts to get insulin resistance. Like it's literally your body's like, whoa, like stop. And it kind of creates whatever ecosystem response to that. But it just shows you that your body doesn't like it.
Jenny Powers (36:09)
Right? The majority of the things that people go to the doctor for now, humans never used to get. I mean, humans got communicable diseases, but now we have all of these non -communicable diseases, you know, the metabolic syndromes, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, hypertension, all of these things are solely due to lifestyle.
Michelle (36:34)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (36:36)
Some people who have genetic predispositions to things. So that doesn't help that the lifestyle that's presented to us, the lifestyle that's marketed to us doesn't help those people either. They have a worst time of it if they're genetically predisposed to some of these diseases. But those diseases just, we never used to die of those diseases. No worries.
Michelle (36:59)
Hold on one second. Bye. My daughter.
Jenny Powers (37:05)
So that was another thing. I'm like, you're right.
People, if it was a disease that affected everyone in their childhood, we would have evolved. So whatever predisposition to that disease, we would have evolved away from it because the goal of evolution is to reproduce. And if you don't make it to reproductive age, you don't reproduce. So if these problems happened early in childhood,
they would have been evolved out because you wanna get to the point where you can reproduce and pass your genes on. But all of these diseases of modernity happen after, you know, after you're fertile, after you have kids for the most part. A lot of it kind of starts, your lifestyle starts, but that's why it's just so prevalent because it doesn't affect our evolutionary success. Evolutionary success is to have offspring, right?
Michelle (37:52)
Right, right.
Jenny Powers (38:04)
So it's affecting us later in life and it's affecting our quality of life. So like, yeah, we might still live to be 75, but how many of those years are really good years? Like when do you start having these debilitating illnesses that affect your quality of life? So the hunter gatherers and our ancestors, you know, who we have models of today, if they get past childhood and
Michelle (38:17)
Yeah, that's true.
Jenny Powers (38:33)
aren't forced to leave the land and be people, become who they're not with their lifestyle changes. They live very, very healthily into their seventies. And that because they're so healthy, they're contributing members of the group. They're not debilitated to the point where people have to give them.
Michelle (38:45)
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (39:00)
resources, they're still in the mix, they're still contributing, and that's because they're healthy.
Michelle (39:08)
Yeah, amazing. It's interesting how, I mean, just kind of being in your nature, your body responds to living kind of in accordance to the Tao. It's really like, it comes full circle to that. And then speaking of also just balance, let's talk about work and rest and how much we as Americans and really modern culture, I think pretty much anywhere
Jenny Powers (39:18)
Yeah.
Michelle (39:33)
overworking and there's barely any time to rest people. I actually just spoke to my cousin. She's been having gut issues and I told her eat earlier because she's been eating like really late every day. She goes, I can't. She goes, by the time I get home at 7 PM, she goes, I cannot leave earlier. I'm like, what? It just sounds so crazy. So she comes home really late and she wants to cook and have dinner with her husband. So it's
Jenny Powers (39:52)
Yeah.
Michelle (39:59)
really tough because I mean, it's just insane hours. Like, so how do you even work around that? But yeah, so talk about that and what you've discovered.
Jenny Powers (40:03)
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I think what's interesting about our ancestors is they didn't have to worry about work and life balance because it was integrated, right? Their work life and their home life, it was all together. So they considered there, and it was another way of looking at it holistically. Like now we think we have our work and then we have our home, but their work was part of their everyday. But they also,
Michelle (40:30)
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (40:36)
What was really cool is that they didn't, they worked until they had what they needed and then they stopped. It was a very, someone coined this phrase, an immediate return economy because they didn't, they had such a different concept of time than we do. And they had such, you know, they lived off the earth and they had, they knew that whatever they needed, they would be provided that they didn't.
They didn't necessarily plan for the future. They worked until their needs were met. They listened to their bodies and like, okay, I'm not hungry anymore. I'm kind of tired. I'm going to go rest. You know, agriculture changed all that because now we went from an immediate return economy to a delayed return economy. You planted crops and then you waited and everything depended on this future outcome.
Michelle (41:14)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (41:30)
And so in today's world, we work now and we get a paycheck later. So it's another kind of way that we delayed our return on our investment, I guess. And so the way we look at work now, we never work in the present. We're always working. There's a deadline. There's this, we have this, we have this. And so in the book, we talk about how
Michelle (41:36)
Mm -hmm.
So interesting, yeah.
Jenny Powers (41:57)
rest and meditation really helps because we can't go back to an immediate return economy. You can't just be like, I've made enough money. You know, I'm going to quit my job or, you know, I'm going to go home when my hours are this. How you approach work can really change the outcomes of work. Like if you're if you stay in the present moment, not only can you you lower your stress, but you can also see what's really important if you're worried about some future.
Michelle (42:04)
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (42:27)
project, you're not going to be very efficient in the moment doing what you need to do. So it's kind of a mindset shift. Also, I think our society puts emphasis and puts people on the pedestal who work long hours and who make a lot of money. And so that and who have a lot of stuff. Yeah, we have
Michelle (42:36)
Yeah, definitely.
It conditions, it conditions you.
Jenny Powers (42:54)
I mean, I think I read it and it's in the book. An entire, I don't know, group of hunter gatherers had fewer possessions than a single farmer after the agricultural revolution. They just didn't have stuff. They didn't. And so once you have stuff, now you're like, you know, you need to buy more stuff and to buy more stuff, you need to make more money. And to keep up with the Joneses, you need to make even more money so you can buy more expensive stuff.
Michelle (43:21)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (43:21)
and buy a bigger house and then fill that house up with stuff. And then your house doesn't fit your stuff. So now you have a storage unit where you have to put your stuff. And so our emphasis on what's important in our society and what our society values is causing this work epidemic. I also think that people need to learn from an early age not to tie their identity with their achievements.
Michelle (43:24)
Right.
Jenny Powers (43:49)
tie their identity with work. Because I think we live in a place where it's kind of a meritocracy, where the people who are successful...
are just people and they're just as good, you know, the people who aren't successful, who are working their butts off every day, but enjoying their life, they're still these, they're successful people, right? They're not necessarily like making millions of dollars, but we idolize those people who make so much money. When really they might not have the best work -life balance. Probably not. I mean, I've never heard someone say,
Michelle (44:26)
Yeah, it's interesting.
Jenny Powers (44:29)
you know, on your deathbed. I wish I had had more money, you know? Yeah.
Michelle (44:32)
Right. It's 100 % true. Well, that's because it's an illusion. It's this illusion, you know, and the ancients talked about that, the samsara and the illusion. It's like a matrix. We're living in a matrix. I mean, that's, you know, it kind of is because it's, it's the set code of ways of being, and it causes us to continue moving into the future or thinking about the past and never being present. And the ancients always talked about now.
Jenny Powers (44:44)
Yeah.
Michelle (45:00)
becoming more present, more alive. And even with meditation, we know that it really makes your body work better. This presence, being present, having your attention is like gold. Having your attention in the now actually infuses your body with more vitality. And if you think about the ancients, I mean, their focus was 100 % when they were hunting or whatever they were doing, they were present, like really, really fully present.
Jenny Powers (45:29)
Yeah, exactly. And it's almost a survival. It was a survival mechanism. You had to be present so you could be... And this is kind of dovetails really nicely into the nature chapter because they were present in the moment and they were present in their environment, right? They could say, there was a deer came through here. There's that broken branch or they hear something.
Michelle (45:46)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (45:55)
you know, I think that's a predator, we need to go this way. Or they're so attuned to their bodies and to the world around them that they lived in the present moment. I mean, there's this stress reduction theory of nature, that nature, natural environments lower your stress and promote recovery because...
Yes, it has information, but has low levels of information that you need to be processing at all times. But when you are downtown in a big city walking around, there's cars driving by and there's people and there's loud noises. And so your senses are overwhelmed with all of these things to process. And now, where's my phone? Now we are overwhelmed by all of this information, all of the things that are just right at our fingertips.
Michelle (46:33)
loud noises.
Yes.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (46:50)
So no wonder we're stressed, you know, no wonder. Yeah, we're overwhelmed all the time.
Michelle (46:53)
We're overwhelmed. It's like too much, too much information all the time and it overwhelms our, our minds. And that's why one of the things that I think is actually releasing is important, especially now. So when we're meditating or releasing kind of like the excess doing less, getting more into this yin phase of less and more harmony and more quiet, that's why we need it because we are in such a young active mode.
all the time, nonstop, 24 -7. And that's considered good. I remember, because I lived, I worked in New York and it was like the city that never sleeps. That's amazing. It's like the best thing ever. And I remember what it did to my nervous system. It wasn't good.
Jenny Powers (47:29)
Great. People brag about it.
Thanks.
Yeah, I remember when I was in graduate school, we used to compare, well, how late were you up last night? I was in the lab until two in the morning. Well, I didn't even go to sleep last night. It's the hustle culture that's idolized. And what needs to be idolized is the slower culture where you actually enjoy at the moment by moment. I've noticed people always say, time is moving so fast. It's because we don't spend any time in the present moment.
Michelle (47:46)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (48:08)
we're spending a time in the future, we're spending time in the past and very few people actually experience every moment in the present. And I think if we experience moments in the present, time would seem slower. Time wouldn't seem to be just rushing by, rushing by, rushing by. And I know when you have kids, it seems that way because you actually see time passing as they're growing up. But I found that I feel like
Michelle (48:17)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (48:37)
When I'm less distracted, when I'm more relaxed, when I'm in the present moment, that's when you live. There's no other place to experience life except in the present moment. Everything else is just in your imagination, in your mind.
Michelle (48:52)
Yeah. And when I work with people, I always talk about that. Like, because if I can, if you can get as present as possible, and it's hard, it's hard when you're trying to get to a goal, you know, it could be the goal is pregnancy or whatever that goal is. But if you can work on getting as present as possible, you are actually infusing life force into your moment to moment. You're more alive. When you're more alive, your body's more alive. When your body's more alive, you're more fertile. So these are things that
Jenny Powers (49:15)
Yeah. yeah.
Michelle (49:21)
timeless again, you know, things that we've been told for centuries. And it's always go within, go, you know, where we have that innate knowing that connection with our earth that like, typically our bodies communicating with us. I mean, this is such a fascinating conversation. I could talk to you for hours because it's just, there's so much to uncover. I mean, we're really literally talking about the nature of humanity and like where we came from. And there's just so much. And I can see why you would want to do a series on this.
Jenny Powers (49:23)
Mm -hmm.
I...
Right?
Michelle (49:51)
And I would be fascinated by that in the future as well. But for people who are listening and they're like, this sounds really interesting. How can they find you and get to the book?
Jenny Powers (50:03)
Yeah, yeah, well, we have a website, www .ontheoriginofbeing .com. There's a link to places there. You can really buy it anywhere, any online retailer that you like, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. There's other places. I know people want to support smaller businesses and things like that. But it's available on online retailers. We are...
We have our website and we're also, we have a Facebook page at On The Origin of Being and I'm most active on Instagram at On The Origin of Being. That's where we're, I try to post at least once a day, little tidbits or news or like you said, this topic is so fertile. I don't feel like I'm ever gonna run out of things to post about because even if I'm posting about sleep, there's a million things I could post about sleep.
Michelle (50:52)
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (50:57)
There's a million things that they post about nutrition. So it and what's what's been amazing is I was off social media for 10, at least 10 years because it wasn't good for mental health. And when you have a book coming out, you kind of have to be out there a little bit. And so I was really worried. But what I found is there is this community of people like you have like minded people who who see
who have their eyes open, who see like, this is the way we're living is killing us. And they are actually, they really, really care about other people and their health. And they really, really care about the environment. And so I feel like there's this community online that I just hope to see it swell even bigger and bigger. I've just, I felt so supportive, supported. And so it's just so nice to meet other
people who are going through this journey and who have platforms like you who wanted to want to get the word out. You know, I feel there are these just genuine people who care and that's made my experience of being back in social media and getting back out into the world and promoting this book feel so much more comfortable. Just that that's just an observation that I've had over the last few months. It's really been an amazing experience.
Michelle (52:22)
awesome to hear. And yeah, it's like anything. Everything has like the pluses and minuses. And I think that that's what it is. If you come into social media, really taking advantage and using it for the good. It's like anything. It's like money. You know, people can say money is evil, but it's actually something that could be used to help a lot of people. So it depends really on the intention behind it. And I think when your intention is connected to purpose, then it's a lot of fun. Then you're like, okay, this is really, yeah.
Jenny Powers (52:35)
Right?
The tool. Right.
Yeah.
I like that. I like that connections. Yeah, it's totally. It's totally neat. Yeah. So, so we're on there. Yeah, and they just came out this week. I don't know when this is going to be airing, but the book came out this week. I think we've hit some number one, like bestseller statuses on a couple of different categories. And so it's been a very exciting time.
Michelle (52:51)
sucklings.
Awesome. That's great.
Amazing. Well, congratulations on the book. And this is fascinating. And I think it's so important because I think that as a society, we're craving to come back to our origins. We really crave that. And I think that we just, we lost it. And so this rekindles a memory because I think that we do store memories in our DNA. There is that kind of knowing that when we hear something, it resonates as true. There's a reason for that. I think it's cause we just, so it's a memory that got just awakened.
Jenny Powers (53:24)
I agree.
Yeah.
my gosh, totally.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the good news is we still are running our hunter gatherer software. You know what I mean? We still, we have all these capabilities inside of us still. We haven't evolved since, you know, we maybe, for the most part, we haven't evolved since we were hunter gatherers. And it's still in there. We just have to refind, we have to find it. And I think learning about evolution and learning about how we got here,
Michelle (53:51)
Yep.
Yes.
Jenny Powers (54:11)
will really help us make better decisions now. Because like I said, we can adapt with our minds. We can adapt to anything. We're smart. We just have to do the work.
Michelle (54:21)
Yeah.
Yes. Amen. So Jenny, this was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and I look forward to any future work that you do.
Jenny Powers (54:33)
Thank you, I really enjoyed talking to you today too.