EVOLUTIONARY MISMATCH: UNDERSTANDING OUR BIOLOGICAL HERITAGE FOR BETTER HEALTH

My father was a great man. He raised nine children, and taught me many of the values that have guided me through life. He was an outstanding dentist and understood that the health of the mouth and teeth reflected the health of the body. Looking outside his profession, he was also a student of human health, interested in a diverse range of health-related topics including nutrition and hormones, and even more esoteric subjects such as energy fields and chakras. He was excited to share these things with his children, and I fondly remember our discussions on a wide variety of health-related topics. When I was in my early twenties, he gave me a gift that had a profound impact on me—it was a book by Dr. Weston Price titled, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. I’ve had this book for almost fifty years and have read it many times.

Dr. Weston Price was also a dentist who understood that dental health reflected overall health, and that dental caries (cavities) were an early sign of systemic health problems. From 1930 to 1936, he and his wife traveled around the world and visited different cultures that had