If Modern Health Advice Worked, We’d All Be Thriving

By Dr JT – Medical Doctor | Ancestral Health Advocate

This blog is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The views expressed here are my own and not those of my employer or the NHS.

Walk through any UK town and you’ll see it—fatigue, obesity, chronic illness, infertility, depression, burnout. It’s everywhere. This isn’t a rare exception—it’s the new normal.

And yet, most people are still told the same things:

• “Eat whole grains & lots of plants.”

• "Everything in moderation."

• "Eat low-fat."

• "Avoid red meat."

• “Use sunscreen in the UK even when it's cloudy.”

• “Get your steps in.”

• “Just manage your stress.”

  
  

It’s not working.

As a doctor working in Emergency Medicine for years, I don’t need public health statistics to tell me the state we’re in. I see it on every shift: preventable illness, metabolic dysfunction, obesity, bodies breaking down far too early. This isn’t because people are lazy or lack willpower—it’s because they're surrounded by terrible, noisy advice, addictive junk food a culture of dependence.

So, what’s the alternative?

Instead of trusting advice built in boardrooms, I started asking a simple question:

What would our pre-agricultural ancestors have done?

This is usually the point where someone says, “Well, our ancestors only lived to 40.” Let’s clear that up.

That average age that's often quoted includes massive infant mortality, death in childbirth, trauma, and infection—the things we can now successfully treat. Our Human ancestors were not obese and riddled with the leading causes of premature death that we see today, like heart disease and cancer — they simply lacked antibiotics, sterile surgery, and sanitation/hygiene practices. That is what dragged the average age down to around 30-40 years old.

Those who survived childhood and avoided infection or trauma often lived into old age—typically without the chronic lifestyle-driven diseases that plague us today. And they didn’t spend the second half of life on 15 prescriptions and mobility aids. We’re not modelling ourselves on their mortality statistics. We’re learning from their biology, their rhythms, and the natural environment that our genes still expect.

The fact is, our genetics have not significantly changed in the last 150,000 years (apart from a few exceptions), but our environment, our lifestyle, our inputs have - drastically.

Ancestral health isn’t about going backwards.

Humans survived—and thrived—for millennia before modern medicine, without calorie counting, fitness trackers, or ultra-processed food. They lived in sync with nature:

• Woke up with the sun.

• Ate real food.

• Moved often, slept deeply.

• Had strong social bonds.

• Had daily purpose.

  
  

But, this isn’t about going back to living in caves or rejecting science. I’m a doctor—I value evidence & scientific rationale. But most of what I now believe and practice is grounded in evolutionary biology, human physiology, and common sense.

When you strip away the noise, you find a truth that’s been buried under decades of bad advice:

Your body isn’t broken. The modern environment is.

The real change usually comes from lifestyle—not just prescriptions. It’s about returning to what worked for 99.9% of our existence.

Ancestral health isn’t a trend. It’s a reset button.

If something didn’t exist 1,000 years ago, I treat it with some degree of caution, particularly if we're talking about food. If it comes in a packet with multiple ingredients on it that I can barely pronounce, I don’t eat it - I eat what the human body is biologically and evolutionarily adapted to eat, which is predominantly meat. If it messes with my sleep, my light exposure, or my stress response, I change it - the biggest culprit here being artificial light at night (ALAN).

This blog is where I’ll explain how and why I do these things, and why it may help many, many others too.

Not in just theory—but in reality. From a doctor who’s "walked the walk". Minimalist. Straight-talking. No gimmicks. No nonsense. You won’t find magic cures here, or prescriptions, or guarantees, but you will find something far more powerful: clarity.

—Welcome to the ancestral reset.