1: The Primal Shift: Your Roadmap for Shifting Away From the Modern Lifestyle

Michael Kummer: You're listening to the Primal Shift Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Kummer, and my goal is to help you achieve optimal health by bridging the gap between ancestral living and the demands of modern society. Get ready to unlock the transformative power of nature as the ultimate biohack, revolutionizing your health and reconnecting you with your primal self.

Welcome everyone to the first episode of the Primal Shift podcast. I'm super excited you're here and that you're interested in making the Primal Shift with me. This podcast idea has been in the working or at least in my head for a long time. And finally the stars aligned and I managed to make it happen.

So I'm super thrilled about that. And thank you so much for being here with me. Now in today's episode, um, it's kind of like an extended introduction. I want to tell you a little bit about. What the Primal Shift is all about, why I decided to make the Primal Shift, why I think it's necessary to make that shift in our modern world, and what some of the issues are that I've not only experienced myself, but that I see every day around me and that I think can be easily solved by making certain changes in your lifestyle and bringing back some of those ancestral principles that our bodies were designed to be exposed to. In other words, I think that our bodies were made or designed for an environment that no longer exists. And that causes certain health issues. I see it every day. People have gut issues.

They have trouble falling asleep, losing weight. They have skin issues, cardiovascular issues, metabolic issues. If you look around, who can you really say is is healthy, does not have any issues that are lifestyle induced. Most people would fall into the sick category to varying degrees, and I don't think that has to be like that.

You can easily change it, take your health under your control, and with this podcast, my goal is to share with you actionable, very easily digestible nuggets of information that you can implement right away to improve your health and well being. And To start, maybe let me tell you a little bit about my journey and why, how I, you know, came to be in this position and, and, and start sharing what I've learned, because obviously I didn't come out of my mom's womb, um, deciding that I want to be a health influencer or that I want to eat a certain way or, you know, live a certain way.

This was a process that happened over decades. And I think one of the major milestones in my health journey was the realization that The gut issues that I had for three decades were not normal, even though, you know, in the first three decades of my life, I thought that bloating, constipation, the occasional diarrhea, just the pain and pressure in my stomach after eating, that's part of life for various reasons, because I, you know, I didn't really, I've never experienced anything else.

But also my dad has had All of his life and indeed still has because he has not yet made the primary shift unfortunately, and his dad died of the age of I think 48 of stomach cancer so got issues. Let's say ran into family run into family and so I figured, well, it just is what it is. But then one day.

We ran into a couple at a childbirth preparation class. So that was when my wife was pregnant with our daughter and we connected with that couple. They, you know, they were Latinos, much like, you know, my wife is Latina. And so we connected on that level, I guess, and we came, became really good friends. And over time I figured out this dude is eating differently.

He doesn't eat most of the things that, that we eat. And so I asked him and he said, well, I'm on a paleo diet. And I'm like. What is that? And he's like, well, I'm trying to mimic the diet that our ancestors had for 2. 6 million years as part of human evolution. I'm like, okay, well, you know, you, you do you, I I'm fine.

But the more and more I thought about what he was doing and the more he was explaining to me why he was doing it, the more I realized, you know, maybe this is something I can at least try, you know, changing a diet is tough. I know I've done it several times in the last couple of years only. And so I, I know that, you know, it was tough, but one day I woke up and said, you know what, I want to give it a try.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to start on a paleo diet. And I did this. And within 10 days, my gut issues were gone. And I'm like, Whoa, this is. Amazing, you know, I can, I can eat now and I no longer have to circle around the bathroom or plan my entire day around when I can go, you know, have my potty break.

My stomach doesn't hurt anymore. I don't have this, you know, bloating and, and, and like if someone inflated balloon in my stomach, all of those issues were suddenly gone. And I'm like, this is amazing. You know, the only thing I changed was. removing a bunch of food categories from my diet. I mean, who knew?

And as part of that, I realized that it was not only my gut health that has dramatically changed, but suddenly I had energy. I'm like, Whoa, where is all this energy coming from? I'm getting older and I'm feeling more energetic. I'm becoming physically Fitter, and mind you, I was the 5th fastest 100m sprinter in Europe in 2001 in my age category.

So I was pretty fit when I was in my early 20s, and the older I get, I'm becoming fitter and fitter. That should not be possible. We should be deteriorating. But evidently I never really ate, slept, or did anything else in my life that was contusive to optimal health. And so that was the major milestone where I realized that what we are doing, what we've been told is, you know, how we should eat and how we should sleep and how we should You know, handle certain things is absolutely not conducive to optimal health.

There are a lot of misconceptions and, and, and just things that humans have been doing for, for not really a good reason as far as health is concerned. And when I realized that I started questioning everything and my wife got pretty annoyed with that. I have to tell you, because I started questioning literally every single thing, you know, and I realized, Oh, it's not only nutrition.

It's sleep, it's light, either the exposure to natural sunlight, which I've always been. I hated the sun, not the sun, but more so being in the sun. I hated sunscreen, which I guess was a good thing to a degree. But for me, that meant just staying out of the sun or being covered up. I remember a couple of years ago, we went to Austria and we, uh, we met up with my brother and his wife and the kids.

And we went to a, like to a public swimming pool kind of thing. And I was covered like in a rash guard or whatever you call those shirts that surfers use. And she's like, what a waste of body, you know, covering everything up. And I'm like, well, I don't want to, you know, expose my skin to sun. And then I realized this is BS, you know, we need to be exposed to sun.

And the only reason why I had sunburns and sun allergies and whatever itchy stuff was because my diet was crap. And so by changing all of that, we realized and I realized that we are doing everything the wrong way. And I am someone who. Can be fairly extreme. I'm a kind of black or white guy. And if I see something that I want to do and that I want to accomplish, I go all in and I don't care about the consequences.

I bulldoze over everything in my way to get to my, to where I want to get. And obviously, you know, that's. not socially acceptable all the time. And so in particular in our family setting, you know, I realized we need a different approach to this. We need to, to figure out how can we make, how can we improve our life in a way that's, that we can afford?

Because it seems like everything, doing stuff right is expensive. Buying, you know, healthy food is expensive. Buying healthy clothing is expensive. Buying healthy skincare products is expensive or more expensive. And so we needed to figure out how can we do this? That's financially responsible. That's conducive to still maintaining a somewhat modern life and how can we do this as a family, you know, because if you're on your own, if, if I was just me, you know, I could do whatever I want to, you know, it doesn't really matter what someone else thinks, you know, I do me, but with a partner, with kids, with animals, with livestock, with friends, with, you know, all of those, you know, make things more complicated.

And so, My goal in this podcast is to share with you not only things that work, because most of you, I would assume know what's right, not in every case, maybe, and I'm learning every day too, but for the most part, I think a lot of people know what they should be doing. They just don't know how to go about implementing those things.

And so my goal with the podcast is to really go into. You know, all of the core pillars of what I consider that make up a healthy life, you know, nutrition, obviously, exercise and fitness, sleep, stress management, tribalism and belonging, environmental toxins, hormesis, you know, exposure to natural or to stressors, to good stressors, all of those things, but explain them in a way.

that you can implement as part of a family setting, or if you're by yourself or with a partner, doesn't really matter, but in a way that makes them actionable and easy to implement. It's not always easy, but at least it's doable. And I know it's doable because if I can do that, you know, mind you, you know, My wife's Costa Rican.

I'm from Austria. We come from completely different backgrounds. Our kids are American or, you know, they have three citizenships, but nevertheless, they were born here. So they are, you know, American. And so this is a somewhat complex environment because of the vast differences in our upbringing, in our cultures and beliefs.

And I believe that if we could make that work, Then you can as well. And that's really the goal now of my podcast to, to help you find a way to show you a roadmap or a blueprint that you can implement at your own pace. Because I strongly believe that if you just improve something, a little thing every day.

You're going to end up somewhere where you want to end up without taking huge leaps and without, maybe without being quite as aggressive as I was and as black and white as I was, because I know that this is difficult and not conducive to, you know, happy marriage and all of those things. You have to be a little bit more nuanced.

There are ways to do that and I'm going to show you how. So hopefully you stick around, you subscribe. But before we wrap it up, I want to talk about a little bit about MK Supplements. This is a brand that my wife and I launched two years ago. It's about three stride beef organ supplements because we've realized that if there is One low hanging fruit, no pun intended, on how you can improve your health is to make sure that your body gets all the nutrients, the vitamins, the minerals, the peptides, the enzymes, cofactors, et cetera, that it needs to thrive and that it needs to thrive in a stressful environment, which very often increases your nutrient demands.

And so we started a Freestride Beef Organ Supplement brand that delivers, as the name implies, Freestride Beef Organs. And why beef organs? Because they are the most nutrient dense foods on the planet as far as I'm concerned. And it's the easiest way to make sure you get all the nutrients into your body as part of your diet.

without necessarily the hassle and the taste and the texture and everything that comes with it of consuming fresh organs. Like I encourage you to consume fresh organs. We do it as often as we can, but even in our, you know, where we are fans of organ meat, or at least I am a fan of organ meat, it doesn't happen every day.

And especially with the kids. And you know, family and everything, just using freeze dried capsules that contain the same nutrients as the fresh organs, or very close to it at least, is very easy and convenient. And I have a special discount code for my listeners here. If you use a code primalshift, one word, on shop.michaelkummer.com, you get 15 percent off your first purchase. And with that, we're going to wrap up the first episode, stay tuned for more. We're going to talk all about those things that we, that are just briefly covered in this episode in much more detail and with actionable information that you can implement today.

See you next time.