Every once in a while I get a question about how I created the foundation of the Bare 5 perspective. In essence, “How do you frame your views on health?” Really, although it ends up being more complicated, the answer is simple: I use a comprehensive, multi disciplinary approach. There are so many sources of information and perspectives available to us so I draw clues and inspiration from several sources. They all contribute equally to help create the Bare 5 philosophy. Since many people like diagrams, I made one to put it into visual form…

Here is the Bare 5 Foundation Diagram…

The concept is simple. I look at humans and health from the Bare 5 junction. Where evolution, science/biochemistry, traditional culture, modern day hunter gatherers and the individual all intersect. This is Bare 5. Taking all these into account when determining how I feel about something has given me a very comprehensive approach to humans and health.

Have a question about health?

Is _______ good for me?

Should I eat _______?

How should I exercise?

This is what I ask myself…

How does evolution explain it?

What does science say?

What did traditional cultures do?

What do hunter gatherers do?

What works best for the individual?

Between these 5 questions I can get a pretty good handle on a question or a subject matter. It doesn’t always give me the exact answer but it always gives me a great foundation when formulating my opinion. Some people give a bias toward one or more of these areas, particularly specialists/experts in these areas. This is a great thing and gives people a chance to see how one or more perspective might approach something. There is great value in looking at something from purely a scientific or evolutionary perspective. There are also fantastic things to learn just from looking at culture or tribal behavior. There certainly is validity to the mantra of n = 1. I just like to marry them together to see where they overlap and use that as my starting point. So far, so good.

And that is how Bare 5 looks at human health.

Thanks for reading, have a great multi disciplined week!