There is a pernicious idea that has become lodged in the public consciousness that as you age you just get certain diseases. In my research for my book about losing 300 lbs doing a keto diet i put that to bed...

"In 1962 a South African doctor named A. Gerald Shaper set out into the African bush to study the heart health of the Samburu tribe of Northern Kenya. Depending on the season Dr. Shaper found that young Samburu males consumed between 2-7 liters of milk every day which could contain as much as a pound of butterfat or more. At times they would add 2-4 pounds of meat to their daily consumption which drove consumed cholesterol sky high. Which of course doctors will tell you will cause heart attacks.

A few years later Doctor and Professor George V. Mann traveled to Africa to study the Masai men who he had heard ate nothing but meat, blood & milk and disdained vegetables as womanly food. Of course Dr. Mann’s colleagues back in the States had decided that animal fats cause heart disease. So Dr. Mann and his team from Vanderbilt University brought along a portable lab to investigate the health and diet of the Masai tribesman.

Professor Mann found the Masai tribesman also consumed between 3-5 liters of milk per day. In the dry season when milk ran low they would mix in cows blood. They also enjoyed lots of meat including beef, lamb, and goat and on party days or market days they might eat as much as 4-10 pounds of meat.

In both cases fat was 60 percent of calories, being critter based that means it was mostly saturated fats. The young men again in both cases disdained vegetables scorning them as womanly food.

And what they found was the blood pressure and weight of these meat eating dudes was about half of the average American at that time. These numbers also didn’t rise with age. Dr. Shaper said these findings hit him hard, he realized that worsening health was not automatic as you age which is what everyone assumed then and now.

A review of 26 studies of small ethnically homogeneous hunter gatherer groups who were living in primitive conditions and eating an ancestral diet (e.g. they are eating what their people were eating hundreds of years ago) an increase of blood pressure was not a normal part of aging and just to keep driving this point home all of the metabolic syndrome diseases are of a piece so the lack of high blood pressure is really an indication that they weren’t suffering the metabolic diseases."