(0:41) Welcome
Welcome back to The Paleo View listeners!This week Stacy and Sarah are excited to welcome their guest, and good friend, and chef extraordinaire, most interesting man in Paleo, and that's not to mention all the work titles he has - Russ from The Domestic Manis here with us todaySarah noted that she is way overdue for a visit with Russ and his familyStacy is looking forward to seeing both Russ and his wife while Stacy and the family is on the road for their summer travelsThe experience of preparing for a cross-country road trip has been quite interestingMatt and Stacy will be starting a family podcast about it so they can travel vlog and capture the memoriesThis week Stacy and Sarah asked Russ to join the show to share on his latest projectHe has been working for about four years on his self-published, latest book, The Heritage CookbookYou can get an e-copy now, or you can preorder a hard copy and automatically receive the e-copyStacy has seen the eBook and has tested recipes from itShe finds this book to be really interesting because it is not just a cookbook, it's an exploration of DNA and ancestry and how our heritage influences our culture, our health, and our foodStacy thought it would be interesting this week to explore Stacy and Russ's experiences with DNA testing and to learn a bit on what they can glean from these testsSarah geeks out over blood tests and is chomping at the bits to cover this topic(5:56) More on Russ
Russ is in the military and has been for almost twenty years nowFive years into his service he had a stroke, which came out of nowhereHe was hospitalized for awhileHe was only 24 at the timeWhile he recovered really quickly, he lost all the function on the left side of his body and had to re-learn how to write and walkA year after his stroke things got way worse and he ended up going back to the hospital and telling them that something was off and not feeling rightFrom that point, he lived in a military hospital for a really long timeThey ended up diagnosing him with an autoimmune disease, where he has inflammation in his arteriesHe was put on a ton of medication to try to balance everything within his bodyThe medication was causing all sorts of issues so Russ ended up having open heart surgeryIt was a really drastic surgery, but he made it out of that okAfter a 6 month recovery, it all got worse again because he hadn't fixed any of the issues within his bodyHe went right back on all of the same medicationsA few years after all of this, Russ found a random blog article covering Robb Wolf's book The Paleo Solution, when it has first come outThis book inspired him to change his dietSure enough, a lot of his issues began to disappear after a monthRuss went back to the doctor to have his bloodwork checked, and the data showed improvements in his healthRuss began blogging about his experience to hold himself accountable and to share his experienceIt blossomed into a bigger following than he ever expected since it was just a hobby at the timeHe ended up getting a book deal working with Stacy and published The Ancestral Table and then Paleo TakeoutRuss had planned on publishing more books in the future and he had all these big ideas, but something happened in him where it became really important to learn more about his own familyRuss's birth father was in the navy, and he met Russ's mother in San Diego when his father was stationed thereThey got married and had two childrenRuss's father was out of the picture when he was three and he was raised by his stepfatherThere was a level of curiosity that Russ had to explore his ancestryEspecially once Russ had kids he wanted to learn more about his DNA and ultimately the traits he passed on to his kidsHe did DNA research to understand what the science says about his genesAnd then he worked to learn more about his Dad and where his genes are fromThrough Russ's ancestry research he learned a lot about his father and familyHe was able to find extended family members on Facebook and connect with themOnce he had a few names he was able to do the research and find his entire paternal ancestryThis inspired him to start thinking about the types of food he craves and how genes impact cravingsDigging into his heritage and what likely shaped his palate from a genetics standpoint, led him to ask the question - how does this work for othersThis inspired his latest book, which obviously took a lot of research since it was four years in the makingHe is very happy with what came out of it and is proud of the final product(10:02) Q & A
Stacy asked Russ what his biggest takeaway was from the research he conductedHe thought there was going to be these secret foods that were fine-tuned to his genetic traitsHowever, science is nowhere near thereThere are a few things available in research that shows how our ancestry impacts our digestive abilitiesRuss realized that the best way to find out how people thrive is to look at historical eating patterns over historySo when Russ wrote The Heritage Cookbookit ended up being a food history bookHe looked up each of the major food groups and looked at what the origin of the food is and this is how he developed and assembled the cookbookYou end up with a cookbook where you can look up your heritage and learn about the eating patterns relevant to your background and then you can go to the recipes relevant to those regionsThe book is nearly 800 pages long and has 300 recipes in itSarah asked about the research process for being able to teach himself how to cook with these different methodologiesRuss first figured out what our actual ancestor breakout is in the United StatesHe then divided up the number of recipes he was going to dedicate to a specific region based on how many people are from that regionHe looked through history books and looked at the staple dishes for the various regions, and then had to figure out how to make these staple recipes work in a modern kitchenRuss wanted to connect people with their ancestors via these recipes, but to also keep them approachable so that people actually want to make the recipes in the bookWhen creating this book, Russ had his wife in mindShe is not an expert chef, but she is great at following a recipeHe wanted to keep the recipes approachable at her levelShe is very particular with the way that she approaches a recipe, and Russ wrote the book with this skill level in mindIf you loved Russ's first two books you are going to love how Russ has expanded culturally the same concept, especially from The Ancestral TableStacy noted how special it is to connect with a culture, even if it is not a part of your ancestry, by reading about that culture's history in this book and then cooking those cuisinesRuss shared more about his research process and the way he had to almost play detective with pieces of information that are available, and the way he had to go about testing recipes, piecing the details togetherIt was very important to Russ to bring recipes back to life that may have been fading from use, both within a specific culture and to others who wouldn't have had a chance to try them otherwise(36:07) Experiences with Blood Testing
Sarah's personal approach has almost been the flip side of the coinShe has used her DNA to really understand her dietThe approach that Sarah has taken has been at a micro level, and she loves the way Russ has taken a more macro approach to look at heritage data when deciding how best to eat for our healthSarah also noted how special it is to see the way this book brings back a level on interpersonal touchpoints within the family that have started to fade in the age of connectivity (i.e. learning how to prep a recipe from Grandma)Russ shared on his personal journey finding his ancestral history and visiting the places where his family was fromFrom his research and explorations, Russ found that his DNA test and his ancestary.com results don't define who he is todayRuss dedicated this book to his parents and his childrenStacy's mother was adopted and up until two years ago she didn't know anything about her birth familyWhen you are adopted you have no idea about your health historyStacy's mom used ancestary.com and 23andmeShe found a lot of information about her family and was able to meet many family members who were living within a close distanceThese interactions also allowed Stacy and her mom to understand a lot more about their health history and the kinds of cancer that are prominent within their familyRuss shared more about what it meant to find out about his family's history and learning about their lives, where they died, where they are buriedConnecting with family members as an adult, when you didn't know they existed your entire life is a bizarre experience to navigateStacy touched on why some people don't want to utilize DNA and genetic testing when they would rather not know certain details surrounding their family and extended family membersSarah noted that there are ways to utilize genetic testing without opting-in to learn about genetic relatives and to not have your information listed within the database so that others can contact youIt is possible to get the scientific, medically relevant details without learning about the family dynamic pieces(1:03:02) Closing Thoughts
Stacy thanked Russ for joining Stacy and Sarah on this week's Paleo View episode and for sharing his storyA huge thank you for also putting together this amazing body of literatureTo find out more on Russ, visit here: https://thedomesticman.comTo learn more about his new book and to grab a copy, visit here: https://theheritagecookbook.com/Thank you, listeners, for being here!If you have your own story about taking any of these ancestry tests, we would love to hear about them in the comments section on these blog posts or on social mediaThank you, everyone, for tuning in!Stacy and Sarah will be back next week, and Stacy will be on the road!
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