Human health requires frugality: A disciplined alignment with our biological roots, avoiding excess and focusing on essentials.
In a time of lavish health rituals, designer supplements, boutique fitness classes, and personalized diets, the pursuit of well-being often seems more like a costly indulgence than a wise investment. Yet, at its core, human health requires frugality: a disciplined alignment with our biological roots, avoiding excess and focusing on essentials. This philosophy views humans as a ghost within a machine navigating life. The ghost is the individual mind, its energy, complex state space, and the soul. The machine is our biology—a metabolic system that converts stored energy into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the universal cellular currency, serving as a headset for the mind to engage with the external world. Health is achieved by optimizing this machine in harmony with its evolutionary design, spiritual needs, and environmental patterns. Straying from this path invites dysfunction, while adherence brings vitality.
The Metabolic Machine
Every living organism, from bacteria to humans, sustains itself through metabolism: the conversion of stored energy into ATP. This process powers cellular actions, growth, maintenance, and division. Life continues as a constant stream of ATP production across generations. For humans, this stream defines our species’ endurance. Aging appears as the gradual decline of ATP-generating capacity. Disease results from failures in the layered metabolic systems surrounding ATP synthesis. Individual life ends when metabolism stops; species extinction occurs when this metabolic process ceases.
To understand this, think about our evolutionary origins. LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, was an early ancestor of archaea and bacteria, which are the microbial domains of life. Before LUCA, life used stored energy through intracellular glycolysis, a process still common today. Later, ancestors developed ATP synthase, a rotary enzyme on the cell membrane that produces much more ATP from osmotic gradients, similar to a turbine in a dam. LUCA gave rise to the modern microbial world.
LECA, the last eukaryotic common ancestor, founded all complex life. After LUCA, archaea and bacteria existed independently and also formed symbiotic relationships, exchanging ATP and materials, which can still be seen today. LECA emerged when an archaeon engulfed a bacterium, establishing internalized symbiosis. Animals, plants, fungi, and protozoans descend from this event. In eukaryotes, bacteria specialized in making ATP, becoming mitochondria, while archaea focused on protein synthesis. Nuclear DNA comes from archaeal origins; mitochondrial DNA from bacterial origins. Human cells have about 300 mitochondria each. Free microbes, limited by membrane-bound energy production, stay microscopic with genomes around 1,000 genes. Eukaryotes, boosted by symbiotic ATP, grew more complex: the human nuclear genome has around 25,000 genes, while the mitochondrial proteome remains simple like bacteria. Most mitochondrial genes moved to the nucleus, except for 13 essential genes involved in ATP regulation.
Your biology is a high-performance machine; the most controllable factor in its longevity is the fuel you provide it.
This vigorous windfall fueled
extravagance. Cell volume increased, gene counts surged, and repair mechanisms multiplied, extending generational spans. Genetic variability propelled natural selection, speciation, and adaptation to environmental niches defined by energy sources. Human biology’s layered complexity—neurologic, circulatory, hepatic, immune, and musculoskeletal systems—optimizes ATP production across generations, building on the simple ATP synthase enzyme. Health is the normal operation of the machine, refined for specific fuels, circadian environments, and mitochondrial functions. Deviations speed up cellular aging, tissue dysfunction, subsystem failure, organism decline, and death. The most controllable factor remains fuel intake.
The Layers of Hunger
Hunger drives us, but its forms differ. Foremost is spiritual hunger. As beings with souls, our primary drive seeks spiritual fulfillment. When unmet, it pushes us to seek worldly substitutes. As Jesus declared in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Physiologic hunger splits. Our eukaryotic body hides the soul and connects with the outside world through microbiomes on the gut, skin, and beyond. The gut microbiome, although inside, functions as a passage outside the body. It includes bacteria, archaea, and tiny eukaryotes, ideally diverse and living in harmony with the host. It begins from maternal gut, skin, and breastfeeding; lifelong exposures shape it. Too many or unnecessary antibiotics, along with other toxins, can reduce this diversity. This is not about rejecting needed medical care but about noticing the unintended effects of overusing antibiotics. This microbiome needs prebiotics, such as microbiota-accessible carbohydrates (MACs) and biodiversity from fermented foods.
Human physiological hunger addresses the body’s needs; biome hunger pertains to the gut ecosystem. Above these are hedonic and conditioned hungers. Hedonic hunger seeks the pleasure of food, driven by dopamine, often unrelated to actual need, as seen in ultra-processed foods designed to induce constant cravings. The temporary dopamine-induced pleasure without satiety resembles addiction. Conditioned hunger, similar to Pavlov’s dogs, pairs cues with eating, enhanced by hedonic elements like sugary cereals.
Insufficient fuel for mitochondria or the gut microbiome hijacks higher systems, manifesting as systemic hunger, often hedonic. Objections arise: diabetics or the obese seem fuel-rich, with elevated blood sugar or stored fat. Yet, these reserves are external to cellular engines, blocked by insulin resistance or lipolysis barriers. Mitochondrial fuel tanks are empty despite abundant stores.
“Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Proper Human Diet
A frugal diet starts with spiritual nourishment—connecting with God and others. For the body, focus on animal-based proteins and fats that are absorbed in the small intestine. For gut health, include fermented MACs, which are indigestible in the small intestine but fermented in the large, supporting microbial metabolism, repair, and growth.
Refill intracellular tanks carefully. Avoid kerosene in a gasoline engine: insulinogenic processed grains, processed seed oils, excess alcohol or recreational drugs, and environmental toxins impair performance. No superfoods exist. No single item perfects function. Animal fats and proteins support the body; fermented MACs nourish the microbiome. Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
Our machine, shaped by generational natural selection, depends on ancestral fuels and microbiomes. High-level systems supply proper fuel to a quadrillion mitochondria and 38 trillion gut microorganisms. Dysfunction originates from chronic ATP shortages, impairing function, maintenance, and replication. Modern medicine often isolates subsystems, addressing symptoms rather than causes; a frugal approach targets the metabolic root.
Understanding Aging
Aging isn’t just the number of years you live. In geriatric ophthalmology, some 50-year-old diabetics get cataracts, while some 80-year-olds on proper diets do not. Aging is caused by reduced ATP production: fewer and less efficient mitochondrial engines.
Mitochondrial density indicates biogenesis driven by exercise. Depleting ATP increases production, causing reactive oxygen species (ROS) to leak from the electron transport chain. This low-level ROS signals pathways to produce more mitochondria, with hormesis helping restore balance. Excess ROS oxidizes ETC components, damaging engine parts. Cellular repair uses ATP to fix them. Mitophagy, mainly at night, recycles old mitochondria. Very old mitochondria can trigger apoptosis. In non-regenerative tissues like adult neurons or cardiac muscle, this results in permanent loss.
Aging results from improper fuels, cellular energy shortages, poor biogenesis, impaired mitophagy, and lack of repair. Systems weaken due to this foundational damage. Death is complete system failure.
Circadian Alignment
The machine evolved in a dynamic world, optimized for change, not stability. Circadian rhythms synchronize with daily light and environmental cycles. Cortisol and other circadian hormones coordinate activity, rest, feeding, and sleep. Health requires a proper diet, exercise, sleep, and circadian harmony. It’s not a silver bullet, but a bulletproof vest—layered protection against deviation.
Toward Frugal Vitality
This philosophy avoids extravagance in favor of essentials. Our machine, a metabolic marvel from LUCA to LECA to eukaryotic complexity, requires ATP-efficient fuels: animal proteins and fats for the body, MACs for the microbiome. Spiritual fulfillment suppresses worldly excesses, physiologic alignment challenges hedonic traps. Aging gives way to biogenesis, mitophagy, and repair. Circadian rhythms synchronize us with environmental cycles.
In a world of abundance, frugality prevails. Eat ancestrally. Move intentionally. Sleep restorative. Align each day. Health isn’t bought but nurtured, a careful stewardship of the spirit and its body.
Val Zudans, MD, is an ophthalmologist practicing in Florida with over 24 years of clinical experience at Zudans Eye. He is the founder of EnSurf, a mitochondrial biotechnology startup. He studied medicine at the University of Florida and completed his residency at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami. Val is a dedicated husband to Tracey and father to Zane, Tyler, Kira, and Zeo. He is a former mayor of Vero Beach and is currently working on a philosophy book, The Peculiar, Frugal World of Oz.
