Hi, it's Mark Sisson from Marksdailyapple.com.

Enjoy this audio narration of a recent Marksdailyapple.com post by Tina Lehman.

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Find your tribe. Find your health.

Humans are tribal species.

We form alliances.

Align ourselves along ethnic, familial, religious, and cultural lines.

Still, for the vast majority of people, tribal carries a

negative connotation. Bitter partisan politics, ethnic genocides, religious wars, and long history

of bigotry make that connotation almost unavoidable. But I don't think tribal in its true essence is all bad. The basic instinct

to form and belong to groups is a simple fact of human physiology. It's how we work, so we'd better

make it work for us. Remember, I err on the side of evolution. If human evolution has produced and maintained a characteristic or

behavior, there's probably a reason for it. And maybe that reason doesn't make sense in the modern

world. It gets distorted or magnified. Tribalism certainly can, but it can be equally detrimental

to ignore that characteristic, to brush it off and discard it.

We don't have to perform hard physical labor to procure food anymore, but exercise is still vital

for our health. My guess is the same holds true for our predilection toward tribalism,

and it doesn't have to look like you think it might.

Research shows that one kind of tribe, die-hard sports fans, see physiological benefits when

their teams compete, such as boosts to testosterone and increased empathy. Sports fans even have

a higher-than-average sense of meaning in their lives, something many modern humans lack.

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