Evolving Health: The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World Is Making Us SickHuman illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage — which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows: Level of Evolution / Cause of adaptive failure / resulting disease or problem Pre-life / Environmental poisons / Certain birth defects Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like) / Viral infection / Colds/flu/HIV Morula (sponge-like) / Cellular stress / Cancer Chordate / Physical stress / Back pain Fish / Excess dietary salt / Hypertension/heart disease Amphibian / Tobacco smoke / Lung cancer/emphysema Lower primate / Excess dietary sugar / Diabetes mellitus Higher primate / Vitamin C deficiency / Scurvy Ape / Excess dietary protein / Gout Homo sapiens / Reduced dietary variety / Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies |
Contents
1 | |
5 | |
2 How Our Health Evolved | 15 |
3 An Evolutionary Childs Birthright Perinatal and Pediatric Diseases | 40 |
4 The Virus War | 60 |
5 Cellular Stress A General Model for Cancer | 73 |
6 Breast Cancer Prostate Diseases and Cancers of the Reproductive System | 87 |
7 Heart Disease and High Blood Pressure A Story of Fish and Chips | 97 |
9 Diabetes Mellitus and the Thrifty Genotype | 124 |
10 Gout Liver Enzymes and Global Climate Change | 136 |
11 Back Pain Bad Knees and Flatfeet | 147 |
12 Gut Diseases | 161 |
13 The Evolution of Psychiatric Disorders | 177 |
14 Uncivilized Solutions Reestablishing Adaptive Normality in Your Life | 197 |
Notes | 225 |
241 | |
Other editions - View all
Evolving Health: The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World Is Making ... Noel T. Boaz No preview available - 2002 |
Evolving Health: The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World Is Making ... Noel T. Boaz No preview available - 2002 |