Evolving Health The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World Is Making Us Sick

by Boaz, Noel T.

• ISBN13: 9780471352617
• ISBN10: 0471352616
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-11
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

Human 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

Author Biography

NOEL BOAZ, Ph.D., Biological Anthropologist, is the founder and Director of the International Institute for Human Evolutionary Research and Professor of Anatomy at Ross University School of Medicine. He is the author of more than fifty scientific papers, the leading textbook in biological anthropology, and two popular science books, Quarry and Eco Homo.

Table of Contents

List of Tables.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

1. Achieving Adaptive Normality, Your Evolutionary Birthright.

2. How Our Health Evolved.

3. An Evolutionary ChildÆs Birthright: Perinatal and Pediatric Diseases.

4. The Virus War.

5. Cellular Stress: A General Model for Cancer.

6. Breast Cancer, Prostate Diseases, and Cancers of the Reproductive System.

7. Heart Disease and High Blood Pressure: A Story of Fish and Chips.

8. Why We Smoke.

9. Diabetes Mellitus and the ôThrifty Genotypeö.

10. Gout, Liver Enzymes, and Global Climate Change.

11. Back Pain, Bad Knees, and Flatfeet.

12. Gut Diseases.

13. The Evolution of Psychiatric Disorders.

14. Uncivilized Solutions: Reestablishing Adaptive Normality in Your Life.

Notes.

Index