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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
This book took a while but I really enjoyed the writing and the style. Lieberman basically started at the beginning of our evolution and painted a clear picture of how we got here, why our bodies are the way they are, and why certain diseases impact us. It was really, really fascinating. Basically, we aren't meant for this world, our big brains have created an environment that our bodies aren't suited for. We naturally crave sugar and fat which will cause us to get sick. It's all kinds of interesting and frustrating. If anything, my takeaway is that a deeper understanding of why I do certain things - why I crave certain foods or why I prefer sitting to standing or driving over walking or wearing shoes over being barefoot - are totally natural in my environment, but also not what my body was meant to do. Not that we have to totally buck cultural and societal norms, but it has certainly given me a lot to think about.
I'd love to give it five stars because I enjoyed the content, but the reality is this book could have been a hundred pages shorter if the author had a better editor and wasn't so unnecessarily repetitive.
I geeked out pretty good on this book. I kept me interested throughout with only a few slower parts here and there. But I’ll tell you this—one of my favorite exhibits at the Museum of Natural History in NYC is the one on human evolution. I could spend hours there. And the book takes that to the next level. The writing is pretty objective, but also quite accessible. The book left me with some takeaways to keep in mind about lifestyle changes and evolutionary perspective. It’s a great read on the biological and cultural evolution of the human body.
Favorite excerpts:
We get sick from chronic diseases by doing what we evolved to do, but under conditions for which our bodies are poorly adapted. And then we pass on those same conditions to our children.
Trying to understand what the human body is adapted for by focusing on just hunter gatherers is like trying to understand the result of a football game from watching just part of the 4th quarter.
Occasionally we even promote mismatch diseases by treating their symptoms so effectively that we unwittingly perpetuate their causes.
Cells that divide more frequently (e.g., blood and skin cells), or that are more often exposed to chemicals that cause mutations (e.g., lung and stomach cells), have a greater chance of accidentally acquiring mutations that cause them to divide out of control.
Symptoms don't instigate disease, but they cause suffering, and so they are what we notice and care about when we get sick.
The hypothesis of disevolution predicts that as long as we accept of cope with the symptoms of the problems these products create, often thanks to other products, and as long as the benefits exceed the costs, then we will continue to buy and use them, and pass them on to our children.
Farming was the worst mistake in the history of the human race. Farmers have more food and more children. But in general they have to work harder, have a lower quality diet, and more often confront starvation, and they live at higher population densities, which encourages the spread of infectious diseases and social stress. Farming also led to surpluses, which led to things like art, science, and many other human achievements. It led to civilization. But this also led to social stratification, slavery, war, famine, and other evils unknown to hunter gatherer societies.
If you were born in 1850, the chances were you'd live to be 40 years old and your cause of death would most likely be an infectious disease. An American baby born in the year 2000 can expect to live 77 years, and will most likely die from cardiovascular disease or cancer.
A girl born in 2010 can expect to live to 55 years old if she is from Zimbabwe, or 86 years old if she is from Japan. This reflects long term socioeconomic disparities that limit access to health care, good nutrition, and more sanitary conditions.
Old Friends Hypothesis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3868387/#:~:text=The%20Old%20Friends%20mechanism%20states,circuits%20%5B14%2C%2015%5D.
Adult Americans who were unfit, but then improved their level of fitness halved their rate of CVD. Because it costs an extra 18,000/year to treat an American with CVD, one can estimate that persuading just 25% more of the population to become fit could save in excess of $58 billion/year, for just CVD care alone. To put this number into perspective, $58 billion dollars is roughly twice the entire annual research budget of the NIH. Only 5% of that NIH budget goes to research on disease prevention.
A 2008 study estimated that spending $10 per year per person on community based programs that increase PA, prevent smoking, and improve nutrition would save the U.S. more than $16 billion in healthcare costs within five years.
Prevention is more preferable and cost effective way to promote health and longevity.
Thought experiment: The tyrant who is a health freak and seizes control of your country mandating changes.
We get sick from chronic diseases by doing what we evolved to do, but under conditions for which our bodies are poorly adapted. And then we pass on those same conditions to our children.
Trying to understand what the human body is adapted for by focusing on just hunter gatherers is like trying to understand the result of a football game from watching just part of the 4th quarter.
Occasionally we even promote mismatch diseases by treating their symptoms so effectively that we unwittingly perpetuate their causes.
Cells that divide more frequently (e.g., blood and skin cells), or that are more often exposed to chemicals that cause mutations (e.g., lung and stomach cells), have a greater chance of accidentally acquiring mutations that cause them to divide out of control.
Symptoms don't instigate disease, but they cause suffering, and so they are what we notice and care about when we get sick.
The hypothesis of disevolution predicts that as long as we accept of cope with the symptoms of the problems these products create, often thanks to other products, and as long as the benefits exceed the costs, then we will continue to buy and use them, and pass them on to our children.
Farming was the worst mistake in the history of the human race. Farmers have more food and more children. But in general they have to work harder, have a lower quality diet, and more often confront starvation, and they live at higher population densities, which encourages the spread of infectious diseases and social stress. Farming also led to surpluses, which led to things like art, science, and many other human achievements. It led to civilization. But this also led to social stratification, slavery, war, famine, and other evils unknown to hunter gatherer societies.
If you were born in 1850, the chances were you'd live to be 40 years old and your cause of death would most likely be an infectious disease. An American baby born in the year 2000 can expect to live 77 years, and will most likely die from cardiovascular disease or cancer.
A girl born in 2010 can expect to live to 55 years old if she is from Zimbabwe, or 86 years old if she is from Japan. This reflects long term socioeconomic disparities that limit access to health care, good nutrition, and more sanitary conditions.
Old Friends Hypothesis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3868387/#:~:text=The%20Old%20Friends%20mechanism%20states,circuits%20%5B14%2C%2015%5D.
Adult Americans who were unfit, but then improved their level of fitness halved their rate of CVD. Because it costs an extra 18,000/year to treat an American with CVD, one can estimate that persuading just 25% more of the population to become fit could save in excess of $58 billion/year, for just CVD care alone. To put this number into perspective, $58 billion dollars is roughly twice the entire annual research budget of the NIH. Only 5% of that NIH budget goes to research on disease prevention.
A 2008 study estimated that spending $10 per year per person on community based programs that increase PA, prevent smoking, and improve nutrition would save the U.S. more than $16 billion in healthcare costs within five years.
Prevention is more preferable and cost effective way to promote health and longevity.
Thought experiment: The tyrant who is a health freak and seizes control of your country mandating changes.
Asiallinen ja monipuolinen tietokirja ihmisen evoluutiosta ja sen vaikutuksesta kehoon, joskin ajoittain toisti itseään vähän liikaa.
This is a book of how the human body became ... well... human, as opposed to ape-like. Thus it doesn't dwell too much on organs, except for the brain. It's more about how we developed arched feet, long legs, big butts (in comparison to say, chimpanzees), why we are predisposed to be fat and such things. When the author is done with this, he moves on to "mismatch" diseases, the result of our bodies not fitting to its current environment. Typical mismatch diseases are flat feet, being short-sighted and diabetes 2. Fun, interesting and easy to read.
slow-paced