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

ISBN-13: 9780471352617 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 256 str.

Noel T. Boaz

Opis

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

Recenzje

"...many of the book′s points are excellent and would yield delight if effectively delivered to the public and to the clinicla specialists...a gem..."(human–nature.com, 11 June 2002)

"...rich in facts and good quality high–fibre solid information..." (Evolving Health Focus, August 2002)

Spis treści

List of Tables.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

1. Achieving Adaptive Normality, Your EvolutionaryBirthright.

2. How Our Health Evolved.

3. An Evolutionary Child s Birthright:Perinatal and Pediatric Diseases.

4. The Virus War.

5. Cellular Stress: A General Model for Cancer.

6. Breast Cancer, Prostate Diseases, and Cancersof 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 Thrifty Genotype .

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: ReestablishingAdaptive Normality in Your Life.

Notes.

Index.

O autorze

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.