Evolving Health

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:<br /> <br /> Level of Evolution<br /> <br /> Cause of adaptive failure<br /> <br /> resulting disease or problem<br /> <br /> Pre-life<br /> <br /> Environmental poisons<br /> <br /> Certain birth defects<br /> <br /> Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like)<br /> <br /> Viral infection<br /> <br /> Colds/flu/HIV<br /> <br /> Morula (sponge-like)<br /> <br /> Cellular stress<br /> <br /> Cancer<br /> <br /> Chordate<br /> <br /> Physical stress<br /> <br /> Back pain<br /> <br /> Fish<br /> <br /> Excess dietary salt<br /> <br /> Hypertension/heart disease<br /> <br /> Amphibian<br /> <br /> Tobacco smoke<br /> <br /> Lung cancer/emphysema<br /> <br /> Lower primate<br /> <br /> Excess dietary sugar<br /> <br /> Diabetes mellitus<br /> <br /> Higher primate<br /> <br /> Vitamin C deficiency<br /> <br /> Scurvy<br /> <br /> Ape<br /> <br /> Excess dietary protein<br /> <br /> Gout<br /> <br /> Homo sapiens<br /> <br /> Reduced dietary variety<br /> <br /> Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies