Tuesday, October 1, 2013

NPRs Fresh Air Sept 30 episode

Interesting listen.
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/30/227777434/how-our-stone-age-bodies-struggle-to-stay-healthy-in-modern-times
Trascript as well: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=227777434
The Story of the Human Body

Interview Highlights

On "mismatch diseases"

Many of the illnesses that we confront today are what evolutionary biologists called "mismatch diseases": ... Diseases that occur because our bodies are poorly or inadequately adapted to environments in which we now live. An example would be eating large amounts of sugar or being very physically inactive leads to problems like diabetes or heart disease that then make us sick. So mismatched diseases are diseases that are more modern in the sense that they're more prevalent, or even novel or more severe, because we don't live in the way in which our bodies are adapted.

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