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Kimberly A. Plomp Books

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“The term -stress- is almost always used to refer to a negative stimulus but increases in cortisol also occur during positive and beneficial experiences, such as mating and exercise. Cortisol serves other functions across the soma, including in energy metabolism. Therefore, accurately interpreting changes in cortisol levels requiere knowledge of context, perception and activity levels.”

“During the initial agricultural -revolution-, people began to cultivate cereals, rice and other plants. They settled into permanent dwellings to tend crops and led more sedentary lifestyles. Some early agriculturalists decreased the breadth of their diet, incorporated more carbohydrates and lived in larger communities, where diseases could spread more easily.”

“Once industrialisation ocurred, non-communicable (chronic) diseases (NCDs; e.g., cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cardio-vascular, and non-infectious respiratory diseases) started to rise and replace infections. Tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diets and the harmful use of alcohol are key risk factors for NCDs.”

“Human dietary variation, including our ability to intensify carbohydrate-rich resources, is known to be a key evolutionary strenght. Diet and environment are key drivers of our evolutionay past, and a transition to agriculture among many populations worldwide has had far-reaching implications for our foodways and health.”

“The dramatic changes that occurred in the relationships between humans and animals as societies transitioned from hunting and foraging to herding and farming, and from living in rural to urban and industrialized environments, had major impacts on pathogen evolution. The development, spread and intensification of agriculture, coupled with urbanization and increased connectivity through trade, enhanced opportunities for pathogens to be shared. Populations of potential hosts, human and animal, were increasingly crowded together often in unsanitary environments. These conditions drove pathogen transmission and virulence because they facilitated transmission from heavily infected and very sick individuals.”

“Increasing technologies, globalisation, and wealth, along with sedentary jobs, have led to a much less active lifestyle for many humans, with consequences for general health and increasing rates of overweight and obesity. This lack of exercise coupled with malnutrition, specifically referring here to poor-quality, obesogenic diets, are thought to be responsible for epidemics of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).”

“If, though, the phenotype then encountered an environment richer than expected, the thrifty phenotype might be -mismatched- to the greater abundance. It is this mismatch, it is argued, that has led to the prosperity for adults to develop obesity and other metabolic disorders during adulthood in our contemporary, industrialised environments.”

“The factors facilitating the global emergence of pathogens shared between humans and animals are of particular importance because the diseases they induce have had major impacts on both human and animal health. This transfer of pathogens has ocurred for thousands, if not millions, of years and continues today.”

“Our species has co-evolved alongside many others to which we were in contact, especially through scavenging, hunting, and then animal husbandry, all of which would have exposed us to novel pathogens and zoonotic diseases. As a species, we had to adapt to these new pathogens without the benefits of modern medicine. The newly emerging diseases of recent decades, while novel in themselves, are but a repeat of patterns which humans have survived over several millennia.”

“Today there are almost eight billion people on earth, crowded together and travelling widely -this is 1300 times more than were present when the agricultural revolution began around 10,000 years ago and facilitated the spread of many pathogens.”

“Humans have always lived surrounded by potential pathogens. Whether they co-exist relatively harmlessly or become a problem, cause acute or chronic disease and spread slowly or in epidemics has been, and still is, influenced by how we have impacted the environments we share with other animals. Pathogens are opportunists within these environments, capable and ready to take advantage of anything that promotes their transmission.”

“The research on palaeodiets also sheds light on how contemporary, so-called "palaeodiets" are generally unscientific and limited (if not erroneous) in their health recommendations, given the wealth of data on the dietary diversity of our evolutionary history.”

“Cancer progression is a complex process that develops across many years of an individual's life. It is not aging, per say, that leads to cancer, but the relationship between aging, the accumulation of mutations and the tissue the microenvironment that harbours potentially mutant cells.”