The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health & Disease
A Harvard Biologist on Modern Man and What We Can Do for Our Health
I read “The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal” by Desmond Morris a long, long time ago. Thought provoking when published in the late 1960’s, and somewhat discredited since, Morris lit my interest in biology. Daniel Lieberman’s book is one of the recent, critically acclaimed stories summarizing today’s body of evolutionary knowledge and what it may suggest regarding our everyday existence. Combining the fossil record with anthropological research through the modern era, he writes in layman’s terms with a sharp wit. “The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease” is an engaging and fascinating read.
Lieberman’s work also provides another piece of the anatomical puzzle for how to think about individual health through the lens of multigenerational adaptation. His catchy phrase for many of the “Western” diseases is “dysevolution.” A portion of Lieberman’s prescription, worth considering perhaps while pushing a grocery cart, is “avoid eating too much food, especially excess sugar and processed industrial foods.”
But he doesn’t end there. With subtle irony Lieberman refers to cities and suburbs as “unnatural environments” for humans, at least based on our inner system design. An evolutionary biologist through and through.
He pulls no punches when he writes:
“Most people don’t get sick through any fault of their own, but instead they acquire chronic illnesses as they age because they grew up in an environment that encourages, entices, and sometimes events force them to become sick. For many of these diseases, we can then only treat the symptoms. Unless we want to end up as a species ever more dependent on medicines and expensive technologies to cope with the symptoms of preventable diseases, we need to change our environments.”
In addition to providing a layman’s introduction to endocrinology, Lieberman also provides a framework for understanding the recent prevalence of arched feet, nearsightedness, impacted wisdom teeth and lower back pain, among other maladies. He is no product pitchman, however. Lieberman stops short of providing coupons for barefoot shoes, stand up desks and salad spinners, but no doubt is contributing to sales on behalf of certain market niches.
What Lieberman proposes is we remove our shoes and allow our kids, if not also the adults, to get dirty in the backyard; it turns out those bacteria-critters may do wonders for our immune system, and the earlier our exposure in life, the better. He also recommends plenty of weight bearing activities for youths, adolescents and young adults, as this generates peak bone mass — essentially a higher starting point — that will come in handy as our body begins its natural degenerative process.
And, for anyone flirting with a Paleo diet, the author points out, after much discussion, that the remains of hunter-gatherers show little, if any, sign of heart disease or atherosclerosis. A diet of mostly raw vegetables and limited simple sugar (scarcity of supply issue back then), even when combined with meat, seemed to chart a path to relative health thousands of years ago, provided you could outrun the lion.
As many Harvard undergrads have discovered, Lieberman’s style is such that the author would be a tremendous companion on any topic. For the rest of us, particularly those curious about the science for food adaptation, human posture and daily chores, presented through an evolutionary lens, add this book to your reading list. With health insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles increasingly expensive, finding creative — and low cost — approaches to health may be worth the investment of time and effort.
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