Category: Health

October 25, 2024

Seminar: The Evolution of the Corrupt American Health Care System and What We Can Do About It with Tony Biglan

Free Seminar and Q&A Session

December 3, 2024

A Theory of Everything for Human Illness and Disease

By identifying the evolutionary roots of our modern afflictions we can address the underlying issues that perpetuate our collective suffering.

September 12, 2024

PLEA Agency: ACT and Psychological Flexibility Case Study

ProSocial World is focused on enhancing psychological flexibility to cultivate a prosocial cultural globally, including in the healthcare sector.

September 4, 2024

Humans: Smart Enough to Create Processed Foods, Daft Enough to Eat Them

We’ve long suspected that natural foods are better for health, but there are now clues that living foods might play a crucial part in our evolutionary history.

August 13, 2024

Do We Sleep Better Than Our Ancestors? How Natural Selection and Modern Life Have Shaped Human Sleep

Human sleep presents a paradox: we are the shortest sleeping primate, yet we have the largest brain. If sleep is for the brain, why do humans exhibit the least sleep?

July 23, 2024

Public Health and Evolutionary Mismatch: The Tragedy of Unnecessary Suffering and Death

The current anti-vaccination movement is a result, in part, of the innate cognitive biases inherent in our nervous systems that evolved to deal with problems in a very different premodern world.

July 10, 2024

Is Cancer a Disease of Civilization?

Our cancer suppression mechanisms evolved for a world that is not the world we live in today.

July 3, 2024

The Darwinian Causes of Mental Illness

Why hasn’t natural selection eliminated -- or at least severely reduced the frequency of -- well-known risk alleles for major depression and other mental health conditions that compromise organismal fitness?

June 18, 2024

(Mis-) Communication in Medicine: A Preventive Way for Doctors to Preserve Effective Communication in Technologically-Evolved Healthcare Environments

Cultural evolution created technologically-advanced contexts that make it difficult for doctors to communicate with patients in manners concordant with our evolved, ancestrally-familiar modes of communication.

February 8, 2024

A Mother's Mismatch: Why Cancer Has Deep Evolutionary Roots

While cancer is not exclusively a disease of modern environments, many modern environmental changes influence our disease susceptibility.

December 13, 2022

The Analogy of/and Inoculation Theory to Mental Immunity

Models from epidemiology are increasingly used to better understand how misinformation spreads in online networks.

August 23, 2022

The Anxiety Epidemic in Children: What are the Causes?

Rates of anxiety and depression have been rising in children since the 1980’s and might have accelerated during the last ten years.

October 12, 2020

How Covid-19 Reminds Us We Are More Alike Than Different

Genetic differences between individuals within groups are much greater than any average differences between groups of individuals.

September 14, 2020

For God’s Sake! What’s All This Fuss About a Virus?

The success (or failure) that societies have had in the wake of COVID-19 offers a simple reminder that the success of Homo sapiens has been essentially a cooperative enterprise.

August 24, 2020

Institutionalization of Animal Welfare and the Evolution of Coronavirus(es)

The current pandemic is an obvious manifestation of the price society has to pay for current practices.

July 28, 2020

Is Video Chat a Sufficient Proxy for Face-to-Face Interaction? Biosociological Reflections on Life during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“Zoom fatigue” and “touch starvation” have evolutionary origins that researchers need to take seriously.

July 27, 2020

Social Science Contributions to the Study of Zoonotic Spillover: Normal Accidents and Treadmill Theory

Two approaches help us identify high-risk activities and social processes that heighten the likelihood of zoonotic spillover.

June 15, 2020

The Cheating Cell: An Interview with Athena Aktipis

Understanding why and how both Twitter bots and cancer cells create conflict in different kinds of cooperative social systems may help us find new strategies to bring both kinds of disruptive behavior under control.

May 3, 2020

The Physical Activity Mismatch: Can Evolutionary Perspectives Inform Exercise Recommendations?

It’s highly likely that some degree of mismatch exists between our modern environment and the physical activity levels we have evolved to perform.

April 29, 2020

Did Paleolithic People Suffer From Kidney Disease?

Paleo-type diets by limiting salt and sugar should help limit damage to the blood vessels in the kidneys and other organ systems.

April 20, 2020

Pandemic: A Global Opportunity for National Renewal or Deterioration

Pandemics spread among human populations because the viruses and bacteria that cause them exploit a key evolutionary asset of the human species: our unique pro-social nature.

March 26, 2020

Big Pharma and the Death of Americans

As long as harmful practices result in profits to corporations and income to corporate leaders, harmful practices will continue.

March 23, 2020

How Coronavirus Bypasses Our Behavioral Immune System (And What We Can Do About It)

The evolved emotion of disgust neutralizes many pathogens by helping us avoid what makes us sick. We need to adapt our behavioral immune system to counter new threats.

March 19, 2020

How and Why the Food Industry Makes Americans Sick

The problem is that capitalism, as it is currently practiced in the United States, has no system for assessing the risks of companies’ products and marketing practices.

March 5, 2020

How Cigarette Marketing Killed 20 Million People

The tobacco industry provides a lesson about the harm that can be done in the name of profit. No other industry has contributed as much to promote illness and death.

September 20, 2016

Evolutionary Medicine Comes of Age: An Interview with Randolph Nesse

The evolutionary outlook expands the perspective of health professionals from that of mechanics to that of engineers.

June 27, 2016

Evolutionary Medicine: The Top Ten Questions

Evolution explains why we have traits that leave us vulnerable to disease, as well as why so many other aspects of the body work so well.

March 29, 2016

On Junk Diets and Junk Science: What’s the evidence for and against the paleo diet?

Adopting an evolutionary framework, based on sound scientific empirical work, is our best way forward to understand human health in the modern world.

March 8, 2016

Evolution Shows Us That Nurture & Love Are Fundamental To Mental Health

Evolution helps explain why the need for love and nurture is key in creating a childhood that makes humans happy and productive throughout their lives.

January 8, 2016

Cancer and the transformation of life: An Interview with Athena Aktipis

An insightful interview with Athena Aktipis on cancer research from an evolutionary perspective.

February 16, 2015

The Vaccine Controversy. Through An Evolutionary Lens

June 21, 2013

Misconception & Menopause, Media & Public Reception, And The Larry King Effect

Scientists respond to the media buzz about their research that went viral.While scientists increasingly have become interested in publicizing science and publishing popular books, media have played important roles in translating science from the field or laboratory to the public domain. Thus, scientists, media, and the public flanked by industry, business, and government define the consortium of producers, consumers, and sponsors of discovery.

June 6, 2013

How to Really Eat Like A Hunter-Gatherer: Why The Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked

We are not biologically identical to our Paleolithic predecessors, nor do we have access to the foods they ate.

March 22, 2013

Did Evolution Give Us Inflammatory Disease?

Researchers demonstrate that some variants in our genes that could put a person at risk for inflammatory diseases have been the target of natural selection over the course of human history.

January 26, 2013

Patients and Evolutionary History

What evolutionary insights are there for clinical medicine?

January 22, 2013

How Can Evolutionary Biology Explain Why We Get Cancer?

Using evolutionary medicine to treat cancer.

December 27, 2012

Erratic Environment May Be Key to Human Evolution

Key mental developments within the human lineage may have been linked with a highly variable environment.

December 27, 2012

Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind.

December 10, 2012

Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains

The connection between mother and child is ever deeper than thought.

November 18, 2012

Mental Disorders And Evolution: What Would Darwin Say About Schizophrenia?

How do debilitating mental disorders survive natural selection?

November 14, 2012

Evolutionary Pharmacology is at the Forefront of an Adventure in Crowdfunding

Funding evolutionary pharmacology research.

November 7, 2012

More Reasons To Thank Grandma - She May Be The Secret To Human Longevity

People live longer thanks to the grandmothers who help raise them.

October 16, 2012

Modern Humans Found to be Fittest Ever at Survival, By Far

Humans have done more to extend our life expectancy in the last century than during the previous 6.6 million years, since the evolutionary divergence from chimpanzees.

October 15, 2012

Can Humans Stop Aging?

Can scientists prevent aging in late life?

October 14, 2012

Has our War on Microbes Left our Immune Systems Prone to Dysfunction?

An Epidemic of Absence takes on the worms you're missing.

October 8, 2012

For Some Primates, Survival of the Nicest

Baboons, like people, really do get by with a little help from their friends.

October 2, 2012

The Evolutionary Advantage of Depression

Alleles (forms of genes) that increase one's risk for depression also enhance immune responses to infections.

September 23, 2012

Inequality of Wealth. Inequality of Health.

Historical data show that rampant economic inequality results in declining standards of life for the least advantaged.

September 9, 2012

Why Fathers Really Matter

What if it turned out, though, that expectant fathers molded babies, too, and not just by way of genes?

September 8, 2012

Evolution Could Explain the Placebo Effect

Scientists have discovered a possible evolutionary explanation for the placebo effect with new evidence.

August 28, 2012

Why Humans Give Birth to Helpless Babies

Why are human infants so helpless?

August 27, 2012

Debunking the Hunter-Gatherer Workout

DARWIN isn’t required reading for public health officials, but he should be.

August 25, 2012

The Evolutionary Basis For Obesity

The first evidence for the evolutionary basis for the obesity epidemic and the increased prevalence of non-insulin-dependent diabetes.

August 22, 2012

Menopause Evolved to Prevent Competition Between In-Laws

The menopause evolved, in part, to prevent competition between a mother and her new daughter-in-law.

August 21, 2012

Orangutans on Ritalin: An Evolutionary Developmental Psychology Perspective on ADHD

No animal other than us modern humans—our hunter-gatherer ancestors included—suffers ADHD. But plenty of today’s elementary school children do. What's going on?

August 7, 2012

Mom’s Genes Make Males Die Sooner

Men who make it to adulthood without succumbing to the male habit of dying in accidents shouldn't congratulate themselves too soon.

August 6, 2012

Alarming Evolution of Nastier Parasites in Vaccine Study

Evolution may also play a role in how other diseases react to vaccines.

August 2, 2012

Scientists Find Secret of Why Women Live Longer

Why women live longer than men.

August 1, 2012

Boy or Girl? Mother Can Control Outcome

Mothers can adjust the sex of their unborn children to best match their living conditions, research shows.

July 13, 2012

Do Wild Bats Hold the Key to Understanding Human Tribal Behavior?

Disease-causing pathogens–viruses, bacteria and protists–have geographies, both in terms of where they can be found and how common they are within those regions.

July 13, 2012

Autumn Babies More Likely to Hit 100

Good news for autumn babies: those born between September and November are more likely to live to 100 than those born in other months of the year.

June 25, 2012

We Evolved To Eat Meat, But How Much Is Too Much?

Modern medicine tells us that too much meat is bad for us, so what's a consumer to do?

June 22, 2012

Dirtying Up Our Diets

Reintroducing coevolutionary diets to improve health outcomes.