Evolution in Health and Disease

An account of how evolutionary biology can offer many important insights into the central problems of human health and disease, providing a compelling argument for why the tools of evolutionary biology belong in every doctor's tool kit.

---

Have you ever wondered how the disparity between the life experiences of our ancestors and ourselves might affect our health? For the majority of our evolutionary history, humans lived in small hunter-gatherer groups whose diet, lifestyle, living conditions, and environmental pressures were very different to the experiences of most humans today. The adaptations making us uniquely human - height, brain size, body proportions, metabolic rate, day range - were established during the Pleistocene - some 200 times as long as our recent evolutionary history - and may not fit us as well at the end of the 20th century. This book explores and analyzes the ways in which our ancient genes contend with, and influence, human life in the Space Age. It offers coverage of the many points of contact between evolutionary biology and medical science. Evolutionary biology is not a standard part of medical education, but it offers many important insights into central problems of human health and disease. This book is intended for students in medicine, anthropology, human science, evolutionary biology, and researchers in evolutionary biology, medicine, anthrolopology.