Understanding contemporary diseases under evolutionary medicine view
Subtitle: -
By: Edited by Atena Editora
Edition: -
Series: -
Publisher: Atena Editora
Published: 2023
Place of publication: Brasil
Language: por
Format: PDF
Copyright date: 2023
Description: From the evolutionary theory, the body is not a product of design but a bundle of compromises
shaped by natural selection to maximize reproduction or genetic fitness, not health. Hence,
life history theory predicts the coordinated evolution of the traits contributing directly to fitness:
age and size at maturation, number and size of offspring, number of reproductive events,
and ageing and lifespan. Major constraints were famine and infection with the trade-offs
of encephalization-gut size; growth-immunological defense and longevity-reproduction. The
major functions involved in lifespan are maintenance, growth, reproduction, and defense,
in which energy can be invested. For those, insulin resistance, sodium preservation and
inflammation are seen as thriftiness in situations such as famine, water privation and infection.
For then, emerged the thrifty genotype. An evolutionary view suggests that many genetic
variants interact with environments and other genes during development to influence disease
phenotypes. Therefore, it is possible to analyze a great number of diseases in terms of
adaptive vulnerabilities connected to our phylogenetic inheritance, such as human bodily
inadequacies in relation to the modern environment. This means that current diseases such
as obesity, T2D, essential hypertension, dyslipidemia and metabolic syndrome may result
from the mismatch of our ancestral thrifty genotype with the contemporary way of life through