6 ms·

Humans have been getting polio, measles and smallpox for millenia as well. That doesn't make them cures for heart disease, except in the morbid sense. Just bec

Humans have been getting polio, measles and smallpox for millenia as well. That doesn't make them cures for heart disease, except in the morbid sense. Just because people in the medieval times and before did it is no reason to presume that it was good for health.

Amezarak 2y ago
Polio is actually an interesting case. Polio did exist for millennia, but severe outbreaks did not occur until the industrial era. Constant exposure to the virus gave most people natural immunity, and then improved sanitation meant that first exposure often occurred in later childhood or teenage years, when the virus was much more dangerous. > Just because people in the medieval times and before did it is no reason to presume that it was good for health. It is reasonable to assume that if your ancestors for a sufficiently large number of generations ate some diet it means that natural selection has ensured that diet is reasonably optimized for your health.
- adamc 2y ago
  Not really. It's reasonable that it didn't kill them before they had children. There isn't much selection against diseases that affect us after our children have grown, and what little there is (grandmother care effects, say) was likely swamped in most of human history by other causes of mortality.
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    Humans are social animals. The grandfather/grandmother effect is much stronger than merely "helping take care of kids", lots of living older relatives can have a dramatic influence on your social standing and therefore ability to reproduce.
    - adamc 2y ago
      Undemonstrated. You might be right but I'd like to see the science.
- ted_dunning 2y ago
  > It is reasonable to assume It is reasonable to consider such hypotheses, but until you have some evidence it isn't very convincing. It's on about the same low level of intellectual rigor as assuming that "progress" is all wonderful. Neither good-old-days nor progress-is-always-good are valid modes of logical inference. Take, for instance, the farming-based diet that our ancestors have eaten for millenia. In fact, there is evidence that it was worse than what went before. But there is also evidence that modern diets are healthier (in terms of robust development to biological potential). It isn't all one way or the other. Here's a reference to a survey article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21507735/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21507735/
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    Oh, absolutely there was peaks and troughs in terms of the healthiness of historic diets; the Romans noted the German diet produced a very obvious superior outcome. A more recent trough occurred in the late 1800s/early 1900s: mid-Victorians lived much longer, and grew much taller, than late Victorians in England. We've only relatively recently recovered from that (mostly - not in terms of life expectancy at age 5, but certainly on other factors like height.) You definitely have to take a very expansive view.

Amezarak 2y ago

Polio is actually an interesting case. Polio did exist for millennia, but severe outbreaks did not occur until the industrial era. Constant exposure to the virus gave most people natural immunity, and then improved sanitation meant that first exposure often occurred in later childhood or teenage years, when the virus was much more dangerous. > Just because people in the medieval times and before did it is no reason to presume that it was good for health. It is reasonable to assume that if your ancestors for a sufficiently large number of generations ate some diet it means that natural selection has ensured that diet is reasonably optimized for your health.

adamc 2y ago
Not really. It's reasonable that it didn't kill them before they had children. There isn't much selection against diseases that affect us after our children have grown, and what little there is (grandmother care effects, say) was likely swamped in most of human history by other causes of mortality.
- Amezarak 2y ago
  Humans are social animals. The grandfather/grandmother effect is much stronger than merely "helping take care of kids", lots of living older relatives can have a dramatic influence on your social standing and therefore ability to reproduce.
  - adamc 2y ago
    Undemonstrated. You might be right but I'd like to see the science.
ted_dunning 2y ago
> It is reasonable to assume It is reasonable to consider such hypotheses, but until you have some evidence it isn't very convincing. It's on about the same low level of intellectual rigor as assuming that "progress" is all wonderful. Neither good-old-days nor progress-is-always-good are valid modes of logical inference. Take, for instance, the farming-based diet that our ancestors have eaten for millenia. In fact, there is evidence that it was worse than what went before. But there is also evidence that modern diets are healthier (in terms of robust development to biological potential). It isn't all one way or the other. Here's a reference to a survey article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21507735/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21507735/
- Amezarak 2y ago
  Oh, absolutely there was peaks and troughs in terms of the healthiness of historic diets; the Romans noted the German diet produced a very obvious superior outcome. A more recent trough occurred in the late 1800s/early 1900s: mid-Victorians lived much longer, and grew much taller, than late Victorians in England. We've only relatively recently recovered from that (mostly - not in terms of life expectancy at age 5, but certainly on other factors like height.) You definitely have to take a very expansive view.