Summary Of Chapter 19 Of Diseases And Human Evolution

Chapter 19 of Diseases and Human Evolution discusses diseases that can be associated with our diets. The first thing that stood out to me was that our transition to polished rice showed an increase in the disease beriberi. Because of the way polished rice was cooked, it lost the majority of the vitamins it had, and ultimately causing vitamin B deficiencies because this was a staple in individual’s diets. The chapter also discussed scurvy, a disease I am very familiar with. As someone who raised guinea pigs, who can’t produce their own vitamin C, it’s a disease I always had to be on the lookout for. A feed recall meant extra vegetables and vitamin C tablets to make sure they didn’t develop scurvy.
I think it’s hard to compare these types of diseases to the extended evolutionary synthesis. Nutritional deficiencies develop due to our diets, so I guess in a way we could apply the extended evolutionary synthesis to our body rather than the disease. Particularly, I think it is a wonderful example of how adaptive variants are propagated through repeated environmental induction. These deficiencies develop from foods that are staples in individual’s diets. This is repeated environmental induction. When corn or rice

I thought it was interesting that an increase is seen in pregnant women. Was this part of the development of gestational diabetes in North America? I know the paper discusses type 2 diabetes, but Benyshek mentioned that pregnant women that have impaired glucose tolerance during pregnancy are more inclined to develop type 2 diabetes. When Benyshek discussed other possible factors that caused an increase in diabetes in the Natives American populations, the one that stood out the most to me was oppression of their populations might have caused the phenomena 40 to 50 years