Modern Diseases: Deviations from Nature

Diseases of Abundance: A New Challenge Facing Humanity

The next category of mismatch is one where there is too much of some stimuli. While there was an abundance of stresses in the prehistoric world that contributed to evolution, there was also a severe lack of resources. This lack of necessary things had an equally important impact on how our bodies are designed. Of course, the most sought-after resource was energy.

We are always told that eating junk food, specifically sugary food, is bad for you. Yet people often find themselves eating lots of it anyway. Just today, I have eaten a chocolate muffin and coffee ice cream, way more sugar than our ancestors may have eaten in a week. The reason sugar is so prevalent in society is due to how cheap it is to manufacture.

The Cost of Agriculture

Ever since the rise of human civilization, people have become very good at growing large amounts of a select few grains. These grains are by definition carbohydrate dense and thus provide a great precursor to simple sugars. In the case of humans, high fructose corn syrup has become a staple ingredient in the majority of processed foods. This newfound ingredient has been wreaking havoc on our bodies, and here’s why:

1. Diabetes: Our body tries to use energy as efficiently as possible. The issue with sugar is how fast the energy comes. In the wild, all plant sugar has to be eaten with lots of fiber since it is trapped in plant cells. This fiber slows down how fast the sugar is released from the food into the blood. As a result, the body releases a little bit of insulin at a time, signaling cells to take up and burn the sugar as it comes.

In the modern world, high fructose corn syrup’s sugar is much more concentrated than a plant’s. On top of that, it has no fiber. This means that when the sugar is ingested, all of it hits the blood at once. The body responds by releasing a lot of insulin so all the sugar can be taken and burned The problem is that since the body was not designed to handle so much sugar, it accidentally overshoots the amount of insulin needed. I have mentioned diabetes in my analysis of its destructive effects on homeostasis.

This means that the body cells will take up all the sugar in the blood, making you hungry again. However, the bigger issue is that the body is unable to burn the energy at the same rate that it is entering. In nature, this is great! As mentioned earlier, humans evolved to be masters of storing energy in fat. However, as the fat cells fill up, the energy keeps on pouring in. At this point, the body is forced to put this fat in between organs, better known as visceral fat.

At the same time, as the body is bombarded with insulin, it begins to gain a tolerance for it. This means that the cells go “deaf” to the feeding signal. As a result, more insulin is needed to get the cells to take in sugar. Eventually, the cells become so resistant to this signal that they begin to starve even though there is so much food floating around them. They have become insensitive to the signal telling them to eat.  This is diabetes in a nutshell, one of the most common modern diseases in developed nations.