The Evolution of Attention Deficit Disorder

Upcoming Topics

The above video clips are taken from a recent interview. The subjects will be covered in the next several posts. If you have any suggestions for topics you would like to know the evolutionary medicine approach to, please let me know. This interview was conducted in the production facilities of Santa Barbara City College under the direction of Steve Devega assisted by Patrick Lawler on video, Dane Larson still camera, and Jacob Dornbus, production. Arrangement for this session was made by Jay Kahn,Writer's Guild of America.

Why Do We Cough?

Conventional wisdom would have it that we cough when we are sick to “clear” our throats and lungs of bad stuff. We commonly think of mucus and phlegm as something we need to get rid of. Long before we knew of viruses and bacteria and germs of all sorts, we associated all that gooey stuff with the cause of our being ill. But it is part of the cure. Our bodies have evolved this complex stuff known as phlegm to engulf the germs that have taken root in us and it works best when it is inside of us. Making us cough is actually the evolutionary strategy of the virus to escape from us and move on to the next victim. We know that cold and flu viruses are spread by airborne droplets…of mucus spewed out when we cough. When we are told to “cough it up” we are the unwitting accomplices of our enemies. But what happens to all that goop if we don’t cough? It gets absorbed in our lungs, and swallowed into our stomachs where our immune systems can react quickly and target the invader to eliminate it. Even worse is the consequence of all that coughing. We do harm to our throats. And our lungs. When we have a tickle in our throats, clearing them and coughing is like scratching an itch. But just like scratching, when we do it too much, it leads to more swelling, not less. And more swelling, means as it does everywhere in our bodies, more pain. And more coughing. I often see patients in the office who have largely recovered from a cold but days and weeks later are still complaining of sore throats, frequent throat clearing and a persistent cough. As I explain the above scenario to them, I show them how to not cough, by swallowing, drinking, and coughing with a closed mouth or into their sleeve. Within a day or so they are often so much better that they don’t need any of those colorful cough medicines and lozenges and rubs that they have been fruitlessly trying.

The Sunshine Vitamin... For Your Heart

Just how important is Vitamin D? Or a better way to ask this question...just how much sunshine do we need? The answers are increasingly clear. Vitamin D just may be the health rediscovery of the decade. Careful research has found it to be of more and more significance to our health, as shown in a recent journal article in Circulation that was based on data from the venerable Framingham Study. And Evolutionary Medicine explains clearly why this is so.

We know our ancestors evolved near the Equator. As they moved toward the poles, mostly north, they shed their thick covering of body hair, probably to give our itchy, crawling, skin parasites less opportunity to grab hold of us, but also to let more sun fall onto our skin. Those individuals with lighter color skin were then able to absorb more sunlight in the shorter periods it was available in the northern latitudes. The consequences of not getting enough sun, and therefore not enough Vitamin D, turn out to be legion: thinner and weaker bones, less active immune cell function, higher risk of several cancers, depressed mood, and now clearly much greater risk of heart disease and stroke.

This study shows that those with low levels of Vitamin D have a 60% greater risk for heart disease than those with "adequate levels." This is a greater percentage effect than ANY cholesterol lowering drug has ever been shown to have.

What it doesn't show is whether getting Vitamin D from pills will have a preventive effect. It is very likely that because Vitamin D is present in our bodies in 4 forms, simply taking it in pill or supplemented form will be ineffective in preventing cardiovascular disease. Let's hope that when the inevitable clinical trials testing the effect of D, at least one group has the sense to test the difference between D in pill form and D derived the way we are evolved to make it, from the sun!

Just how much sunlight do we need? As little as 15 minutes a day will usually do the trick. That shouldn't be too hard for most people...how about a 15 minute walking break today when the sun happens to be shining? And if it is raining or snowing, well you will just have to make it up tomorrow. Luckily our bodies can store Vitamin D for some time in our fatty tissue to stock up for the cloudy days.




Read the original study here:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.706127v1
This is a good article based on the study:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080107181600.htm

What is PRIMAL HEALTH?

With so much health information out there, and so many competing theories and perspectives vying for attention, it’s difficult to know what we should do on a day-to-day basis to keep ourselves healthy and happy. Yet a new discipline, evolutionary medicine can help. By exploring how our Stone Age ancestors lived, loved, got sick, and healed themselves over millions of years, Evolutionary Medicine provides us with useful and in many cases counterintuitive guidelines on how to nurture our own innate capacities for health. How many of our commonly-held beliefs, like drinking 8 glasses of water and taking vitamins every day, are really modern myths? How much of our faith in the latest cholesterol or blood sugar pill is manufactured? Primal Health offers answers to these questions as well as valuable advice on everything from cancer to diabetes to aging gracefully. It’s time to take evolution out of the courtroom, liberate it from the science classroom and introduce it into the examining room and our daily lives. Cutting through the hype that surrounds health issues as well as the "conventional wisdom" that so often hinders rather than helps us, Primal Health provides readers with the insight they need to live longer, healthier, and happier and less anxious lives.