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A review by saanaa
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel E. Lieberman
5.0
The Story of the Human Body is a book that should be read by every single person on earth. There is nothing more motivating towards exercise and health than the realisation of how much bad we are doing to ourselves by avoiding physical activity, and how wrong we are about the way we are living our lives. This book does that exactly. The impact our choices make on the ongoing evolution of humans is clearly portrayed in a way to emphasize the importance of change. Simply speaking, we will continue to get fatter, lazier and sicker if we don’t modify our daily activities to become more physically challenging, as well as fixing our diets to ones we can obtain actual nutrients from.
I deeply appreciated the insight of the first part of the book, chapters 2-6, due to the extensive explanation of the evolution of human race. There was so much I didn’t know that the book taught me, such as the existence of Homo Floresiensis – a dwarf version of Homo species living on island of Flores who were ‘driven by natural selection to become small-brained and small-statured in order to cope with lack of food’. The comprehensive descriptions of our species’ early evolution sheds a very bright light on why we are the way we are now, and why we keep getting worse. The epidemic of mismatch diseases in the last few generations is raising the mortality rate due to illnesses such as CVD and diabetes which could be prevented if we just changed the way we eat and how much physical activity we obtain during the day.
In this book, D. Lieberman talks about the comfort of our lives and how it has damaged our physical abilities and has limited our performances in many ways. Due to our acclimatization to convenience and luxury, we have lost – or are losing- many physical traits that have made our lives easier, but the lack of them may contribute to pain, and many mismatch diseases. This realization, if only it could become apparent, could reduce – or maybe even treat or prevent- a lot of pain that the majority of population is in.
This is an extremely eye-opening book, especially to anyone who has the slightest interest in the human body, evolution or health. But it would have a strong effect on anyone reading it, leaving the reader in a motivated state to improve their lives. If only this book was a mandatory read, I believe we would have a chance of living in a (somewhat) healthier world.
Despite being a scientific book, it is not a difficult read. I believe anyone with basic biology knowledge would have no trouble understanding the concept.
I deeply appreciated the insight of the first part of the book, chapters 2-6, due to the extensive explanation of the evolution of human race. There was so much I didn’t know that the book taught me, such as the existence of Homo Floresiensis – a dwarf version of Homo species living on island of Flores who were ‘driven by natural selection to become small-brained and small-statured in order to cope with lack of food’. The comprehensive descriptions of our species’ early evolution sheds a very bright light on why we are the way we are now, and why we keep getting worse. The epidemic of mismatch diseases in the last few generations is raising the mortality rate due to illnesses such as CVD and diabetes which could be prevented if we just changed the way we eat and how much physical activity we obtain during the day.
In this book, D. Lieberman talks about the comfort of our lives and how it has damaged our physical abilities and has limited our performances in many ways. Due to our acclimatization to convenience and luxury, we have lost – or are losing- many physical traits that have made our lives easier, but the lack of them may contribute to pain, and many mismatch diseases. This realization, if only it could become apparent, could reduce – or maybe even treat or prevent- a lot of pain that the majority of population is in.
This is an extremely eye-opening book, especially to anyone who has the slightest interest in the human body, evolution or health. But it would have a strong effect on anyone reading it, leaving the reader in a motivated state to improve their lives. If only this book was a mandatory read, I believe we would have a chance of living in a (somewhat) healthier world.
Despite being a scientific book, it is not a difficult read. I believe anyone with basic biology knowledge would have no trouble understanding the concept.