[00:00:00] hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of superhuman radio. We have a great show planned today. We're going to have dr. Daniel Lieberman on to talk about. Possibly one of the greatest books ever written the seminal work the story of the human body. No one no one should be without this book, especially if you are in the health care industry.

[00:00:21] It's very very important. You know, I get to read a lot of books doing the show.  And I always learn something from every book I read. But only one other book that I've ever read made me feel a sense of Enlightenment the way the story of the human body has made me feel by. Dr. Daniel Lieberman. How you doing?

[00:00:48] Dr. Lieberman pleased to be here. I got to tell you something. Everybody needs to read this book. I don't care who they are. If everybody in the country read this book. We would [00:01:00] probably have a greater impact. On the current Health crisis than anything else that anybody could do and more importantly every physician should have to read this book when they go to school to become Physicians everybody who makes Health Care policy decision should have to read this book.

[00:01:16] This book is unbelievable.  Gosh, thank you so much. Well, I mean, okay, so. Explain why you even got started writing this book II this is this the major undertaking and I also have to tell you it reads like a fictional novel. You don't want to put it down. It's not boring. It's an amazing book but the information in it explain how you got started even undertaking this.

[00:01:44] Well, I mean if it had a long gestation, but I I teach human evolution here at. And for years, I've been teaching, you know, what happened in human evolution and I can you know, a lot of my students are going to be doctors their pre-medical [00:02:00] students and I've spent a lot of my career writing doing research for other academics.

[00:02:06] And as I over the years, I got increasingly frustrated that what I was teaching and what I was writing, although it was fun and interesting, you know, figure out why we are the way we are is fun that at most. People who I talk to you or teach aren't actually all that interested in knowing you know, what the brain size of Lucy, you know, a Joseph Briggs afarensis was but but they do care about their bodies and I started thinking more and more about how is evolution relevant to health and in most people's eyes that you know, they think paleo diet.

[00:02:40] That's all they think right and and the paleo diet has some good things about system some problematic things and I realized that we have a very. Superficial that of understanding of how our evolutionary history is relevant to how and why we get sick and also how and why it is that we're constantly treating the symptoms of diseases rather than preventing their causes.

[00:02:59] So it was [00:03:00] my attempt to try to try to. To see how I can you know help people understand these questions and help move the debate forward so that we can help each other and and you have accomplished that so A couple a couple things that I thought about first of all one evening when I was reading the book and I was probably through the first I don't know six or seven chapters.

[00:03:22] I remember closing the book. I was laying in bed remember closing the book and and holding it horizontally. In between my hands and looking at my hands and realizing that my hands looked like the hands of an ape and I've never I've never felt this way before but when I was reading the book and I was reading about, you know, our last common ancestor and how this journey began and what we were like when we first learned how to stand up and I mean it was it was very evident to me that we take for granted that very little has changed with our bodies.

[00:03:57] Over some millions of years now [00:04:00] and I that was the first thing the second thing that I thought about was I know why people probably don't want to read this book, you know why it makes you feel very insignificant when you realize six million years have passed and you're like this blip on a blip.

[00:04:17] It's very sobering. It is but it's also exciting and I think it's fun to understand why we are the way we are why our hands are the way they are and I think it's empowering actually. Yeah. We're we're an experiment where an evolutionary experiment, but I think that.  I think that's it's fun and useful.

[00:04:39] Yes, when you get past those two points, the book is a startlingly enlightening. So let's start with a couple things that I found most interesting. First of all the fact that the greatest contribution to our Evolution early on was not that our brain was not our brains, but the fact that we became [00:05:00] bipeds and that we we perspired.

[00:05:03] Yeah. Yeah, we we we often think that the brain led the way in human evolution. What makes us most special is our big brains, but actually Darwin figured this out to that actually was bipedal is in the started us off to being very different from other animals and and it you know, the we didn't actually start evolving big brains until for 5 million years after we diverged from the other Apes but importantly.

[00:05:31] You know becoming bipeds had all kinds of contingent effects. So it you know Evolution work through contingency, you know and things can't happen unless other things have happened previously and becoming bipedal had some advantages early on but it also had some important disadvantages which then set the stage for are becoming really good at endurance running because since we became bipeds we became slow, you know, you only have if you go running with your dog, your dog is twice as many limbs to produce power.

[00:05:58] To move itself forward and human [00:06:00] humans can run basically about half as fast as other animals of our body size because we can only have two legs now them for Lex and that meant we couldn't hunt and that or run very fast and when Predators chased us, we were probably really eat Nick and and and that was.

[00:06:17] Cost which was apparently outweighed by the other benefits of being a bipedal but then starting around 2 million years ago as the climate started changing in Africa Again by profoundly, we kind of evolution somehow found a way to make that cost an advantage which is to turn us into a not sprinters but endurance Runners and one of the key sets of features that make us so good at endurance running is her ability to sweat which is something that is unique to.

[00:06:44] And you know what? I also found very very interesting. Was that our first foray into hunting without weapons was persistence hunting because we were able to sweat and we were able to go for long distance when other animals couldn't so we would just wear them out until they would die of heat [00:07:00] shock and we pick them up and eat them.

[00:07:01] That's exactly right. Is that cool? Because you know even putting a stone point on the end of a spear that was invented. Maybe only. 300 to 500 thousand years ago, but we know that our ancestors were hunting big game like kudu and wildebeests and things like that between two and two and a half million years ago.

[00:07:17] And so how did they hunt without any of the technology that we take for granted even among very sort of simple sort of Stone Age Technology and the answer is as you say persistence hunting we're able to run animals that chase them at a speed that would make some gallops and because they can't cool by sweating the way we do when they.

[00:07:37] Gallup they have to call by panting and and you can't Gallop in pain same time. So you can make an animal Gallop at for a long period of time you actually cause it to overheat and that's exactly what our ancestors did and they're still people who occasionally do this in different parts of the world.

[00:07:54] It's very rare, of course because we don't need to anymore. But we that Legacy is part of our [00:08:00] bodies and so that you know, the fundamental sort of basic aspect of human anatomy and biology and Physiology is that we're endurance athletes where we evolved to run and walk long distances and that's part of who we are it makes us very special compared to most organisms.

[00:08:15] And that's why sitting at desks all day is having the deleterious effect on health and it's having today and we know this about the lack of activity. Another thing that I was amazed by was that the Ice Age. Two things number one the Ice Age didn't happen and disappear at ebbed and flowed over 40,000 years, right?

[00:08:33] It came and went came and went. Yeah. Yeah, it's it was a constant change and and must have been really quite challenging for all for everybody back there. But but in fact climate change is what allowed us to basically cover the entire planet at some point there because every time the climate became unlivable, let's say we went and moved someplace else, right?

[00:09:00] [00:09:00] That's right. Yeah, we didn't fear not sir, you know nailed to the ground and you know, just just cope with the climate changes as the climate has changed as ice is glaciers for example covered the Northern Hemisphere and then receive. It's expanded and Shrink that pumped humans and other animals and plants have around the globe.

[00:09:22] So we got pumped In and Out of Africa throughout Europe and Asia is climates shifted, but we also managed to develop technologies that and to to that enable us to sort of cope with climate change in a way that was different from from any other species. So by the time that. You know around 40 50 thousand years ago humans had become culturally sophisticated enough that they were actually able to endure and run out right out the ice age in some parts of the world.

[00:09:52] And that was a special that was unique and it may be one of the reasons we outlasted the. And and then the last [00:10:00] thing I want to talk about with the ice age was we think of ourselves as being big brain now, but there's really evidence that our brain has shrunk since that period right? That's right.

[00:10:07] Yes. So during the during the Ice Age our ancestors had brains that were slightly larger than ours today. I mean not not hugely know if you hundred milliliters, but. But our brains are shrunk because actually our bodies have shrunk. So so you animals that live in cold environments think about them like mammoths and bears they tend to be really large.

[00:10:26] And the reason for that is that you want to have a large. Area sort of small surface area relative to the size of your body. Right? So big animals actually have smaller surface area to body mass ratios. So as the Ice Age receded and it's gotten warmer since then, we've actually gotten smaller since selection for human scale but smaller and because we've gotten smaller our brains have also gotten smaller by just the right proportion.

[00:10:51] So so yeah, we're smaller brains and than we used to be a few thousand years ago. And if anything the. The job one or the The [00:11:00] evolutionary gift of our brain was not necessarily our ability to logic things out but instead Community the ability to want to cooperate with others in the party and you point out in the book, you know a chimp May feed a baby chimp that's lost its mother but it's not going to share food with another peer but Youmans do that, right?

[00:11:24] That's right. It's one thing that makes us special where we're amazingly Cooperative pro-social creatures that that help each other out in ways that no other animal does and it's and it's intrinsically part of who we are it's and you know, I think for example. It's part of even running, you know, everybody was amazed about the Boston Marathon this year and how everybody was running as this big Community event, which it was it was an amazing event.

[00:11:47] But you know people have been doing that for two million years. I mean, we've been running in order to hunt and when people hunt they share their food so Hunters when they came back from a hunt to million years ago would come back and sure that food with [00:12:00] everybody. This has been going on for millions and millions of years.

[00:12:02] Nobody else. Does that no other animals do it say well and it's why we it's why we have. Permit, I mean because we are so unique that way that government says hey this is the law do it and we follow the law because we want to cooperate.  Yeah, I mean I mean government is a formal governments are our very recent phenomenon.

[00:12:23] Since really the invention of agriculture, but the but the but the instinctive tendency for us to help each other out and act in cooperatively is very ancient and it's get its Essentials quintessential to being a human being we have to take a break. I've got so many questions and we're going to end up talking about the current Healthcare debacle as we go through this with talking with dr.

[00:12:47] Daniel Lieberman. The book is called. The story of the human body you must read this book and I really mean this if you read this book, you will have such a different opinion about everything around you you can get [00:13:00] the book by going to super human radio.com at the very bottom of the homepage. You can click a link to order the book.

[00:13:06] Everybody has to read this book. I promise you it will change the way you look at the world. It will change the way you look at your life. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. They say the tough love is sometimes the best advice. He's got the toughest love why you should not drink diet sodas. It's very very simple.

[00:13:23] If you don't subscribe to the idea that they're toxic fine then subscribe to the idea that they cause a derangement. In insulin response, if you don't subscribe to that fine, then subscribe to the idea that they Spike insulin. I mean it's like do whatever you want. But why do we need science to tell us to stop consuming more chemicals?

[00:13:44] Are you really that pathetically addicted to something? That's not good for you then say it say I'm addicted to these things. I can't help myself. I know that bad me. I'm going to keep using them and then we don't have to do research. You're listening to superhuman radio with Carl Lenore. [00:14:00] Listen strong.

[00:14:01] It's super human radio.  Welcome back to super human radio the story of the human body. Probably one of the greatest books ever written. I'm telling you. Dr. Daniel Lieberman. So, dr. Lieberman, I erroneously used the word on my show starting somewhere early last year D volution. I said, you know.

[00:14:27] We are actually doing things today that are hindering impairing or changing the direction of evolution. But you call it this evolution in the book talk about it a little bit. Well evolution is just change over time. And this is bad, you know something gone awry and so there's two kinds of evolution going on today one is the the old fashioned.

[00:14:52] Natural selection the kind of stuff that Darwin wrote about and it's still actually happening. It's just very slow [00:15:00] and very hard to measure and you know, the changes that will occur in our lifetime our are almost impossible to measure unless you're a scientist with huge sample sizes and fancy equipment.

[00:15:09] So we don't need to worry about evolution by natural selection, but the other kind of evolution that's going on is cultural right? We're changing the foods that we eat and the ways we use our bodies. I terms of how we walk and sit and and run and. Today, you know everything and and our bodies are interacting with those environments those new environments in ways that are causing us to get sick and we call those mismatched diseases diseases caused by bodies being poorly adapted to the environments in which we now live and then.

[00:15:42] Culturally, we respond to getting sick by treating the symptoms of getting sick. So you wear shoes that make your feet week and then your arches collapse and then you go get an orthotic and enables you to keep keep using shoes. And we do the same thing with with diabetes and cancer and heart disease where we're [00:16:00] getting sick because of the way we use our bodies are is out of whack with our bodies.

[00:16:05] But we're also treating the symptoms more and more effectively and that's the neighborhood have to keep this Vicious Circle going and I call that Vicious Circle this Evolution and I call Dad Eeveelution, but it was not the appropriate word, but I couldn't come up with this Evolution with my small brain.

[00:16:23] Well, obviously smaller than it would have been had it had been born in the Ice Age but one of the things that I find interesting about this discussion is that you point out that the litmus test for. Tolerable diseases is a if it impairs our ability to reproduce and be if we can make money off of it.

[00:16:42] Yeah. Yeah, and so a lot of the diseases that people get sick from. You know, they don't affect people really seriously until there tomorrow if they've already had Grant already grandparents, you know, so let's take heart disease. The number one killer of Americans today, right? Most people don't [00:17:00] suffer the ill effects of hypertension or or or, you know after a sclerosis or whatever until they're in their 50s or 60s and that that point.

[00:17:10] You know, it's not going to really going to have any effect on their reproductive success, which is what natural selection really cares about. And of course the other thing is that you know reason we get sick. It's not because people are out there trying to get us sick is that they're trying to give us stuff and we're quite happy to buy and do things that don't promote Health, right?

[00:17:30] We like Comfort. We like sweet things. We like, you know, You know, if you put an escalator in the Kalahari Desert, I guarantee you the hunter gathers there would be using the escalator and right and if you put doughnuts in front of any human being any part of the planet, I guarantee you they eat that over there, you know apples or carrots.

[00:17:49] That's how we evolved to Crave those kinds of foods. And right now we live in a society and the world. An economy where we can suddenly for the first time have have infinite access to [00:18:00] foods and and luxuries that used to be rare. Now. I've said on this show that there's a new type of selection pressure.

[00:18:09] It's where you get your information from. Well, well, yes, thank you. And and one of the things I think we're seeing now is actually a Tipping Point is occurred. We have children. Who probably will not have Offspring because of autism because of colon cancer at 9 and 10 years old diabetes at 9 and 10 years old and other disorders that may in fact impair their ability to have Offspring.

[00:18:38] So we actually have where we where we no longer have infectious disease. We have diseases of modernity that may actually thin the herd for 500 years from now, we could see entire Gene lines and race from erased from this gene pool. Do you think that's true? Well only to the extent that that the factors that so selections only going to operate if.

[00:18:59] [00:19:00] The there's a heritable basis to people's proclivity to get those diseases. So if you have a so all of us have a have a some proclivity to get diabetes and heart disease Etc. But the question is are some of us more likely to get those diseases because of a gene We inherited or because we simply happen to have the bad luck or the good luck to be born to in environments where where those factors are present and I would argue that there's really.

[00:19:28] You know all of us crave Donuts all of us crave driving in cars and taking elevators instead of the stairs. It's really our parents and the environments in which we grow up that's really making the big difference of people listen to your show or or who go to you know, who come from turns out, you know, people who are more educated tend to be more wealthy.

[00:19:51] They have the time and Leisure and the ability to exercise more and. By healthier foods, it's not cheap to buy healthy foods today, [00:20:00] right? So I think that it's unlikely that selections going to really act because those. Those factors that make the you or me more likely to live a healthy lifestyle as opposed to someone who doesn't listen to the show.

[00:20:11] They're probably not have no genetic basis right knocking across selection A very wise therapist when I was in my 20s. I had my first experience with talk therapy a very very wise therapist named Jerry cats once said to me that men pursue and women choose can we blame women for the problems with selection today?

[00:20:31] Ha ha ha come on. Come on, I'm not first of all, well, my instincts are not touch that when it says bubble butt but no I think choices by both males and females and his sexual selection certainly is an important. Evolutionary thing but really it's I mean, it's all of us are subject to these. Look I like I run a lot right but I figured out that if I'm going to run a lot I have to coerce myself into right?

[00:20:58] No, I can't iive I have [00:21:00] a running group so that there are days when you know the weather out there sell and it's particularly. This winter was really tough winter to go running. But if it weren't for the fact that I had a bunch of books that I was supposed to run with and Anna Marathon I'd signed up for I wouldn't have been out there and so.

[00:21:15] So I think you know those of us who figure out how to you know, when I go to the supermarket have learned long ago to eat before I go. Otherwise, it'd make worse choices when I go to the supermarket. So it's you know, we have to figure out how to how to better adapt to this environment that we've created.

[00:21:32] But we also all need help in terms of understanding that environment and and helping us from being nudged too much in the wrong direction. So so I think all of us are making choices and and it's very hard to make. The right choices it's a challenge struggle with it day. And dad. Did I don't know. I don't know anybody who naturally does the right thing because it's hard.

[00:21:52] No it is it you you have to be focused on it. You have to make very very wise decisions and even those of us who make the decisions. We you [00:22:00] right? It's our genetic Creek. What's this with a predisposition to want to eat foods that are sweet. Salty and fatty to sit around and take. Yeah, they're interesting.

[00:22:15] They're part of our what we call the fast brain and you really we need to use our slow brain what Daniel Kahneman causes slow brain and and it's powerful but we need to we need ways in which to turn off that fast brain and turn on that flow brain. And and that's that's a real challenge. Well deferred gratification is not something that is a genetic gift of ours that we've deferred gratification requires us to plan ahead and I'll brain was designed to.

[00:22:41] I'm hungry now. I need shelter. Now. I'm tired now. Well, we have both parts of that brain. So we have those instincts. But we also we also have the ability to. Yes, they're both there. And we and the problem is that they're designed to do different things. We have evolved to do different things.

[00:22:58] So those things can help get us out of [00:23:00] trouble those instincts help us put on, you know, eat things that we probably ought to eat because later on we'll get the benefit of it. So not eating, you know in the in the in the Paleolithic. If there was a plate of doughnuts in front of you and you weren't really hungry that would have actually been maladaptive right to not eat those donuts today.

[00:23:18] It's become adaptive like the circumstances of shifted but those instincts are ancient and so we need to understand those instincts and how to control them and to use them to our benefit how to avoid them being used to somebody else's benefit for us to us to survive and thrive. We have to take a break when we come back.

[00:23:38] I want to talk about the influence that the arch in our. And how our hips changed and more importantly as some research that I found there was a debate going on on the show last week because of the whole backlash on five fingers, which I'm a big fan of I want to talk about the arch and the Mitten shoe and and some of those things are talking with.

[00:23:58] Dr. Daniel Lieberman. The book is [00:24:00] the story of the human body. If you have not bought any of the books that I've suggested this year and you only want to buy one book this year. This has to be the book I'm telling you. In fact, I've given this book as gifts to even to Adele Musa who contributes to the show four months to Germany because the book is that profound.

[00:24:20] It really is a game changer. It is one of the books that will not only educate you but Enlighten you you will see everything different get it go to superhuman radio.com at right on the homepage. We'll be right back. There's something comforting about knowing he's out there government is in place because it assumes that people are too stupid to care for themselves by your side government has to take up the parental role of teaching people what to do fighting the good fight government has to get out of people's pantries.

[00:24:47] First of all, they can't legislate help. He's Carlin or on super human radio.

[00:25:00] [00:25:01] Welcome back to Super even radio.  You know, dr. Lieberman for a very long time now, I've always had one book next to my bed. That was my go-to book when I wasn't reading something for the show. It's the complete works of Dashiell Hammett. I can I can open up I can open up that book at any page start reading fall right back into place.

[00:25:23] You know the Maltese Falcon the Thin Man the glass key. I've added a second book and it's yours and it sits there and for the bed, I mean, I just pick it up. It's dog-eared. It's scribbled on it's got Pages folded. It's got ideas for shows written all over it. It's an amazing book. I really mean that it's I think that it's going to go down.

[00:25:44] As possibly one of the greatest contributions to understanding why we are so sick and how we can get ourselves out of it. And I don't understand why it's not an entire portion of a curriculum in metal medical school today. Let's talk about five fingers for a second [00:26:00] five fingers just got a backlash because rightfully so they made claims in advertising, but I wear five fingers and have been for.

[00:26:07] Five six seven years now and I love them the arch you point out in the book was one of our evolutionary gifts. It allowed us to be better bipeds. And it even change the archaeology the architecture of our hips, right? Yeah. Well affected our whole bodies. Yeah. So talk about Mitten shoes. And you said, you know people's archers are collapsing nowadays shouldn't we be spending more time walking?

[00:26:32] Barefoot or at least with Minimalist Shoes like those? I have a good I think that I think the there's growing evidence that that's actually there are there are benefits to minimal shoes. But you know, it's there's a lot of data that haven't been collected. The fact of the matter is that the foot is full of muscles and those muscles like anywhere else in your body have to be used to be strong and most people have very weak feet because the design of [00:27:00] most conventional shoes.

[00:27:01] Actually. The reason they're comfortable is that they permit your foot to function without as much muscular effort. So they have arch supports. If you actually take my shoes off you'll notice they've got what's called a tow spring so that the toes are actually curved upwards and that means that your your toes don't have to work as hard push hard.

[00:27:17] When you lift off, you've got we've got all kinds of features in shoes that make make them comfortable. But since when is Comfort good for you, right? And so what five fingers are or like any other minimal shoe. There is lots of minimal shoes up there. There just happened to be the one they got picked up picked on, you know that they just don't have all those features.

[00:27:35] And so they allow your foot more left to function more of the way Mother Nature intended it to function and we just actually published a paper which showed that people who gave a. We give a bunch of people minimal shoes and have them run a kind of a running program. And we also gave them others do the exact same running program in conventional shoes.

[00:27:56] We put them in MRIs before and after the [00:28:00] experiment and the people who were minimal shoes actually their muscles. Got stronger. They got thicker. They got larger compared to the people who were the conventional shoes their muscles didn't change at all. So so, you know that's evidence. Actually that minimal shoes might actually have some some benefits in terms of strengthening your feet.

[00:28:20] But the but the flip side of that is that you have to be careful that if you've been wearing conventional share your whole life. Your feet are actually adapted very well to go minimal and you have to transition I think slowly and carefully and graduate. I think actually almost always do companies out there advise their I had I had the direct I had the director of marketing of Vibram on this show in 2009.

[00:28:45] And we talked about the shoes. And the first thing she said was if you buy them you wear them for an hour a day for the first two weeks because your feet your their muscles in your feet that haven't been used in a long long time depending on how long you've been [00:29:00] wearing Mitten type shoes that will start to hurt if you just put them on and start wearing them all the time.

[00:29:05] Yes, I think I think most people know that and I think most of these companies have been pretty good about telling people that but you know, the way the legal system works is that. You know, sometimes it's I mean, look, I'm not I had nothing to do. The company and I don't know why they decided to settle anything like that.

[00:29:21] But I said, you know, I had I been in their shoes I would have I would have thought the lawyers because them because I think I should have pretty good evidence that the shoes are is good reason to believe the shoes are actually good for you. But you know, that's a scientific debate that will play out in the literature from the next 10-15 years, but I'll tell you this.

[00:29:40] What's your null hypothesis write the null hypothesis science is the hypothesis you have to reject is is a conventional shoe. If you in this proved otherwise or a minimal shoe better for you in this proved. Otherwise, how come nobody's going after they have a big shoe come right make professional shoes.

[00:29:55] I would argue that if we evolved it. It's probably better for us than something we didn't evolve [00:30:00] to do and and you know and conventional she was only around for a few decades. So in 30 percent of Americans have flat feet not to mention all the other problems. We've getting so don't tell me that, you know conventional shoes are healthy for you, unless proven.

[00:30:14] Otherwise, this is nonsense. Take take a glimpse at the future for a moment looking at the trajectory that the planet is on right now and I say the planet because all developed nations are pretty much in the same shape that the United States is. We have a pension to to want pharmacological intervention.

[00:30:35] We don't want to move we want to eat lots of calories. We do so many things that are just so bad for us and we don't want to give those things up. We want to find ways to continue to live this way. When you look forward using your mind's eye and knowing what you know about how we got to this point.

[00:30:55] What do you see in the future? Well, [00:31:00] I mean, I think the the chances I were heading towards a kind of a future that looks not too unlike the movie Wall-E. I mean it yes. That's really sadly where we are headed at the moment countries. Like, you know, they're projecting that by the end of the decade there could be a hundred million people with type 2 diabetes in India China.

[00:31:20] Also incredible diabetes epidemic type 2 diabetes epidemic going on there. So this is that problem that is accelerating around the world. Mexico is now. Even well heavier than an average than Americans so and the problem with a lot of these countries. They don't have the infrastructure to cope with the kinds of illness that we have.

[00:31:38] So so the question is are we going to reach some kind of Tipping Point in the United States today? We spend approximately 20 percent of our GDP on Healthcare and yet Healthcare only explains about ten percent of the variation in healthcare outcomes. We spend less than 5% weigh less than 5% on prevention.

[00:31:58] And the question is at [00:32:00] what point does it have to get so bad that we have to look in the mirror and realize. This is a really foolish and stupid way to try to help each other and to stay healthy and to also avoid Financial ruin and the fact of the matter is that often takes a crisis for for human beings to act and and I'm hoping that the crisis will come sooner rather than later because because we're not headed in the right trajectory.

[00:32:27] It takes multiple crises. I did this show many years ago we had. A scientist from the UK on who did a study to see how many life-threatening events must occur before a person Alters the high-risk behavior that got them there. And and for me my personal Journey was I got very very sick at and when I was 39 years old at heart problem, I was 3 and 30 pounds and it just hit that one event for me to change the trajectory of my life, but the average person takes three.

[00:32:56] And what she told me during that interview was that most people die around the [00:33:00] second? So the reality is that we I think we would have to be in a crisis for a very long time. When we look at the number of children that are ill today that will be in some need of institutional care. And then we look at the number of people in the older bracket that are even 50 60 70 who are going to need institutional care.

[00:33:23] There's a very very small segment in the. Of people that have to generate the the resources to carry all of this weight this country cannot I did a show five or six five years ago with a university Professor from you the the University of Ohio State who wrote a book on anthropology and and I said to him.

[00:33:49] When we when we talk about civilizations that are gone, we think that they just disappeared they didn't they voted with their feet. They left the infrastructure behind because things got so intolerable. I says what [00:34:00] are the benchmarks for a society that's going to fail and he listed them and at that time we were experiencing.

[00:34:06] This is probably three or four years ago. We were experiencing seven of those. And he said the last thing to happen is when the military stops protecting the country because they're not getting paid any longer and there's and the military starts to turn if you will and abandon and we're starting to see that was think we seeing people in the military it committing suicide because they can't afford to pay their own bills while they're in the military and it's so we are already on that trajectory.

[00:34:32] When will this government realized that if they don't stop doing what they're doing and do something different? We're really in big trouble. Yeah, well, it's a very complex system of problem part of which is that if you look for example at the farm bill and the way in which we subsidize Foods the way the protections that are available to companies versus consumers.

[00:34:52] I mean, you can buy food and still not know what's in it. We you can it's legal in the country [00:35:00] now completely legal in fact considered acceptable and you know to label Foods as fat free. That are actually more fattening than foods that contain fat but and and somehow this is considered acceptable because we can't infringe on Free Speech, but but free speech for whom I mean, I think that most people out there, you know need to know and have a right to know.

[00:35:25] What's how their food is affecting them. And right now they're not getting that information. And so it's I think I think it's a political problem. Yes, you know, you'll be you're being very you're being very very kind. It's a it's a politically corrupt problem because the government the FDA the USDA they are protecting.

[00:35:46] The companies that produce Foods our government subsidizes three crops that are at the root of a lot of disease in this country and no one's going to say anything about it because the government needs to get their return on investment. It's a terrible situation. The government [00:36:00] does not belong in our pantry, but you're right, but that's why I say information is the new selection pressure people who get the message and act differently and vote with their dollars.

[00:36:10] We have a chance and those who don't don't. Yeah, but the problem is that the people who have information or ordering, you know, it's become a you know, healthy eating and Healthy Lifestyles come a class issue in the United States. Like I go to I wasn't I had a good fortune of going to Ironman the other year and to see who does Iron Man.

[00:36:31] Right, right. These are millionaires for the most part, you know, you have a lot of money to put in that matter of time and effort in order to to get fit and deepen those kinds of foods in to buy those expensive bicycles and you know Runners for the most part tend to be you know, You know, not necessarily but you know, they tend to be more educated people, you know, people have time to go to gyms and exercise and buy organic food or whatever it is.

[00:36:56] You think is healthy for you that takes time and money and effort [00:37:00] and if you're just struggling to get by you can't afford that and so we've created a system that's not a class system not only in terms of income but also in terms of health and so. It's a complex problem that you know, I don't see a simple solution as a professor.

[00:37:18] My job is to help teach people to think and help people get access to information and to be critical and and hopefully, you know my students and the people listen to your radio show can can start making the changes that are necessary but it's going to take Collective action on a very large scale for this to for this to change the I agree completely.

[00:37:38] Let's take our last commercial break and when we come back, we'll wrap up the interview we're talking with dr. Daniel. In the book is the story of the human body by it read it read it again. Stay tuned. I bet you're feeling stronger already. So keep listening to superhuman radio. We'll be right back.

[00:37:58] Welcome

[00:38:00] [00:38:04] back to super human radio we're talking with dr. Daniel Lieberman about the story of the human body a book that he has written on Evolution health and disease. Your students are really lucky do they know how lucky they are to have you as a professor. Well, they're pretty darn lucky to be here at Harvard as well.

[00:38:22] I mean, it's a it's a I'm lucky to have them like, yeah. No, you're right. It's like school about students on the planet now. So is this it for you? Have you written other books that I just am not aware of are you working on another book right. Now? I wrote a book a few years ago called the evolution of the human head butts bit more academic.

[00:38:39] It's based on how and why our head. Function the way they do and because I actually used to be a head guy before I was sort of my training but and then I'm I'm beginning to work on another. That's exciting. But that it's on it says it's very very very very conceptual stages at this point. I went to school for Optometry early on and [00:39:00] I one of the things that I found really intriguing was when you describe about how are our noses are really not very efficient that the way our most animals they breathe straight through but ours is kind of convoluted and spent all different ways and it makes it more difficult for us does.

[00:39:15] Well, I mean it makes it makes us have to work harder. So that increases resistance in the nose. So make the flow more turbulent as opposed to laminar. So the flow are sort of goes through these complex for tishell sort of pattern. But the advantage of that is it makes us more efficient at humidifying air and also capturing humidity on the way out.

[00:39:36] So so our external noses are unique to humans are really a part of important part of that package of adaptations that make us really good at indoor. We did a show our late last year early this year. I can't remember when talking about. Obstructive sleep apnea in children and the doctor that I had I decided that you know, and this is something that you talked about.

[00:39:58] You know how our Jaws [00:40:00] have changed as a result of softer processed food. They've narrowed and he indicates that they were going to see a lot more obstructive sleep apnea because the the jaw is getting narrower and narrower and such as a subsequently the Airways are getting more easily blocked.

[00:40:19] Yeah, I mean, you know are we evolved to eat pretty hard and tough food and you know chimpanzees spend half their day chewing and hunter-gatherers, you know who live very sort of, you know don't have very sophisticated culinary technology. So at least spend 55 percent of their day chewing and make a bet that nobody listen to his radio show spends that much of the day chewing and what we do is very very soft.

[00:40:46] And and and not very hard and very not very tough. And so that actually affects our jobs grow and it means that our faces. Are actually changing in size and shape simply because they're not exposed to the kinds of loads that [00:41:00] that that we expected and that's having effects on everything from malocclusion to to perhaps the shape of our pharynx indeed.

[00:41:06] So yeah, there's all kinds of interesting things all kinds of exciting strange and unexpected experiments that are going on today as we've changed our bodies and the way they function one of the other good ones. I'm. Sleep is another good one or reading, you know and over time we spend indoors changing our eyes.

[00:41:26] Well, you know what you do for you, you really enlighten me on that because there's a phenomenon called par focalization. And and where the where the the crystalline lens of the eye wants to always be within a certain number of diopters for or against a particular focal point. And so if you're a young child like I was.

[00:41:45] And you spent most of your time sitting 6 feet away from a television set a set or six inches away from a book and then you know eight feet away from a Blackboard you actually develop myopia over time because the the crystalline lens becomes poorer [00:42:00] focalized for these near distances and you point out that this is a disease of modernity.

[00:42:04] It's not a defect per se in us. It's actually something we acquire right? Yeah. I'm a few Generations ago almost nobody had myopia. In fact the very first. Documentation of myopia was actually in the Queen's got you know, those people at the Philly has to guard the queen and London. Yeah. Well, so the the foot soldiers so that James where was the first Doctor Who documented this but he knows that the foot soldiers in the Queen's guard.

[00:42:32] None of them were myopic. But the the the the the officers were educated. The quite a few of them had myopia and he published this and it set off a firestorm of research around the world actually in the 19th century the early 19th century and has now become very well-documented phenomenon that you know hunter-gatherers and people are subsistence farmers and people who don't live modern Western Lifestyles.

[00:42:54] Don't get myopia, but their grandchildren do so, it's not like some Gene for myopia swept to the world Ryan [00:43:00] family cause people can myopic it's because we've changed our environments in ways for which our eyes are poorly adapted. And make it so if you have a young child make sure that they have opportunity to stare off into the distance where you know parallel rays of light have to be focused on the on the random because that will change the way their eye shapes as they grow.

[00:43:20] Yes, not just distance is also the the complexity of what they look at. So so there's evidence that shows that children regardless how much reading they do. If you control for that children who spend more time Outdoors are much less likely to have myopia and children to spend more time indoors after you account for the effects of reading.

[00:43:39] So because there are signals that come to the retina that actually affect the growth of the eyeball depending on on on the complexity of the visual environment. Amazing and it you know, it's and it's when you start to understand these things you think to yourself what have we done to ourselves?

[00:43:56] What have we done to ourselves? You know? Yeah, but you think about myopia don't [00:44:00] because it's instructive example, right? Myopia is not such a bad thing after all. I mean there are advantages to reading right which our ancestors didn't do and and and it just highlights the fact that everything has cost and benefits.

[00:44:12] Right? Right. And so, you know some some aspects of our modern world. Maybe the cost are outweighed by the benefits and became the reading that might be the case because you know, you can't suddenly have people no longer read write or or spend all their life outside and not go to school. But so that might be one way but we're willing to tolerate that trade-off but heart disease type 2 diabetes cancer osteoporosis.

[00:44:41] I don't think the. Outweigh the benefits at all. And in fact not exercising not eating a healthy diet not getting enough sleep. Those are in a way no-brainers, but we're somehow stuck in this in this vicious to the feedback loop and we need to get out of it. We have just a few [00:45:00] minutes and this may be unfair to ask you this in just a few minutes if we have to go long.

[00:45:04] I'm happy to go along. Where do you stand on lactase persistence and and dairy? This is where a lot of the Paleo ancestral diet Primal people. They they want to punch each other in the nose. No, we shouldn't be drinking Dairy. Yes, we should what do you. Well, you know, I'm very glad that my ancestors evolved the ability to digest milk milk sugar because I enjoy milk products and I have no problem with it at me to know because you know natural selection has operated to enable me to do it and I don't have to smell up the room after drinking that stuff.

[00:45:36] So I am you know, I don't eat ridiculous amounts of dairy products, but but they're part of my diet that protein and furthermore. I love cheese. So there we are. Yeah. We didn't evolve to be healthy. We evolved to have lots of Offspring and and sometimes we just have to you know, do the things we really love I've said on this show numerous times that libido may be a greater endocrine indicator of where you are on the [00:46:00] longevity curve than anything else.

[00:46:02] If you think about the fact that job one for any species is to reproduce live long enough to reproduce and if you still feel like you have the drive to reproduce then chances are you're healthy because we know that when when when species. Go to famine and and environmental situations that are not good to bring Offspring into the world.

[00:46:21] Their libido goes away. You have any opinions on that statement but probably would be done but also just fertility. So for example women who are overweight but go on a diet they still there still there ovarian function declines, right they back to become infertile now they're there. Let me know might not change but the body is able to sense that there's a shift in energy right there less energy available because they're actually in what's called negative energy balance or dieting and so the the bodies evolved to say.

[00:46:48] Oh wait, very tough times going on now is not the time to invest in reproduction. So so it's not necessarily just libido. It's also just fertility and and of course males and [00:47:00] females are different in terms of how we allocate energy for for reproduction. But but your way. You know not but natural selection.

[00:47:08] It's the only currency it cares about is how many offspring you have a survive and reproduce so our our our our bodies are very good at shuttling energy towards reproduction when possible which is one of the reasons that underlies prostate cancer and breast cancer increases over the last year's because those are caused by hormones that trade-off.

[00:47:29] Your testosterone is a two-edged sword on the one hand. It's it's. It's a beneficial for all kinds of things including your libido. The other hand testosterone also increases your risk of heart disease. We didn't evolve to be healthy. We evolved to have Offspring and that's one of those trade-offs that's inevitable consequence of the way.

[00:47:48] We evolved, you know, what the single best thing you can do to protect yourself from ever developing prostate cancer has tell me orgasm. We've got to shut none of that. I've got a fantastic study a very well [00:48:00] controlled study the men who had an average of ten orgasms a month over course of years and they looked at different frequencies of orgasm and the more orgasms the lower the rate of prostate cancer in these men and that speaks to the fact that if you're using it, you know, because you talk about use it or lose it while the prostate is no different than a different.

[00:48:20] Yeah. Well, I'd love to see that study. As you know, we may look at my emails. Yeah. Listen, thank you for coming on the show. It truly truly a pleasure having you on the show and thank you for writing this book and I'm telling everybody out there. You must buy this book. I promise you that you will email me and say thank you.

[00:48:39] I'm the smartest person on my block now that I've read the story of the human diet. I'm sorry human body. By dr. Daniel Lieberman. Thank you so much. Dr. Lieberman. Oh, that's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Take care. Hi. So there you have it. We also want to thank God Danny mechanically for being on from the UK to talk about the anti snoring ring.

[00:48:59] You can go [00:49:00] to good night snoring.com to learn more about that. I am going to and we'll see you tomorrow with another episode of superhuman radio. Don't forget get the book The Story of the human body. Right on the Superhuman radio homepage will see you tomorrow.

[00:50:00] [00:50:00] This is this superhuman Channel where we use oxygen for the power of good.