EvolutionMedicine

Are our bodies the enemy in sepsis? I argue no. Decades of experiments in sepsis show that most interventions focused on the host have been either ineffective or harmful. With this track record of failure, it is time to consider the alternative hypothesis—regulation instead of dysregulation—and the possibility that the events of sepsis are adaptive.

Why we sleep is not well understood. The study of sleep is one of the last frontiers in human biology. In addition to smoking and bad diet, we can add sleep loss to the list of risk factors for chronic disease. But is modern sleep all that different from that of our ancestors? Joe Alcock, Kate Rusk, Coffee Brown, and Gandhi Yetish explore the mystery of sleep in this Part 2 of our discussion of sleep evolution.

Why do we sleep? Why did sleep evolve? How much is enough? Do we die if we don’t get enough? Kate Rusk, Joe Alcock, Coffee Brown and special guest Gandhi Yetish discuss these topics in this episode of the EvolutionMedicine podcast. Gandhi has studied the Tsimane, a hunter horticulturalist group in Bolivia. This group, as well as hunter gatherers in Africa - the Hadza and the San - sleep about the same as us: just over 6 hours. What does that result mean for us iPhone gazing city dwellers?

In this age of Marvel comics, superheroes with superpowers have attained a high degree of cultural fascination. But some superpowers exist in real life, courtesy of natural selection. In part two of this episode, originally livestreamed on Inertia TV, Kate, Joe and Coffee talk about the superpower of the Bajau, a sea nomadic people, to dive longer and deeper than other people. This ability is linked to a bigger spleen, a trait with a heritable signature. Sea Nomads live in the waters of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. We talk about some other stuff too.

In this episode, originally livestreamed on Inertia TV, Kate Rusk and Coffee Brown and Joe Alcock discuss whether humans can have actual superpowers. Some human groups have unique abilities to survive underwater, and at the highest altitudes, or deal with temperature extremes. We talk about Tibetans, Andeans, Ethiopian highlanders, and Sea Nomads. More at EvolutionMedicine.com

Kate Rusk and Joe Alcock discuss the evolutionary reasons why pregnancy is so dangerous, both for fetus and for mother. Genetic conflicts of interest between paternal and maternal genes may give rise to gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. Evolutioanry theorist David Haig came up with these ideas, inspired by Robert Trivers "parent offspring conflict." This hypothesis of genetic conflicts in pregnancy has held up over the years, yet these concepts still are not taught in medical school, remarkably. This episode was originally livestreamed on Inertia TV with Kate Rusk. Javier is a prop skeleton, by the way.

Kate Rusk and Joe Alcock recorded this for Inertia TV in March 2018. We talk about the reasons for resistance evolution, alternatives to antibiotics, and which drugs predispose to Clostridium difficile. What to do if no antibiotics work? Fecal transplants of course.

Does evolution matter in the emergency department? Joe Alcock describes why it does. This episode was recorded for Joe Tomkins Darwinian Revolution class in University of Western Australia on April 5, 2018 at the Inertia TV studio, thanks to Kate Rusk.

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In part two Joe Alcock, Coffee Brown, Paul Watson talk about how evolution might guide the treatment of patients with mood disorders. We talk about the evolution of sickness behavior, the utility of antidepressant drugs, and the role of the microbiome in depression and anxiety.

Coffee Brown and Joe Alcock are joined by evolutionary biologist and theorist Paul Watson to discuss whether depression is a feature or a bug. Paul Watson developed the social navigation hypothesis along with Ed Hagen, Paul Andrews, and others to explain depression as a unconscious way to break social contracts and make new ones. Watson now calls this the "niche change" hypothesis. This is part one of two.