Ancient survival mechanisms meets modern day

Society is changing dramatically. Over the past 100 years we have seen the advent of modern medicine and the industrial revolution. In the past 50 we have seen space flight, television and computers. The last 20 years has seen changes in communications, the Internet and the mapping of the human genome. We are moving so fast that some analysts expect that by the year 2050 the technology curve will start to go straight up, As far as progress with our bodies is concerned, other than a thinner skull and less hair, nothing has really changed for a few hundred thousand years. Just think about it for a moment - it's not like we originally had lungs in our buttocks and feet on backwards and eventually we developed technology and changed the way we are. The physiology of the body is something that has changed very slowly over time. Our bodies have taken a very long time to develop and above all there is one function that the body excels at, that of survival. For the body to survive it needs energy and when it comes to absorbing energy, the body is very, very good at it.

You may wonder where I am going with all this, but it is important to bear in mind that our bodies are about survival. Western medicine is beginning to discover what the Chinese had learnt many thousands of years ago. The body is extremely sophisticated and it has many mechanisms for coping with a variety of situations - in fact it is so good that it allows us to get away with murder. Let me give you an example.

For argument's sake, lets say that the penalty for overeating was fits and seizures, then no one would overeat. If the penalty for smoking a cigarette was blindness, then no one would smoke and so on. The fact is our body can cope with all sorts of things, and because it does, we conclude that it must be all right to do so. Many reasons why the body is able to do these things are firmly rooted in our past. Living in an urban environment has only occurred in the past few hundred years, and as we look further back along our evolutionary trail, our origins began as hunter-gathers. Life was very different then when getting regular food was hardly reliable. Our bodies developed ways of coping with these obstacles and these are same mechanisms that we live with, day-to-day in our present age. Starvation diets, for example, cause the body to hold on to the fat and burn muscle, an ancient survival mechanism.

Asthma is a common problem, especially here in Australia. Asthma is an autoimmune response that occurs when the lung comes in contact with dust, pollen and so on. It is believed that asthma is actually an ancient autoimmune response there to protect us from parasites. The lung thinks that dust and pollen is actually attacking its surface and responds by creating inflammation at the site to destroy the problem and uses mucus to flush it away. Of course nowadays we are not threatened with inhaling parasites, beyond dust mites, which we have other means of dealing with. A vacuum cleaner would be a good example. Unfortunately for the asthma sufferer, when this autoimmune response kicks in, they become short of breath, find it difficult to breathe and usually need Ventolin to counteract the response.

Stress can be seen as another example of an ancient mechanism functioning in modern day. In the good old days, when we were out in the jungle gathering food, the dangers we faced were quite tangible, whether it be attack by an animal or falling off something or being drowned in a river. The answer was quite simple - we avoided the situation Or just ran away from it. Stress and anxiety is a signal to the body that we are in danger. Normally when placed in this situation our instinct is to take flight and run away, thereby reducing stress and returning things to normal. Unfortunately for us, when threatened by a stressful situation we can't simply take off. If that were the case we would spend a great part of our days running and hiding from just about everything. What we do instead is the exact opposite. We resist the instinct, and stay and subject ourselves to this perceived danger. This conflict of interest causes great strain on our central nervous system. On one hand we consciously recognize that it would be inappropriate whenever a problem arises to just run away. On the other hand there is a part of us subconsciously telling us we need to escape. As a result it stresses the individual as they try to resolve the difference between what their head is telling them and their feelings. That's why stress is perceptional, and some people can cope better than others and why changing the way we think about certain things will change the way we experience them.

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