Why_We_Get_Sick

Jessie Cay Chapters 10-12 Why We Get Sick Chapter 10: The chapter starts off by explaining how getting food has changed the environment in ways that also created new problems. It talked of our ancestors and how they hunted by following herds and how we planted back then as well. The chapter tells us how increased food made possible by herding And planting had resulted in nutritional shortages. Although we had found new ways of acquiring vitamins, we also had deprived ourselves of vitamins we had once been able to get. A very interesting example was given about Icelandic farmers and their lack of vitamin C through the winter. It caused them to bleed from the gums and become depressed and lethargic. After the winter, they were able to dig up angelica roots to get their vitamin C back. The chapter then goes into talking about supernormal stimuli and how programming makes us prefer certain things that appeal to us more, such as wanting chocolate over a healthy fruit. A graph was even shown to portray how much we intake fatty or oily foods compared to the stone age. It really doesn’t surprise me though. After all, we are looked at as obese by other countries. The chapter then goes into talking about food restriction and how bad it is for us. It also tells about how artificial sweeteners fail to help people loose weight. Then, on a surprising note, the chapter talks about how cavities are a dietary problem and even a disease. I never thought of them that way, but how they are explained in the book, as being a horde of bacteria and how they were extremely serious way back before technological advances. The chapter goes on to the subject of addictions and how they’ve been inhabited all throughout human history. The comparison of addiction today and back in the day is brought up and how much worse things are today with addiction. Addiction is a genetic quark and can even alcoholism can be considered a disease of civilization. The chapter then goes over other ways that associate with fatty foods. This is inadequate exercise. Our lives today are much different than for people long ago. Back then, people got much more exercise because more work was needed to acquire wants or needs. Today we don’t get the exercise we need because everything is made too simple for us and technological advances have taken away our need to hardly do anything on our own. This runs right into the idea of how diseases result from our modern environment. Other things that go along with this are weather and how the population reacts to it. The sunlight is a big part of our vitamin D, so during the winter we are deprived of it. The chapter concludes with a very interesting thought: “ Again and again we harp on the themes that all benefits have costs and that many benefits are worth their associated costs” (157). Chapter 11: Chapter 11 deals with allergies. I myself have terrible allergies so I found this to be a particularly interesting chapter. The chapter starts off with explaining that the terrible side effects of ragweed is just the plant trying to reproduce.