Evolving Health - The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World Is Making Us Sick

Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage-- which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows:
Level of Evolution
Cause of adaptive failure
resulting disease or problem
Pre-life
Environmental poisons
Certain birth defects
Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like)
Viral infection
Colds/flu/HIV
Morula (sponge-like)
Cellular stress
Cancer
Chordate
Physical stress
Back pain
Fish
Excess dietary salt
Hypertension/heart disease
Amphibian
Tobacco smoke
Lung cancer/emphysema
Lower primate
Excess dietary sugar
Diabetes mellitus
Higher primate
Vitamin C deficiency
Scurvy
Ape
Excess dietary protein
Gout
Homo sapiens
Reduced dietary variety
Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies