Importance of Exercise, Repeated
Same as it ever was
Coming up for air for a minute or two, only to mix some metaphors
I’ve been continuing my immersion in hunter-gatherer research since last posting, following up on the ramifications of the Evolutionary Discordance Hypothesis of Eaton and Konner, and examining some of the very many of the rabbit holes humankind has dug for itself – and then fallen into – by disregarding its evolutionarily-imposed ‘factory settings’. The bottom of one rabbit hole came into clear light again for me while our younger daughter and I were recently trading references discussing the relative importance of plant foods and protein sources in the human ancestral diet.
In this last regard, in February 2022 I posted and explained the results of an econometrics exercise that indicated that in the US population case, simply increasing physical activity frequency and amount of vegetables in the diet would result in very substantial increases in life expectancy and health.
Turns out that anthropologists and medical researchers have verified the causal relationship between health and daily exercise level quite resoundingly. In a comparison of the various characteristics of two extent hunter-gatherer populations, the Hazda and the Tsimane, with those of Westernized and more sedentary human populations, Pontzer, Wood, and Raichlen (2018) showed the effects of the only controlling variable explaining the difference in BMI between skinny hunter-gatherers and fat Westerners:
As a result of this ceaseless daily moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVDA) level, the Hazda and Tsimane, maintain a relatively low and healthy BMI throughout the entire course of their lives. From ibid. again:
And, lo and behold, surprise, surprise, modern Westernized bodies respond in exactly the same healthy way when they also move their butts as much as hunter-gatherers do:
And, here, finally, you can see the physical transformation of the fat Western human body that takes place as MVPA is progressively increased:
