Evolutionary Fitness: what evolution tells us about how to stay fit and young | Hacker News Reader

Evolutionary Fitness: what evolution tells us about how to stay fit and young

arthurdevany.com

56 pointstomhoward23 comments

I find the premise of the article interesting, but much of his research seems to be bullshit. "an energetic body capable of high mobility and peak energy bursts"? What the hell is this guy talking about? The peak energy burst of a human is absolutely puny in comparison to any other animal in the African savanna. The fastest sprinter and the strongest weightlifter would be torn to pieces in nature when paired up with modern predators or prey, and their increased caloric consumption would make maintaining their muscle mass too difficult a task.

I also take issue with his comments on aerobic training and running, since if there is one area where humans are far and away superior to practically all others is long-distance running, which maps properly to the hunting methods of early hunter-gatherers. Seriously, human beings can kill almost any land mammal by tiring them to death.

He also talks about the supposed health benefits observed in professional basketball and football players. Has this guy even SEEN these pro players after retirement? Most of them bulk up weight very quickly and many have substantial lesions from playing. It's a regimen that no one can maintain for more than a few peak years of performance without seriously screwing up your body for good. In contrast, I have met literally hundreds of runners, cyclists, swimmers and triathletes who can still succesfully compete beyond their 50s. Beyond early 30s fast-twitch muscle fiber performance goes down dramatically, but aerobic capacity and slow-twitch fiber keeps up, and for all intents and purposes we depend on slow-twitch muscles and a better lung and cardiac capacity much more than bulk muscle mass.

Finally, just because we consumed a certain diet as hunter-gatherers does not mean that it is the optimal diet, even if it was much better than what we had as early farmers. Nowadays domestic pets live far longer than they do in wild, among other reasons because pet food contains lots of nutrients those animals lack in all-meat diets.

Look, it's all fine and dandy with thinking about evolutionary processes, but you have to realize that evolution did not select us to reach old age, which means that it misses out on the sort of things we need to prevent aging.

humans are far and away superior to practically all others is long-distance running

Maybe so, though his main point here is that marathon running is not healthy or in accordance with our evolution. That it takes months' or years' training to become capable of running marathons and that a runner can only undertake a marathon infrequently with lengthy recovery periods in between seems to me to support his thesis.

He also makes the point that as aerobic metabolism/slow twitch movement came after anaerobic metabolism/fast twitch movement, even though we've clearly developed the capability for long-distance running, it's still less fundamental to our nature than brief, high-intensity exertion.

you have to realize that evolution did not select us to reach old age, which means that it misses out on the sort of things we need to prevent aging.

Actually this is the subject area in which De Vany is at his strongest. He's 70+ years old with a body and level of health & fitness enviable to most 20-30 year-olds. See pic at http://www.arthurdevany.com/

Here, you imagine an ancestor like Homo erectus sprinting on the grassy savanna to a patch of trees to escape one of the formidable predators that roamed over Africa 2 million years ago.... Our ancestors walked a lot carrying heavy weight in order to move camp and bring back as much of the kill as they could. Power walking, laden with real weight on the order of 35 to 100 pounds, is an effective modern version of what our ancestors did.

Oh really? Where exactly do we confirm this through empirical evidence? I love how "science" has gotten to the point where we completely make shit up about what supposed cave-men did 2 million or 40,000 years ago (with absolutely no solid evidence whatsoever for their true daily habits) and then apply that to modern training regimens.

This supposed portion of a "research paper" blows. It's about the equivalent of Gladwell's pop psychology that sounds great from a first read but has no solid scientific backing whatsoever. I don't even see a single source cited at the bottom.

Here's a thought experiment for you. If you were a hunter-gatherer out on a hunt and you succeed in killing something, how would you get that kill back to your camp? Would you leave it all there or carry as much as you were able back? Science does leave room for applying common sense, you know. Anthropological studies of modern hunter-gatherer societies also provides pretty good insight into these sorts of issues too.

The thing is that that already assumes way too much about how people two million (!) years ago lived. Already there are lots of differences between modern hunter-gatherer societies, so why assume that one of these ways was the way we are "evolved" to be?

Not too long ago archeologists found remains of the earliest people found in my area. The theory was that they mostly killed small prey (think rabbits) and ate fruit, vegetables and insects, so there would be no need to carry back large prey. Another comment links to an account of hunter gatherers running around, tiring their prey to death, discounting the idea that people in hunter-gatherer societies do not run long distances.

Yeah, he could definitely do with some less off-the-cuff guesses. There's actually quite a lot of debate about it in the scientific literature, because bipedalism is a somewhat odd feature, and we don't have enough evidence to really say for sure why it evolved initially, and what pressures guided its subsequent evolution.

Possibly by coincidence, I think his guess is actually in line with majority opinion, that long-distance treks had more effect than running on evolution of human bipedalism / skeletal structure / etc. But some researchers disagree, arguing that endurance running may well have had a large evolutionary role: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/krigbaum/proseminar/Bramble_Le...

I can't argue with the author in regards to HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). It works. Not only does your body use more energy during the work out, another affect of those sessions is something known as EPOC, or Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. EPOC is your friend. EPOC is what you _want_ to achieve with every workout.

However what I can argue with is the assertion that eating set numbers of meals a day, or lack-there of, is detrimental to ones ability to build lean muscle mass. There has been no scientifically proven benefit to eating 5 meals a day, nor has there been for those who eat 1 meal a day. Sure, starvation won't help you bulk up, but you certainly don't need to follow the doctrine of 5 small meals a day, or whatever else seems to be the fad of the moment.

What _has_ been scientifically proven, atl-least in rats, is that eating less keeps you younger. Lab animals that ate less meals per day, lived longer.

I really took an issue with his comment that setting goals set you up for failure. "Goals set you up for failure. If you don't achieve them, you will quit." - I disagree. I think setting goals are an excellent way of assigning discrete measurements on a path to (health, fitness, well-being), whatever. You have to have goals, just be sure that the goal you are setting is correct. If you want to lose 20kg, that's a goal, just put in place the correct methods to be able to accurately measure your progress towards it.

Ahhh I have too many issues with this article. I could keep going, but I won't.

Lab animals that ate less meals per day, lived longer.

I think you mean animals that consumed fewer calories. I don't recall seeing any research on how many "meals" that intake was divided into.

yeah thanks for picking that up - I meant to write "that ate less" but I was stuck on the whole meals per day thing!

If your trying to bulk up, eating less isn't going to help.

Eating multiple meals per day is not only a proven technique to keep a low body fat percentage, but also a necessity for bulking up through natural calorie intake.

I've read plenty about the benefits of high intensity interval training. I think people will be disappointed to learn, that like always, it seems it's best to do a little bit of both.

Reading his article did remind me of this old reddit link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUpo_mA5RP8

It is a persistence hunt- hunters chase antelope for many many hours until it falls over from exhaustion. This is a well documented hunting technique that humans have been doing for a long, long time. It kinda contradicts his thesis.

I like to do my fair share of running, and found his comment on "marathon runners" having a suspiciously high cancer rate. Curious and wanting to know more...

Granted I have only skimmed over the following ( ie this stuff is hot off the internet press )

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/17/1/183.full This is a full text article discussing how regular exercise whici I consider running and marathon training to be part of, is useful in the fight against colon cancer, yet they are not 100% sure why.

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/96/24/1805 Still getting my head around this article, yet it is a fascinating read.

Marathon runners are at risk of skin cancer. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17116838 http://archderm.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/142/11/147...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15817212/ ( first found via msnbc, I wasn't happy with msnbc as my source )

If anyone else has more links on cancer linked to marathon running please add, as I would like to read more on it.

As with anything on the internet, this article or the papers above, always read up from multiple sources and see what lies between the lines.

My biggest problem with this essay, knowing it was part of a research paper, im saddened by his lack of citations.

This article of his "Top Ten Reasons Not to Run Marathons" has citations for each of the supposed risks, including cancer.

http://www.arthurdevany.com/articles/20091028

I think the lack of citations is because it's a concentrate of his theories & discoveries. Individual articles (many of which are paywalled, sadly) seem to have better references. It'll be interesting to see how well referenced his book is.

All he mentioned was that a few markers associated with cancer are elevated in marathon runners. The actual markers indicate inflammation and a leaky blood brain barrier, which could be caused by lots of things besides cancer.

The recent interview with De Vany at EconTalk is well worth a listen. He addresses some of the common criticisms of his ideas, including several of those made in this thread.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/de_vany_on_ster.htm...

Someone want to recap, so I don't have to pay 39.95 to read my morning news?

Shame, he's paywalled it. This interview on EconTalk gives a good overview:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/de_vany_on_ster.htm...

(Skip past the baseball/steroids bit for the EF stuff.)

There are some parts of this that resonate with me... but other parts seem a little crazy. Many extremely fit people have regular workout regimens. He mentions basketball players... I'm pretty sure they practice on a set schedule, not randomly when they feel like it.

And while goals can be bad if you don't reach them, they can also be really good, giving you something to strive for. They also let you know you are improving... Just because cavemen didn't have heart monitors, doesn't mean they don't have value. This seems like a caveman fetish more than real science, though parts of it (like High Intensity training) are valuable.

Many extremely fit people have regular workout regimens.

I think the point is "extremely fit" doesn't necessarily equate to overall health. One of his key themes is the importance of avoiding extremes.

His article on the risks of marathon running covers this in more detail: http://www.arthurdevany.com/articles/20091028

I suspect the whole hunter-gatherer thing is over-done in evolutionary biology as applied to humans. Most modern humans ultimately come from a farming background, rather than hunting / gathering. For example, northern Europeans tolerate lactose (i.e. milk) and relatively high levels of salt (i.e. preserved food), which are at least associated with nomadic keepers of herds, if not actually settled people.

Agriculture has only existed for 10,000 years or so, which is tiny on the scale of human evolution. There are undoubtedly some adaptations that have arisen since then, but genetically we'd be practically identical to humans before then which had millions of years to evolve in an environment where hunting and meat necessarily were the bulk of the diet. (The original versions of plants we eat - evolved for birds and insects - just were not very nourishing before thousands of years of human selection.)

Yes, because agricultural societies supported higher population densities than does hunter-gathering. So over time, those who adopted agriculture displaced those who didn't. However, before agriculture took over, everyone was a hunter-gatherer.

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