Our Skulls Are Out-Evolving Us | Hacker News Reader

Our Skulls Are Out-Evolving Us

onezero.medium.com

34 pointsxm12 comments

I'm struggling to understand the natural selection process that's driving this evolution. The article mentions only a few causes like pre-industrial societies introducing solid foods to infants earlier along with environmental pollution and recirculated indoor air resulting from the Industrial Revolution, but these are more developmental issues. The article almost seems to be implying a Lamarckian take on this when discussing those factors. What is causing reproductive selection for these traits? Also, depending on your definition of a generation, 250 years ago is only 8-10 generations ago. That seems like an incredibly short period for such a significant evolution.

It could be caused by the absence of reproductive selection, arising due to medicine.

As I understand the WA Price position, it is not evolution. It is essentially symptoms of a form of poor and/or malnutrition.

So environment, not evolution.

From the article, it's not evolution. It's due to changes in weaning habits from industrialization, poor indoor air circulation, and lack of chewing solid foods as babies such that the jaw doesn't develop properly - when the jaw fails to develop properly, it makes it less easy to sleep with proper tongue posture pressing at the roof of the palate. This tongue pressure is partly responsible for widening the palate during development, and then proper nasal breathing during sleep encourages the airways to develop properly. When mouth-breathing, these nasal passages degenerate (or fail to develop properly) in a positive feedback loop that further reinforces the issues, including poor sleep.

Moral of the story? Wean your children later, don't use pacifiers, feed them solid foods once they're coming off of breast milk, and open the windows in your house. Also, if your child develops picky eating habits, poor attitude, sleep, or other behavioral issues, look into whether anatomical issues might be at the root of it.

Interesting stuff.

I remember reading about this tongue posture idea (keeping the tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth), but nearly all the discussions I found about it online were on incel and bodybuilding forums (supposedly maintaining this tongue posture increases the "sharpness" of the jaw and is more attractive), so I wrote it off as silliness.

This article seems to be making the case that there were on to something.

This is unbelievable -- a huge change in such a short amount of time. The connection between skull shape, sleep and behaviour seems to have huge implications. How do we screen for this and what do we do about it culturally?

I guess not shaming breastfeeding for one, and getting doctors to offer new advice for infant/child nutrition

> It’s unrealistic to advise parents to eschew processed food, breastfeed longer, …, or perhaps put children on the Paleo diet

Uhhh… why not??

These are things that can be done without parents being wealthy or having a SAHP. More whole hard vegetables (cut small, mind you) instead of puréed, would be a great start as soon as teeth do come in.

After all, you don’t need blended food if you have teeth, as plenty of elderly people can attest to.

I've had to get a very invasive jaw surgery in order to try to "fix" my apnea, which was not weight related, but instead due to how my head was formed. Its still mind-blowing to me how maladapted my genetics are to something as "natural" as sleep.

If you don't mind me asking, are you happy with the results, any numb areas or nerve damage? This is from someone interested but still a bit uneasy with the whole procedure.

The very middle of my chin is still ever so slightly numb, from where they put a pin in it. I've gotten used to it - it used to be more numb and bugged me for a few months afterwards. Also, I can never box as my jaw is now pretty weak, and wearing a wrap-around helmet can hurt.

Overall its worth it. RDI from 80/hr down to around 10 - it allows me to get through life without being completely sleep deprived though my sleep is still not perfect. A CPAP makes my RDI go up, not down, so this is the best that medical science can do.

suppose i'm a normal industrialized malformed individual. is there any hope for adults? are there any exercises/etc. to improve this (outside of say chewing more)?

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