Intelligence-Driven Health Paradox and Social Hormesis

If the paleolithic environment in which man evolved was anything like we think it was, and if we properly understand the economics of hunter-gatherer societies, then it makes sense that paleolithic man ate little in the way of plant food - some fruits in season, yes, but they were not the big bags of sugar available year-round that we have today. Vegetables don't have enough calories to make them worthwhile going after and generally have to be cultivated, tubers and roots excepted. Furthermore, vegetables especially are loaded with toxic compounds (phytochemicals), many of which are carcinogenic. (Plants don't want to be eaten, and produce toxins for use in chemical warfare.) Yet there's much evidence that including fruits and vegetables in the diet is health- and longevity-promoting. That would seem paradoxical.

Another seeming paradox: all other things equal, a machine, such as a car, lasts longer the less it is used (or abused). Yet a biological machine, such as a human or animal, deteriorates faster the less it is used, which is another way of saying that exercise is health-promoting. Much evidence exists for this as well.

Another paradox can be seen with calorie restriction and intermittent fasting. While the body can store fuel - so we don't run out of it in the same way a machine does - it seems logical that when we provide ourselves with the proper amount of healthy food, then our bodily machine would function at its best. Malnutrition, which includes undernourishment and low calorie supply, is deleterious, after all. Yet again, much evidence exists that calorie restriction and fasting strongly promote health and longevity, within limits of course. When humans eat normally, even eating foods that are healthy, they age faster than if they eat less.

Here's another: radiation. Radiation disrupts DNA, causes cancer, and at high doses can kill within hours or days. Yet low doses of radiation, whether from the sun or elsewhere, can be beneficial.

What all of these - fruits and vegetables, exercise, calorie restriction, and radiation - have in common is that they induce stress, and the response of an organism to amounts of stress that in high doses would kill it is known as hormesis. It amounts to the activation of stress-response pathways, strengthening them and allowing them to confront larger amounts of stress later. (Remember, Mithridates, he died old.) This also explains why many people dislike vegetables, exercise, or going without food: these things are stressful, and we naturally avoid stress.

Hormesis is showing up everywhere. It's now thought that the fact that people who through the practice of intellectual activity delay the deterioration of their brains in old age is due to hormesis. Apparently, mental activity stresses neurons enough that they produce growth factors which enable the neurons to stay in youthful condition. Cold showers, or saunas followed by a dip in cold water, are thought to activate hormetic mechanisms.

Now, in the modern, wealthy world, we can avoid most things that cause hormesis, and in part this is what is causing the modern plagues of obesity, heart disease, and cancer.

In effect, without constant environmental hormetic priming, and in the presence of unremitting caloric surplus, many modern humans may tip into a chronic subclinical inflammatory zone, where physical activity becomes less and less palatable, both physically, and psychologically. They then enter a vicious cycle which reinforces the development of a sedentary phenotype and the metabolic syndrome. Thus humankind may be suffering from an “intelligence-driven health paradox”, as intelligence has enabled us to remove the very hormetic factors that have been responsible for ensuring our biological fitness. [Source.]

The intelligence-driven health paradox is to the animal organism as wealth and comfort are to civilization: just as the body needs stress in order to achieve optimum health and strength, so the social organism needs stress and will whither away - or become prey to predators - as it becomes wealthy enough to avoid it. When a society becomes wealthy enough that it can throw money at problems instead of recognizing their true sources and dealing with them, i.e. it can kick the can down the road, then there's no opportunity for social hormesis to occur. Society becomes soft and flabby and unable to mount a proper hormetic response.