It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick

Disequilibrium and Metabolic Syndrome

A possible explanation for the increase in resistance factors is that there has been selection against the disease of diabetes. This seems unlikely since until recently it was not prevalent enough to affect reproduction with the necessary selection intensity. Perhaps there is selection involving a more subtle aspect of diet, and the impact of diabetes incidence is a side effect of this. Alternatively, the regulation of metabolism may be so complicated, involving hundreds of genes each with a variety of alleles, that it is inevitable that the network malfunctions in some people after a few key components of the system change.

One of the central ideas of this book is that humans are now outside their normal ...