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Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

sciencedaily.com

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Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#61

Post by masklinn »

raxxorrax wrote: post #45

I have the feeling this has much more to do with our self inflicted lifestyle than genetic factors. Maybe no other animal is just that stupid.

> Maybe no other animal is just that stupid.

They very much are, many pets will way overfeed themselves if given the opportunity.

Though it might also be human-inflicted, I don't know if wild animals will do so if provided with effortless unlimited amounts of food.

I would expect so though, most evolutionary environments simply don't set up organisms for an unlimited glut of free energy-dense food, when there's a glut of resources it's usually followed by some sort of crash, so organisms stock up as fast as they can in order to out-compete their peers once resources crash. If the glut doesn't end (which is essentially what modern advanced economies arrived at), neither does the tendency to stock up, because there's probably never been an evolutionary context (sustained for a long enough period) where that was an issue and thus allowed some organisms to outlive others.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#62

Post by Clor »

raxxorrax wrote: post #45

I have the feeling this has much more to do with our self inflicted lifestyle than genetic factors. Maybe no other animal is just that stupid.

From the introduction: "There are many known risk factors, including blood cholesterol, physical inactivity, age, hypertension, obesity and smoking, but in roughly 15 percent of first-time cardiovascular disease events (CVD) due to atherosclerosis, none of these factors apply."

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#63

Post by masklinn »

chosenbreed37 wrote: post #60
klodolph wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe no other animal is just that stupid. Have you ever owned a cat or dog? My experience is that a percentage of them will overeat unless constantly monitored, eat things that are outright dangerous, etc. What is it that makes humans the stupid ones, here?

I wonder whether or not we should distinguish between domesticated animals and wild ones

It would be an interesting (if difficult) experiment but from what I know wild animals will absolutely gorge themselves if they can.

The difference is that in the wild, this is tends to be quickly followed by a resource crash from a normal cycle (e.g. winter crash after summer glut) and / or population explosion.

I don't know that any organism has had evolutionary-scale periods over which to psychologically integrate an access to essentially unlimited (in time and quantity both) resources.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#64

Post by moccachino »

ordu wrote: post #54
jedberg wrote: post #18

If this turns out to be true, I wonder if this is something CRISPR could fix...

I'm not sure that I wish CMAH gene back: > Interestingly, the evolutionary loss of the CMAH gene appears to have produced other significant changes in human physiology, including reduced human fertility and enhanced ability to run long distances. Reduced fertility doesn't seem for me important, we have a contraception for that. But enhanced ability to run long distances seems very convenient. I can ride a bicycle or…

I read somewhere that running very long distances is basically the only physical thing humans can do better than any other animal.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#65

Post by masklinn »

cpp4life wrote: post #57
raxxorrax wrote: post #45

I have the feeling this has much more to do with our self inflicted lifestyle than genetic factors. Maybe no other animal is just that stupid.

Or no other animal is smart enough to be able to produce an abundance of food for the scale of population that we can. And also no other animal has capitalism which motivates actors to make the food supply as addictive as possible.

> Or no other animal is smart enough to be able to produce an abundance of food

It's not just the abundance of food, it's the sustained abundance. Many species follow a feast / famine cycle which puts pressure on stocking up as fast as possible during feast in order to survive the inevitable famine. This is the evolved instinctual mechanism which gets shot to piece by the "endless feast" available to many individuals in advanced economies (or wealthy enough individuals in pre-industrial economies), even more so combined with the physical "leisure" (limited requirements of extensive physical activity in day to day life).

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#66

Post by Ensorceled »

masklinn wrote: post #61
raxxorrax wrote: post #45

I have the feeling this has much more to do with our self inflicted lifestyle than genetic factors. Maybe no other animal is just that stupid.

> Maybe no other animal is just that stupid. They very much are, many pets will way overfeed themselves if given the opportunity. Though it might also be human-inflicted, I don't know if wild animals will do so if provided with effortless unlimited amounts of food. I would expect so though, most evolutionary environments simply don't set up organisms for an unlimited glut of free energy-dense food, when there's a glu…

There are quite a few instances where wild animals have almost unlimited food and reduced predators, in every instance I’ve heard of, they just breed like crazy.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#67

Post by fifnir »

dang wrote: post #56
fifnir wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh another couch biologist,there's one in every thread.. thanks for all the observations, we really hadn't thought of any of that, you single-handedly salvaged modern biological research !!

Hey, could you please not break the site guidelines like this? Internet forums are certainly full of comments that don't necessarily know about things. If you know more, the thing to do is to share some of what you know so we all can learn—not degrade the quality of the site even further. If you'd take the spirit of this site more to heart, we'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. But this happens in every biologically relevant discussion.. Every time results are reported on mice, someone will criticize that it wasn't done on humans, as if biologists are complete ignoramuses and not intimately familiar with the strengths and limitations of their own science.

If an engineer presented a model of a bridge and someone jumped in to say "buh, but you didn't ACTUALLY BUILD the bridge so this is worthless", people would rightly tell him off, wouldn't they? Why is this low-effort criticism of biology allowed ?

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#68

Post by ordu »

moccachino wrote: post #64
ordu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that I wish CMAH gene back: > Interestingly, the evolutionary loss of the CMAH gene appears to have produced other significant changes in human physiology, including reduced human fertility and enhanced ability to run long distances. Reduced fertility doesn't seem for me important, we have a contraception for that. But enhanced ability to run long distances seems very convenient. I can ride a bicycle or…

I read somewhere that running very long distances is basically the only physical thing humans can do better than any other animal.

Pretty close. I heard that humans are second after dogs.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#69

Post by masklinn »

Ensorceled wrote: post #66
masklinn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe no other animal is just that stupid. They very much are, many pets will way overfeed themselves if given the opportunity. Though it might also be human-inflicted, I don't know if wild animals will do so if provided with effortless unlimited amounts of food. I would expect so though, most evolutionary environments simply don't set up organisms for an unlimited glut of free energy-dense food, when there's a glu…

There are quite a few instances where wild animals have almost unlimited food and reduced predators, in every instance I’ve heard of, they just breed like crazy.

Yes, even if the crash is not an environmental cycle, a crash will generally occur because the glut of resources allows a population explosion which eventually consumes the available resource.

Re: Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are prone to heart attack

#70

Post by sambe »

glastra wrote: post #52
sambe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I've ever read says fatty deposits. The NHS website calls fatty deposits "atheroma". You can find multiple definitions of atherosclerosis/atheroma in other places describing them the same way. Wikipedia says: "While the early stages, based on gross appearance, have traditionally been termed fatty streaks by pathologists, they are not composed of fat cells but of accumulations of white blood cells, especial…

What do those cardiologists say? That fat in the blood (triglycerides) causes atherosclerosis? Or dietary fat? Very different things. Regarding the mechanism of atheroma formation, I don't have a list of references handy, but maybe this is a good start: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3152836/ Also of interest would be the role of high insulin and/or glucose and the damage they can cause to the arterial…

The conventional wisdom: fat in the blood is the main thing to worry about (along with genetics) and that lifestyle factors have a big influence on that. So both, really.

Which part of that paper disputes the importance of fat?

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