Sharad P. Paul - The Genetics of Health: Understand Your Genes for Better Health

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Copyright 2017 by Sharad P. Paul

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This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it. The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

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First Atria Books/Beyond Words hardcover edition April 2017

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Paul, Sharad P., author.

Title: The genetics of health : understand your genes for better health / Sharad P. Paul.

Description: New York : Atria ; Hillsboro, Oregon : Beyond Words, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016050053 (print) | LCCN 2016051602 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501155413 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501155420 (paperback) | ISBN 97815011555437 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Human genetics. | Alternative medicine. | Health. | BISAC: HEALTH & FITNESS / Healthy Living. | HEALTH & FITNESS / Alternative Therapies. | HEALTH & FITNESS / Health Care Issues.

Classification: LCC QH431 .P358 2017 (print) | LCC QH431 (ebook) | DDC 616/.042dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050053

The corporate mission of Beyond Words Publishing, Inc.: Inspire to Integrity

For Natasha

CONTENTS

Introduction

If this were so; if the desert were home; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desertthen it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascals imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.

Bruce Chatwin

T he development of our species is still a veritable work-in-progress. For humans living in the present, and indeed for any creature, our present is like a photograph, and our species seems eternal. This dangerous illusion keeps our focus away from the invisible photographer called time, which chronicles the story of our evolution in black and white, so it can be reproduced as a testament to our biological era at a later date.

We humans are essentially vain creatures who have developed a penchant for self-imagery. But is this evolutionary self-photograph unintentionally symbolic? Man is placed at the top of the image, with many creatures underneath. Yet no one seems to be moving, which is reasonable since this is a photograph.

Studying evolutionary biology is merely poring over an old selfie, where background matters less and the environment ends up a mere prop for the individual. Extinction always seems to happen to other animals; thats why our ancestors and other extant and extinct species matter. They need to be rememberedbecause lessons we learn, or dont heed, can be the doing or undoing of our species.

One of my many academic roles is at the School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Australia. In Australia, going walkabout refers to a rite of passage that the Aboriginal people undertakea time of solitude spent searching for songlines of their ancestorsthe idea being to imitate the past and return with renewed energy to face the future.

In traditional Australian Aboriginal thinking, there exists a creation era and creation ancestorsif you think about it, these concepts pretty much sum up both the early evolution of life and the later migration of populations around the world. In the past, due to visceral bias rather than scientific discomfort among some researchers, people searched for alternative explanations of our ancestral origins. Surely, the Europeans couldnt have originated in black Africaeven though research shows that Homo erectus, the first upright human beings, made their appearance about 1.9 million years ago, and they were followed by Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals), and finally by Homo sapiens (modern humans), our common race.

Vincent van Gogh once said, Looking at stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. He mused that while we could take a train to travel between towns, we had to take death to reach a star. But life is to be lived, cherished, and enjoyed, not something we merely exist through. Birth and death are natural inevitabilitiesit is the in-between that we have control over. But there is no map that can illustrate the fickleness of human behavior. Thats why songlines matter; our history makes us more than we make history.