Early humans had to move around frequently to look for food, thinking advanced, moving the most, and those who found the most food were most likely to survive. Over the years, this process has led to gene selection optimized by abundant physical activity. Similarly, physical activity appears to jump-start various cellular processes regulated by genes that help promote health. Thus, evolution favored the most active tribal people. They tended to live the longest and were able to help their grandchildren and promote the survival of an active family.
In other words, the movement is good for us, they point out in their new paper, because long ago the youngest and weakest humans needed grandparents, and those grandparents feed their grandchildren. I needed to be active and mobile to help.
Importantly, the new active grandparents dissertation also delves into what it is about physical activity that still needs it very much for healthy aging today. For one thing, moving around consumes energy that might otherwise be stored as fat, which in excess can contribute to modern life illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, Lieber said. Dr. Mann and his co-authors write.
The activity also has a series of effects that strengthen us. “Exercise is a kind of stress,” Dr. Lieberman told me. It tears the muscles slightly and strains blood vessels and organs. Correspondingly, as most of the exercise science shows, our body initiates various cellular mechanisms that correct tears and tensions and, in most cases, overbuild the affected areas. increase. “It’s as if spilling coffee on the floor and cleaning it makes the floor cleaner than it used to be,” Dr. Lieberman said. This internal overreaction is probably especially important when we get older, he continued. Without exercise and the associated repairs, the aging human body will not work well. It will wear out. I can’t take care of my grandchildren.
Basically, Dr. Lieberman explains why lack of exercise during aging makes a difference between human life expectancy (how many years we live) and healthy life expectancy (the number of years we are generally healthy). Said to explain.
“It used to be the same,” said Dr. Lieberman. Early humans who are inactive cannot maintain their health and will probably die prematurely. Today, many of us can cease activity and survive into old age, but doing so may not be completely healthy. Our genetic inheritance and history as humans require exercise and exercise, Dr. Lieberman said. “Retirement is not the time to slow down.”
This idea that, thanks to human evolution, we can, should, and must remain active as we grow older, is at the heart of the active grandparents hypothesis. But, confusingly as a hypothesis, it’s just a theory and almost impossible to test.
