Survival of The Sickest - Must Read

• Cancer cells require iron to grow, so the body attempts to limit its availability.
• Mother's milk contains lactoferrin - a chelating protein that binds with iron and prevents bacteria from feeding on it.
• Viking men may have offset the negative effects of hemochromatosis because their warrior culture resulted in frequent blood loss.
• Diabetes may have helped European ancestors survive the sudden cold of the Younger Dryas.
• When we are exposed to the right kind of sunlight, our skin converts cholesterol to vitamin D.
• Ultraviolet light detroys folic acid in the body, the darker your skin, the less ultraviolet light you absorb.
• People of African descent have darker skin and are more likely to have a gene that causes them to produce greater amount of cholesterol.
• People of Northern European descents have pales skin and are much more likely to have iron loading and predisposition for Type 1 diabetes.
• People of Asian descent are much more likely to be unable to process alcohol efficiently.
• The current mainstream consensus is that modern humans evolved in Africa around 250,000 years ago.
• In Africa, where the heat was an evolutionary argument against denser body hair, people are prone to sickle-cell anemia, which, as we'll discuss, offers some protection from malaria.
• High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a particularly insidious disease - it's responsible for as much as 25 percent of end stage kidney failure, but it usually has no noticeable symptoms; that's why it's often called the "silent killer."
• Organic plants produce more natural toxic than non-organic plants. Eat your vegetables, your vegetables can kill you.
• Women infected with T.gondii spend more money on clothes and are consistently rated as being more attractive than women without the infection.
• The diarrhea caused by cholera isn't just a symptom - it's a transmission channel. It's how the disease makes it into the water supply and ensures its ability to find new hosts.
• At its most basic, cance is uncontrolled cell growth caused by a mutation in the gene that is supposed to control the growth of the cancerous cells.
• Most scientists don't consider viruses to be "alive", because they can't reproduce or metabolize on their own.
• There are all 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses in the world's oceans. Over the few millions of years, perhaps we've given them the ride of their life and, in return, they've given us the chance to borrow some code from their huge genetic library.
• Researchs have certainly noted that many miscarried fetuses have genetic abnormalities
• Through a combination of epigenetic effects, various genes are turned on and off.
• Pups that were gently licked by their mothers grew into confident rat babies that were relatively relaxed and could handle stressful situations. But rats that were ignored by their mothers grew to be nervous wrecks.
• Children whose parents are overly stressed are more prone to depression and have less self-controlled. Children whose parents are relaxed and available tend to be happier and healthier.
• When cancer cells are successful, it's usually with the help of telomerase. Without telomerase, cancer cells woudl die out after dividing fifty to sixty times, or perhaps a little longer. Many scientists believe cancer prevention is the "reason" cells have evolved with a limit on the number of times they can reprduce.