I suppose it could be unintelligent design as well. Should teach the controversy, right? Anyway, it's interesting that we lost something our ape cousins have kept that helps them avoid heart attacks, yet in the end we do live a lot longer on average. Evolution may be why humans are prone to heart attacks, study says (CNN)One-third of global deaths are due to cardiovascular disease caused by atherosclerosis, when arteries are clogged with fat deposits. Although it's common for humans to experience heart attacks, the same event is rare in mammals. Now, researchers believe that they understand why. ... Researchers think that there was the loss of a single gene, CMAH, in human ancestors between 2 million and 3 million years ago, leading to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. This gene included a sialic acid sugar molecule called Neu5Gc. Apes and chimps have maintained this gene and molecule over time. In a new study, mice were modified to be similarly deficient in this molecule, which caused a twofold increase in atherosclerosis compared with mice who were not modified. The study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. ... https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/health/heart-attacks-human-evolution-scn/index.html Unfortunately, this also means that diet and exercise play less of a role in our heart health and longevity than we might like them to.
Interesting. I wonder if the elderly were selected against over evolutionary time. On the other hand, that long ago I doubt life expectancy was high enough to make protecting 60 year old hearts an issue.
Probably 90% of heart attacks are diet or fast pace of life stress related, something that didn't really exist so much thousands of years ago. Heart attacks are one of the most preventable causes of death. It's almost entirely lifestyle related.
It is also most likely that we are simply living long enough now so that such things are more likely to kill us. We know in the Neolithic era when we made the shift from hunter-gatherer to agrarian that life expectancy was around 34 years. It was far more likely we would die of an infection, disease, bad food or water, or some other cause long before such things as heart disease, cancer, or 10,000 other things would kill us. It was really only in the last century that life expediencies made the jump from around 50, to the 70+ that we see today. We have pretty much left behind most of the preventable causes of death, and are now simply running into the actual abilities of our own bodies to sustain us.
