Proceedings of the 3rd International Evolutionary Health Conference

Author(s): frassetto, lynda; Bastos, Pedro; brito, filipe; Deans, Emily C., MD; Pardi, Dan; Rossiello, Angelo


Proceedings of the 3 rd International Evolutionary Health Conference
London, June 2019

Foreword
The field of evolutionary health is relatively new, and over the last two decades, has come to signify the interest in the extent of mismatch between factors common in our modern day world, and our evolutionary milieu, which is a combination of genetic and environmental interactions that occurred over the course of many thousands if not hundreds of thousand years.
At each conference, we have had discussants explain about brain function, sleep and light, various components of the diet, aging, cardiovascular disease, exercise, bone health, obesity, vitamin levels, hormonal regulation, inflammation and cancer, with the emphasis on the degree of mismatch between what our hominid ancestors did, and modern humans today.
We'd like to thank the Journal of Evolutionary Health for allowing us to publish some of the abstracts of our last conference.A playlist of some of the recorded talks from our conferences is also available on Youtube, at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8YBjoaaAb9OcJI5TDgE-xK0S76HRSORr.

THE ANTI-AGING POTENTIAL OF A LOW ACID DIET
Lynda A. Frassetto, MD In many people with increasing age, renal function declines.And with declining renal function, the kidney's ability to excrete excess metabolic acids (such as phosphates, sulfates, chlorides and organic acids) also decreases.
However, it has recently been demonstrated that high acid levels themselves cause the kidneys to fail more quickly.[1] Bicarbonate supplementation has been shown to increase the interval of time before dialysis needs to be initiated.As such, many nephrologists now give bicarbonate supplements to subjects with low levels of kidney function and low serum bicarbonate levels.
One of the sources of metabolic acids is the diet.Diets high in phosphate have been shown to raise FGF-23 production, and FGF-23 lowers both 1,25 vitamin D and klotho levels.[2] Klotho is an important factor in increasing renal tubular excretion of phosphate, helping to maintain phosphate homeostasis.
But klotho has another interesting property; rats and mice that overexpress the klotho gene live 20-30% longer than wild type animals, while those that are klotho knockouts die rapidly of organ failure similar to rapid aging, including more rapid damage to the kidneys.[3] In animals that are klotho deficient, treatment with bicarbonate lets them live longer.
Another factor associated with aging are telomeres; TTAGGG tandom repeats at the ends of the chromosomes that help control DNA replication.Longer lifespans are associated with longer telomeres and increased activity of the enzyme telomerase, which adds the TTAGGG units to the chromosomes.Diets high in metabolic acids such as phosphate are associated with both lower GFR and shorter telomere length.[4] Diets that low in metabolic acids are associated with longer telomere length.[5] Thus, we hypothesize that perhaps eating a low acid (and particularly a low phosphate) diet and/or supplementing the diet with base precursors such as bicarbonate could 1) slow damage to the kidneys which would help preserve the kidneys ability to excrete acid, 2) avoid the downregulation of klotho that occurs with constant high dietary phosphate intake and FGF-23 production, and 3) could potentially improve telomerase activity to help maintain telomere length.And potentially, allow one to live longer and remain healthier?Link to internet talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzrIB4jZKos&list=PL8YBjoaaAb9OcJI5TDgE-xK0S76HRSORr&index=25

MODERN EXPOSOME AND LOW -GRADE CHRONIC INFL AMMATION
Pedro Bastos, MS, PhD candidate Although inflammation is often viewed as an adverse reaction, its goal is to actually protect the host from infectious agents, toxins and other environmental aggressions, and to initiate the repairing process after a surgery or an injury.[1][2][3] Inflammation is thus a normal and crucial response characterized by the recruitment of various immune and non-immune cells.[1][2][3] Since these activated cells will have increased energy requirements, as well as specific nutrient needs, there will be a competition for those resources between the immune system and many other organs and systems (such as the muscle, the adipose tissue and the brain, among others).[4][5][6] Therefore, various metabolic, neurological and hormonal changes must occur to supply more nutrients to the activated immune system and less so to the other organs, while at the same time limiting nutrient (such as iron, zinc and manganese) access to infectious organisms.[4][5][6][7] Those alterations include insulin resistance in liver, muscle and adipose tissue [5,8] various hormonal changes, [5] anabolic resistance leading to decreased muscle protein synthesis and loss of muscle mass, [5,9] increased coagulation and dyslipidemia, [5,10] increased water retention, [4] decreased circulating concentrations of various micronutrients (e.g.iron, zinc, vitamin A [retinol], vitamin B2, vitamin B6 [pyridoxal phosphate], vitamin C and 25-hydroxyvitamin D), [5,7,[11][12][13][14] bone mineral loss, [15] and depressive-like symptoms (the so called sickness behavior [6] which also includes anorexia, fatigue, sleep changes, and decreased libido [4][5][6]).If they remain uncontrolled, all of these inflammation-induced perturbations can compromise survival and reproduction.[4][5][6]15].
Gut and mental health are linked as increasing evidence links microbiome changes to mental illness and cognitive function.[3] Humans have co-evolved over the entire history of our species and beyond with our microbiome and parasitic infections.Recently, massive changes in hygiene and diet have led to remarkable differences in the population and diversity of our microbiomes.Copious animal evidence and an exponentially increasing number of human trials show us that eukaryotic and prokaryotic guests in our guts influence our mental health via immunomodulatory and hormonal mechanisms.
Changes to most important specific brain nutrients can have psychiatric implications.Every few years a new dietary practice (fad) comes into vogue, such as gluten-free diets.Others, such as ketogenic diets, which fell out of fashion, make comebacks into common practice.While the nutrition literature is often contradictory, controversial, and constantly changing, there is now an evidence base to navigate these murky waters.Sleep is a mysterious behavior.Its origins, however, may have evolved from a fundamental need of increasingly complex life forms to thrive in their environmental niche: the ability to learn and maximize self-directed fitness based on life experience.Neuron plasticity is an energetically costly process.Sleep provides a stable environment for plasticity to occur, and learning is the result of such dynamic plasticity.[1] Sleep cycles are controlled by genetic, biochemical and light/dark (circadian) signals.[2] Sleep across primates, including humans, share many similarities.But there are differences, too.For instance, baboons sleep upright and huddle in a group.Their sleep is light and they all scatter with the slightest of disturbance.Orangutans, on the other hand, create "sleeping platforms, which allows for deeper sleep.This deeper sleep in orangutans affects their performance on cognitive performance tasks.Interestingly, when controlling for phylogenetic relatedness between species, humans sleep fewer hours than other primate species, and spend the greatest proportion of sleep in REM sleep.[3] In hunter-gatherer groups, not everyone sleeps at the same times.[4] The older people tend to be awake during the early morning hours, while the younger people are awake later into the night and sleep later into the morning.Thus, teenagers may be genetically programmed to stay up late and it has been hypothesized that the first adult responsibility for a teenager was to be up at night to watch for dangers to the tribe.Do current-day hunter-gatherer's have "better" sleep than humans living in modernized cultures?It's a challenging question to asses directly from sleep and wake data.The clearest signal from the research available today is that these people living in natural environments have greater circadian amplitude than do many modern humans.Living outside, exposure to natural light across the day, and zero artificial light at night, is likely the strongest mediating influencing in this observation.Perhaps surprisingly, these people living in natural environments don't actually sleep more than humans living frassetto et al.: 3rd IEHC abstracts Published by Journal of Evolution and Health, 2019 Link to internet talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyJ_2IlGZQo&list=PL8YBjoaaAb9OcJI5TDgE-xK0S76HRSORr&index=27&t=0s EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHIATRY: FOOD AND MOOD Emily Deans, MD Link to internet talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO6IcJ4um18&list=PL8YBjoaaAb9OcJI5TDgE-xK0S76HRSORr&index=24&t=26s THE ORIGINS OF SLEEP AND MODERN DAY MISMATCHES Dan Pardi, PhD in modern environments.In fact, they sleep on the lower end of the spectrum for what the Natural Sleep Foundations has determined to be a normal range for sleep duration within a 24-hour period.Does this lower end range of natural sleep times mean that they are sleeping in an environment that is less suited for longer sleep or does the totality of their lifestyles somehow confer a reduced sleep need?Are both options simultaneously true?The answers to these questions are not yet known.Modern sleep patterns are affected by the expanded use of artificial lighting, including digital screens and the work and entertainment delivered through them, shift work, social jetlag, and novel environmental stimuli that can disrupt and influence sleep and it's timing, such as noise in urban areas.Sleep is challenged in modern life and gleaning a greater understanding of various sleep patterns expressed in natural living communities can play a useful role in informing future scientific investigations into how to optimize sleep today.Link to internet talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4P7lYdby9k&list=PL8YBjoaaAb9OcJI5TDgE-xK0S76HRSORr&index=31