Fri, Mar-10-06, 11:01
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Contrarian
Posts: 2,759
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Plan: Atkins/Controlled Carb
Stats: 275/190/190
BF:Not a clue!
Progress: 100%
Location: Missouri
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TheCaveman
Or for that matter, how did every single human mother, until a few thousand years ago, manage?
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I'd say we don't know - we know the pressures of natural selection have resulted in (micro) adaptions, in that when a variable was unfavorable, genetic adaptions occur over generations...for example, we have multiple redundancies to ensure stable blood sugar levels (specifically to raise blood sugar) and only one to lower blood sugars, thus we can consider low blood sugar was the risk/threat to survival across the species - high blood sugars were not, ergo high intake of food that produced persistent elevated blood sugars was not a threat, but ability to find enough to keep blood sugars normalized was...the result - redundancy to protect the survival of the species with internal mechanisms/pathways to boost blood sugars as necessary - most notable, gluconeogenesis (GNG).
What we don't know is if long-term selection outcomes favored those able to find and eat more carbohydrate or protein sources with higher glucose conversion or not - the redundancy in our metabolism to maintain blood sugar would suggest that failure to consume food to maintain blood sugars was taken care of metabolically with GNG and other metabolic pathways....what we can't say is whether these were favorable or unfavorable during pregnancy - we simply can't determine if the result in the long-term process of adaption was to kill the line over generations in those that repeatedly had to utilize the metabolic pathways to sustain stable blood sugars or those that had reliable food sources to maintain blood sugars. I wish we knew!
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