{"id":132,"date":"2013-08-26T12:11:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T12:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshmitteldorf.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2013-08-26T22:30:36","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T22:30:36","slug":"natural-selection-has-rewarded-those-who-contribute-to-the-community-with-long-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/08\/26\/natural-selection-has-rewarded-those-who-contribute-to-the-community-with-long-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Selection has Rewarded those who Contribute to the Community with Long Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research supports a thesis that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside – and that feeling itself is good for our health and longevity. \u00a0People who seek gratification through personal aggrandizement and accumulation of wealth may achieve a kind of hedonistic satisfaction, but this leads to negative health consequences and shorter life span. \u00a0Meanwhile, people who seek fulfillment through service, dedication to cooperative efforts and shared values tend to have better health and longer lives.<\/em><\/p>\n

The dominant theme of my research this last dozen years is that aging arose from an evolutionary conflict between that which is best for the individual and that which is best for the community. \u00a0Best for the individual is to go on living and reproducing, the longer the better. \u00a0Best for the ecosystem is to have a stable death rate to help avoid overpopulation, leading to collapse. \u00a0Without aging, everyone would likely be dying at once in times of overcrowding and severe scarcity. \u00a0Better is a fixed life span that stabilizes the population dynamics. \u00a0Even better is an adaptive life span which rises and falls in such a way as to complement the cycles of \u201cexternal\u201d deaths from starvation and disease.<\/p>\n

Typically, life spans are not fixed, but plastic in response to environmental cues. \u00a0Almost always we can find some communal benefit in the relationship between life span and external conditions. \u00a0The best example is the Caloric Restriction effect, which is an adaptation to help protect the community from population collapse in times of famine. \u00a0Aging also responds to other environmental challenges, and to crowding.<\/p>\n

Man is a social animal, and a significant piece of our evolution has occurred in the hundreds of thousands of years since primates began to live in structured social groups or tribes. \u00a0That suggests we might expect our life span to depend on social factors. \u00a0It is an effect worth looking for to see if leaders and important community members live longer than \u201cdisposable\u201d rank-and-file workers. \u00a0There is some indication this is true, including a new study this week <\/a>that connects aging to the satisfaction derived from constructive engagement with the community.<\/p>\n

Thirty years ago, the British Whitehall Study<\/a> first documented a relationship between mortality and status among civil servants. \u00a0The British system ranks public employees in a detailed grading system. \u00a0The mortality rate among men at the lowest grade was more than three times as high as the rate at the highest grade. \u00a0Differences in mortality persisted into retirement, producing a marked effect of social station on life expectancy. \u00a0The disparity was too large to be explained by differences in access to health care, or by the better self-care associated with education. \u00a0Right up into the highest employment grades, status was a predictor of life expectancy.<\/p>\n

This suggests to me that we sense our importance in the community, and that our bodies respond by modulating our aging according to how much the community needs us.<\/p>\n

Marital status is another well-known link to longevity. \u00a0\u201cThe unmarried live a relatively isolated existence that lacks the close interpersonal ties that the data suggest are a factor in maintaining a sense of well-being,\u201d [Gove, 1973<\/a>] and this translates into a mortality risk, larger for men than for women. \u00a0This table gives the mortality risk of various categories of unmarried people compared to married at different ages. \u00a0The numbers translate to several years\u2019 difference in life expectancy, just a little smaller than the difference associated with smoking status.<\/p>\n

\"Gove73-Marriage&Mortality\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Depression is a big risk factor for mortality, not just because of the risk of suicide, but also for association with increased rates of heart disease and cancer. \u00a0Of course, those who suffer depression tend to take care of themselves less well; but even accounting for all these factors, there appears to be a substantial physiologic response to depression that predisposes depressed people to all the diseases of old age. \u00a0Here is a meta-analysis<\/a> concluding that people diagnosed with depression have an age-adjusted risk of dying that is 1.8 times as high as those who are not.<\/p>\n

In a paper last year<\/a>, UCSF psychologists linked depression to lower social status. \u00a0They theorized that oppressed people have bottled-up anger which it is objectively dangerous to express, so they learn to suffer quietly and depression is the price they pay. \u00a0Some research<\/a> has linked depression to accelerated aging through telomere shortening, though this is disputed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have wondered about the evolutionary meaning of depression. \u00a0What adaptive purpose could it serve to put us into a passive state, with deadened senses and a narrow range of emotional responses? \u00a0Certainly depression is not good for individual survival or reproduction. \u00a0My guess is that depression evolved as a way to make feudal social orders tolerable for the serfs. \u00a0Depression is a response to powerlessness that prevents rebellion and promotes an imposed social cohesion. \u00a0I assume that much of the natural selection on early humans was tribe-vs-tribe competition, and those tribes in which the peons were depressed and subservient were able to out-produce and to prevail in armed conflict against those tribes in which every individual was thinking independently.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s news<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your vocabulary word for the day is eudaimonic<\/em>, an adjective that describes the feeling of happiness and well-being that is derived from engagement with a social mission. \u00a0The contrary is hedonic<\/em> happiness, which refers to success in pursuit of more selfish ends. \u00a0A Florida research team looked<\/a> at gene-expression profiles associated with inflammation and auto-immune responses that are associated with most of the pathologies of old age. \u00a0Our genes don\u2019t change through a lifetime, but the patterns of which genes are turned on and off show an age dependence. \u00a0As we get older, inflammation and auto-immunity are part of a program of gradual self-destruction. \u00a0The Florida team found a link between hedonic happiness and expression of these self-destructive gene patterns. \u00a0Eudaimonic happiness had the opposite association, a link to younger, healthier gene expression profiles. \u00a0It seems that virtue provides its own reward.<\/p>\n

I read the evolutionary context for this loud and clear: aging is a social adaptation, self-destruction whose purpose is to help keep the community stable and dynamically adaptive. \u00a0Everyone must take his turn making this sacrifice, but the community does well to hold on longer to those who are contributing most to robust and cohesive social functions.<\/p>\n

But I notice that Steven Cole<\/a>, the behavioral geneticist from UCLA who wrote up this work, tries to interpret his results in terms of individual benefit which mysteriously fails, rather than attributing to it a group selective purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis response likely evolved to help the immune system counter the changing patterns of microbial threat that were ancestrally associated with changing socio-environmental conditions; these threats included bacterial infection from wounds caused by social conflict and an increased risk of viral infection associated with social contact,\u201d said study senior author Prof Steven Cole of the University of California, Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in contemporary society and our very different environment, chronic activation by social or symbolic threats can promote inflammation and cause cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and other diseases and can impair resistance to viral infections.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This attitude is all too common in a pattern stretching back to the 1970s when evolutionary scientists began imposing an ideological purity that excludes group selection. \u00a0There is now a substantial minority of evolutionists who have taken a professional stance in support of group selection, but around the periphery of the field, few researchers are willing to pay the price of pushing back against this prejudice.<\/p>\n

The Message<\/strong><\/p>\n

Get out there and work, in cooperation with others, for a better world. \u00a0Better yet, become a leader in progressive social movements. \u00a0\u00a0You\u2019ll feel better and live longer.<\/p>\n

_______________<\/p>\n

\u00a0Notice<\/strong>
\nI am traveling in Europe this next week, and may not post anything.
\nBut the following week I will be at Aubrey de Grey’s SENS conference,\u00a0Re-imagine Aging<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0in Cambridge, and you’ll get a full report on Sept 8. \u00a0Stay tuned also for a major update in September\u00a0to my Aging Advice<\/span><\/a> page.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New research supports a thesis that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside – and that feeling itself is good for our health and longevity. \u00a0People who seek gratification through personal aggrandizement and accumulation of wealth may achieve a kind of hedonistic satisfaction, but this leads to negative health consequences and shorter life span. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nNatural Selection has Rewarded those who Contribute to the Community with Long Life - Josh Mitteldorf<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/08\/26\/natural-selection-has-rewarded-those-who-contribute-to-the-community-with-long-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Natural Selection has Rewarded those who Contribute to the Community with Long Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"New research supports a thesis that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside – and that feeling itself is good for our health and longevity. \u00a0People who seek gratification through personal aggrandizement and accumulation of wealth may achieve a kind of hedonistic satisfaction, but this leads to negative health consequences and shorter life span. ... 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. 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