Copyright © 2015 Da-wei Qin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Disease of modern civilization (DMC) such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease is caused by the pressure and tension, as well as nutrition...

IN HIS CLASSIC WORK Science and Civilization in China, Joseph Needham explored the historical reasons why China, for all its long civilization, never developed science as we understand it in the modern West, namely a quantitative, technologically driven science of the outer, physical world. In this paper I shall first outline some of the reasons why Western civilization has never developed a sc...

Access to calorie-dense foods, medicine, and other comforts has made modern humans healthier than our prehistoric ancestors in many respects. However, the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease suggest that there are also drawbacks to modern living. Here, we address the question of whether the dramatic cultural changes that have occurred over the past century have inflated r...

Subjective health complaints without or with minimal somatic findings (pain, fatigue) are common and frequent reasons for encounter with the general practitioner and for long-term sickness leave and disability. The complaints are often attributed to the stressors of modern life. Is this true? We interviewed 120 Aborigine Mangyans (native population, M age = 33.5 years, 72.5% women) living under...