Natural / Unnatural

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Exposure to the sun: natural
Squamous cell/ basal cell/ melanoma carcinomas of the skin: natural
Surgical excision of those lesions: not natural, but needed if those afflicted are to continue on with a natural life.
Caught too late: radiation therapy (not natural), chemo therapy (also not very natural), and even deeper wider surgery (not very natural at all)
Seems to me that the natural exposure to the sun that humans were designed for in their birthplace of civilization provided for vitamin D production as well as anti-microbial therapy, but also led to deformity and death.
Maybe natural diets also require un-natural interventions if humans are to survive well into their later decades.(ie coronary artery bypass graft surgery, stents, carotid artery clean-outs, just as are MOHs surgical procedures required to keep alive victims of naturally induced skin cancers, etc.
Just rambling because we seem to spend a lot of time trying to revert to "natural " ways despite evidence of the dangers they may bring.
 
I think you often see this, where some seem to believe that natural equals safe or where advertising taps into that and implies that because something is natural, it is healthy and good.

Cyanide is a perfectly natural occurring compound. You can find it in apple seeds. You'd have to eat a lot of apple seeds, but you could reach a toxic effect level. Or even water of course. You can drink too much water and have toxic effects.

It seems to me that it's more a question of quantity and how much. Start looking at that, and you will find more useful questions.
 
I assume humans spent a lot of time unprotected in the sun but maybe they sought out shade whenever possible.
 
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Excellent link Sid, almost killed my phone battery reading it.
Great summery of the topic.
 
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I assume humans spent a lot of time unprotected in the sun but maybe they sought out shade whenever possible.

Also, humans didn't need to live very long in general. Sure, there may be a few lucky ones in every group, but it would not have been normal to have a bunch of octogenerians (sp?) hanging around.
Animals that live an entirely "natural" life tend not to have large segments of their populations in the geriatric phase for extended periods. Most long term diseases (including many cancers) simply don't come up before reproductive years are under way or over, so yeah, early humans may not have gotten the opportunity to live long enough to get all our old age fancy cancers.
Ah, and females are able to start reproducing 11-13 yrs of age, or so, and would have as many children as possible since one could NOT expect most offspring to live past infancy or at best childhood.
So one could argue that what we modern humans are asking for, to be able to expect to live a long, healthy, predator-free, disease-free, fully functional life decades after reproductive years are past (oh, and to ask that very few offspring die before adulthood), well, that is an unnatural request of nature, only possible through "unnatural" means such as science, sanitation, medicine.
 
I was thinking about "natural" the other day. Then I was thinking that "natural food" isn't even natural. Where in nature do the same crops grow in evenly spaced rows and get sprayed with water at regular intervals?

Ponder life itself: why does there appear so much order (life, DNA, tending to beings with a conscience) in a universe that tends to disorder? Is that itself natural?

I'm going to choose quality of life over someone's definition of "natural", even though those two may be the same in some instances.
 
Ponder life itself: why does there appear so much order (life, DNA, tending to beings with a conscience) in a universe that tends to disorder? Is that itself natural?


The tendency towards increasing entropy is for the whole universe. Locally, in an unclosed system, entropy may decrease.
That means it's natural to get order locally, just not overall.
 
Barefoot running is natural. Just kick of the shoes and start running after not having done so and you are asking for trouble. The same with sun exposure. Expose yourself too much with out building your mileage and you are in trouble. With either, gradually work up to it and you will be fine.

It is no mystery what causes all of the diseases that require the interventions mentioned, and how to avoid them, as well as reverse them in many instances, it is just not convenient for some to listen. Violate the law of gravity and you will fall. Violate the biological laws and you will fall although we fool ourselves because we don't fall quite as fast and only realize it on impact.
 
Concur. Why does our local system experience a decrease in entropy locally? Why here?

Maybe Morgan Freeman knows.

There's that big gas ball the sun pumping a lot of energy into the Earth's local system, but the amount of entropy that the sun takes on is higher than the progress against entropy here on Earth.
 
Species evolve lifespans best adapted to their long-term survival. Mice breed quickly and eat everything, so they evolved short lives so they don't out-compete their own offspring. Giant tortoises breed slowly and never overpopulate, so they live hundreds of years. Without cancers.

If it were to humanity's advantage to live hundreds of years, we'd all have genetic immunity to cancers just like the tortoises.
 
Natural. A paleo enthusiast here once described how some grains would be found growing naturally and they would be boiled in water over an open fire before being consumed. The water with the residue was saved for drinking later, but naturally occurring yeasts in the air would ferment it. They liked it so much that they decided to settle down from their nomadic ways and cultivate crops of grains instead.
 
Just rambling because we seem to spend a lot of time trying to revert to "natural " ways despite evidence of the dangers they may bring.

Oh I've thought about this a lot myself, trying to live a more natural life or at least trying to figure out what that means.

And I have always thought it ironic that the sun, the very thing that brings us life, is also deadly, but maybe with good reason.

Also, humans didn't need to live very long in general. Sure, there may be a few lucky ones in every group, but it would not have been normal to have a bunch of octogenerians (sp?) hanging around.
Animals that live an entirely "natural" life tend not to have large segments of their populations in the geriatric phase for extended periods. Most long term diseases (including many cancers) simply don't come up before reproductive years are under way or over, so yeah, early humans may not have gotten the opportunity to live long enough to get all our old age fancy cancers.
Ah, and females are able to start reproducing 11-13 yrs of age, or so, and would have as many children as possible since one could NOT expect most offspring to live past infancy or at best childhood.
So one could argue that what we modern humans are asking for, to be able to expect to live a long, healthy, predator-free, disease-free, fully functional life decades after reproductive years are past (oh, and to ask that very few offspring die before adulthood), well, that is an unnatural request of nature, only possible through "unnatural" means such as science, sanitation, medicine.

Yes, I believe its natural for humans not to live very long, and be susceptible to all sorts of illness. Perhaps its natures way of keeping us in check. Back thousands of years ago I'm sure primitive man was more in harmony with nature. Smaller numbers and shorter lives. Think about it like the circle of life, we give and took, but never too much. Once we started getting smarter, making tools, taking more from nature, doing unnatural things, cheating nature, well our standards of living rose, we lived longer, and population grew. I think about it like Smith from the Matrix... we are like a virus spreading and consuming the earth. I don't think the modern world is in a sustainable state right now, but honestly I don't know if there is any way around it, without going back to that natural state which will never happen. technology has changed everything, for better and worse. The question is if we still have a chance of making things sustainable. In anycase, there is a cycle to everything, and even if technology eventually balances with nature, or even if we were to revert to cavemen, the sun will eventually end life on this planet (albeit a very long ways into the future) as it expands into a red giant and engulfs the planet. Even if some of the theories of the lesser mass of the expanding sun allows earth to drift further away, I think we are going to be cooked either way, and of course stars will eventually die anyhow. So will technology ever catch up to those sci-fi shows where we can travel faster than light and occupy other habitable planets? Not sure, our entire being is created around the conditions of our planet. Well I'm starting to ramble...
 
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Rainy windy and cold here today, dropping down to the thirty's tonight. Diane's downtown volunteering for race day prep for Detroit's International Marathon scheduled for tomorrow morning, my buddies are either in Ann Arbor or East Lansing for today's football games, the Tigers don't take on Boston til 8:00 p.m., and the Wings don't play 'til 9:00. I was going to do some lifting at home today and take in the day's events with some Autumn worthy brew, but now I'm all neurotically bent out of shape worrying about the Sun's mass depleting.
Thanks Tristan:nailbiting:
 

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