Main description:

How has bipedalism impacted human childbirth? Do PMS and postpartum depression have specific, maybe even beneficial, functions? These are only two of the many questions that specialists in evolutionary medicine seek to answer, and that anthropologist Wenda Trevathan addresses in Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives.

Exploring a range of women's health issues that may be viewed through an evolutionary lens, specifically focusing on reproduction, Trevathan delves into issues such as the medical consequences of early puberty in girls, the impact of migration, culture change, and poverty on reproductive health, and how fetal growth retardation affects health in later life. Hypothesizing that many of the health challenges faced by women today result from a mismatch between how their bodies have evolved and the
contemporary environments in which modern humans live, Trevathan sheds light on the power and potential of examining the human life cycle from an evolutionary perspective, and how this could improve our understanding of women's health and our ability to confront health challenges in more creative,
effective ways.

Contents:

Chapter One: What is Evolutionary Medicine and What Does It Have to Do with Women's Health?

Chapter Two: Are We Grown Up Yet?

Chapter Three: Vicious Cycles

Chapter Four: Getting Pregnant: Why Can't Everyone Just Get Along?

Chapter Five: Staying Pregnant

Chapter Six: Welcome to the World

Chapter Seven: The Greasy, Helpless One-Hour Old Human Newborn

Chapter Eight: Women Are Defined By Their Breasts

Chapter Nine: But Women Are More than Breasts

Chapter Ten: If Reproduction Is What It's all About, Why Does It Stop?

Chapter Eleven: What Good Are Old Women? Quite A Lot, Thank You

Chapter Twelve: Implications for Women's Health In The 21st Century And Preventing The Epidemiological Collision