Doves, Diplomats, and Diabetes

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. A Darwinian Way of Thinking

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 1-15

3. Diabetes in a Textbook

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 17-34

4. Diabetes in an Undergraduate Class

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 35-71

5. The Rise and Fall of Thrift

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 73-94

6. Of Hawks and Doves

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 95-112

7. Of Soldiers and Diplomats

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 113-133

8. The Physiology of Aggression

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 135-169

9. Deploying the Immunological Garrison

   • Milind Watve

   Pages 171-184

10. Why Population Density Matters

    • Milind Watve

    Pages 185-202

11. Time to Give Up Stress

    • Milind Watve

    Pages 203-218

12. Fat: Beyond Energy Storage

    • Milind Watve

    Pages 219-244

13. Why Blood Sugar Goes Up

    • Milind Watve

    Pages 245-284

14. Beating Around the “Wrong” Bush?

    • Milind Watve

    Pages 285-303

15. Behavioral Deficiencies and Behavioral Supplementation

    • Milind Watve

    Pages 305-317

16. Where Do We Go From Here?

    • Milind Watve

    Pages 319-337

17. Back Matter

    Pages 339-380

    PDF

Darwinian medicine looks at the ecological and evolutionary roots of disease. A disease is an interaction between a genome and its biotic or abiotic environment and therefore a disease is essentially an ecological process. Good understanding of ecology and a Darwinian way of thinking can give us novel and useful perspectives on health and disease. If we understand the disease process better, we can certainly prevent, control as well as treat diseases in a better way. Although the thought that the origins of obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) might lie in our hunter gatherer adaptations is not new, research over the last decade makes us rethink many of the classical concepts. Brain and behavior is increasingly being recognized as central to all the endocrine, metabolic and immunological changes that earmark type 2 diabetes and other metabolic syndrome disorders. A major change in paradigm appears to be on the horizon and the proposed book intends to speed up the paradigm shift by raising important questions, pointing out flaws and inadequacies in the prevalent paradigm and stimulating radical rethinking which would redirect and refine the line of research as well as bring some fundamental changes in drug discovery and clinical practice. ​

• Darwin
• Diabetes
• Ecology
• Insulin
• disease
• evolutionary medicine
• receptor

• Education and Research (IISER), Indian Institute of Science, Pune, India

  Milind Watve

Policies and ethics