If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Have you ever wondered why the very biological traits that helped our ancestors survive are now the leading causes of chronic illness today?
- Did you know that your body’s ancient mechanism for preventing dehydration is a hidden reason behind modern high blood pressure?
- What if the secret to understanding obesity lies not in your willpower, but in a prehistoric survival instinct that tells your body to never stop eating?
Listen to Too Much of a Good Thing — Free Audiobook
Loading player...
Key Takeaways from Too Much of a Good Thing
- Understand why the human body's slow evolutionary pace clashes with the rapid advancements of the modern world, resulting in a biological mismatch that causes chronic diseases.
- Discover how evolutionary adaptations designed to survive food scarcity—like storing fat and releasing hunger hormones after weight loss—now fuel the modern obesity epidemic.
- Learn why genetic traits that once aggressively conserved sodium and water to prevent ancient humans from dying of dehydration now cause deadly high blood pressure.
- Uncover how the life-saving prehistoric instinct to panic and flee from physical predators misfires in response to modern stressors, causing widespread anxiety and depression.
- Find out how the biological blood-clotting mechanisms that historically protected early humans from bleeding to death are now inadvertently triggering modern heart attacks.
Too Much of a Good Thing — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: The human body is ill-suited to the modern world.
Chapter 3: Human bodies adapted to food scarcity, but today we now have abundant food.
Chapter 4: We were once threatened by having too little water and sodium, yet too much is dangerous too.
Chapter 5: Our tendency to panic once aided survival, but it now fuels anxiety and depression today.
Chapter 6: Blood clotting that once protected us from fatal bleeding can now cause heart attacks too.
Chapter 7: Our genes are unlikely to evolve quickly enough to combat modern chronic diseases on their own.
Chapter 8: Collective action is more effective than individual willpower for meaningfully changing dietary habits in society.
Chapter 9: Pharmaceutical firms are supporting high-tech medical research.
Too Much of a Good Thing Summary & Overview
The human body evolved to allow us to survive in a world very different from the one we inhabit today. These blinks explain why we’re not suited to the modern world, and the health complications we’re suffering as a result.
Who Should Listen to Too Much of a Good Thing?
- People suffering from obesity, high blood pressure, depression or coronary illnesses
- Medical professionals
- Anyone interested in genetics or evolution
Books Similar to Too Much of a Good Thing
Readers who enjoyed this also liked these titles.
Why We Eat (Too Much)
★ 4.5 / 5 • 408 ratingsThis gentle tour through evolution, hormones, and modern food culture helps explain why willpower often loses to biology—and how small, supportive changes in cooking, habits, and mindset can guide the body back toward steadier health.
Go Wild
★ 4.1 / 5 • 41 ratingsEat Fat, Run Free, Be Social, and Follow Evolution’s Other Rules for Total Health and Well-Being
The Story of the Human Body
★ 4.6 / 5 • 173 ratingsEvolution, Health, and Disease
Exercised
★ 4.3 / 5 • 287 ratingsWhy Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding