Nudity Provides Health Benefits for Your Body and Brain

[goodsamaritan]

“A Naked Ape Would Have Fewer Parasites” posits that “humans evolved hairlessness to reduce parasite loads, especially ectoparasites that may carry disease.” --- interesting.



Is clothing crushing us? Are we trapped in tomb-like textiles, exiling our flesh from experiencing the environment? Are we atrophying our epidermis, our senses, our neuro-intelligence?

If you put a plaster cast on a broken arm the skin starves for Vitamin D, the muscles weaken due to strangled range of motion, the nerve synapses depress to a whimper of their former joy. Twenty-first century hominids? We shroud our entire skin palette except for face, neck and hands - we obliterate symbiosis with the planet.

We hide in cocoons, when we could be free as butterflies.

http://immortallife.info/articles/entry/nudity-provides-health-benefits-for-your-body-and-brain

[goodsamaritan]

A naked ape would have fewer parasites

    Mark Pagel1,* and
    Walter Bodmer2

+ Author Affiliations

    1School of Animal and Microbial Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AJ, UK
    2Cancer and Immunogenetics Laboratory, Cancer Research UK, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DS, UK

    *Author for correspondence (m.pagel@reading.ac.uk).

Abstract

Unusually among the mammals, humans lack an outer layer of protective fur or hair. We propose the hypothesis that humans evolved hairlessness to reduce parasite loads, especially ectoparasites that may carry disease. We suggest that hairlessness is maintained by these naturally selected benefits and by sexual selection operating on both sexes. Hairlessness is made possible in humans owing to their unique abilities to regulate their environment via fire, shelter and clothing. Clothes and shelters allow a more flexible response to the external environment than a permanent layer of fur and can be changed or cleaned if infested with parasites. Naked molerats, another hairless and non-aquatic mammal species, also inhabit environments in which ectoparasite transmission is expected to be high, but in which temperatures are closely regulated. Our hypothesis explains features of human hairlessness—such as the marked sex difference in body hair, and its retention in the pubic regions—that are not explained by other theories.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/270/Suppl_1/S117.short