What problems with the human body can be traced back to evolution?

I have heard that back problems can be attributed to our bodies not fully being adapted to walking upright. Are there any more? Vollygirl the fact that walking upright cause less back problems than walking hunched over does not prove we are fully adapted to walking upright. If we were back problems would only happen due to injuries or over exertion.

Public Comments

1. Women (and some men)who are too hairy for modern societies tastes, not a problem as such, but all I could think of. Nice question.
2. Our backs are fully adapted to walk upright, if you don't believe me walk hunched over like an ape for a day and tell me which one hurts worse.
3. knees are still a problem... very vulnerable when locked straight. Something to do with crucial faculties etc.. (we're designed to keep a slight bend...like monkeys do). For the person who said that if we spent a couple of hours stooped over we'd get back ache.... not if we did it all the time. Standing straight would then give us back ache...Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other animal that suffers from spine compression.
4. Cancer gene.
5. There are certain vestigial features to the human body that are from ancestors, such as the tailbone and the appendix.
6. Oh no if you refer to the men and women which are hairy because they stay too much in air conditioned areas so hair is more grown. Its scientifically proven and many things like these have reasons. But there are two things 1st) animal-ism i say the attraction at women and sex that is something which is not controlled much by some people.2) Yes not walking upright is attributed to our bodies not fully being adapted to walking upright but because our head is the most part heavy from organs so we wil not walk upright when you wake up from sleeping you are a bit taller in fact.
7. Giving birth is ridiculously difficult for women compared to virtually all other species due to 1) an over-sized head on the child and 2) a badly positioned pelvis from walking upright. Choking risk due to our airway and food tube being shared. Knee problems are another issue with walking upright. Our eyes are not as good as most birds (we have relatively poor night vision and distance vision) and we have an optical nerve right in the middle of where we are looking. Our sense of smell is poor compared to a dog or a pig as we have never had to find food by smell (not a problem as such). We die when we fall from relatively small heights unlike a cat which can survive high falls relatively unscathed. This is because we cannot stretch out to increase air resistance and so have a high terminal velocity. Our sense of balance and direction is poor compared to other primates as when we left the trees that was no longer beneficial.
8. As with any species, genetic deformalities and inherited disorders pose major problems. Natural selection favours humans with the most efficient immune system, as lack of food or water poses little problem for the species as a whole, since a massive proportion of the world's land is used for growing food- just for us. Makes you realise how selfish we are doesn't it? Since humans reproduce relatively slowly, it can take a long time for resistant populations to arise, in contrast to bacteria, which can develop resistance to a particular antibiotic in a matter of years. We have sped up this process, however, by outsmarting the bacteria with our constant replacement medicines, which kill them off, until they again develop a resistance. Vaccinations also immunise us from a wide range of common childhood diseases and the like, which can cut deaths in a relatively short time. For this reason, we can adapt short-term without really evolving as such, so traits in other species such as a keen sense of smell are not so prominent in us, as we rely on day to day objects and curatives to do the work for us. Do you see where I'm coming from? The ultimate drive in evolution is mutations- some advantageous, some not so much. They will always happen- hence evolution is an infinite process. Humans with darker skin, for example, tend to have more resistance to the sun.
9. There are many problems in the human body due to evolution. We have too many teeth, especially our wisdom teeth and poor sinus drainage. Many nerves and muscles that we no longer have any use for, particularly the plantaris muscle of the foot. Anyone with scoliosis or sciatica can attest for our poor back design. An inability to produce vitamin c due to the loss of the GULO gene. The length of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which connects the brain to the larynx via the aortic arch. (this means in Giraffes it's 20 feet longer than necessary. An appallingly designed eye. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#Other_developments The development of the testes leads to a weak point in the abdomen wall that can result in hernias. The appendix, whose main function is to potentially kill us. Why do we grow a tail in week 4-5 of our embryonic development and then have to lose it at week 8? Ectopic pregnancies A horrendous collection of congenital illnesses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_disease And what kind of sadistic creator would put our sewage system and our entertainment complex in the same place.