Human genes evolved to be stimulated by intermittent stressors, and the lack of such stressors in modern life has negatively impacted aging and predisposition to age-related diseases.

“The bottom line is that our genes were meant to be pushed by intermittent types of stress, and we've lost that. We've lost that ability to push them. I mean, not the ability, but we've stopped doing it, and I think that it's had a detrimental effect on the way that we're aging, our predisposition to age-related diseases as well, because you want to clean up stuff. You want to keep pushing the antioxidant, the anti-inflammatory, the preventing the protein aggregation, the repairing the damaged DNA.”