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Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond (B Cubed) is a collaborative project between The Daily Princetonian and Princeton Insights. The show releases 3 episodes monthly: one longer episode as part of the Insights partnership, and two shorter episodes independently created by the 'Prince.' This show is produced by Senna Aldoubosh '25 under the 147th Board of the 'Prince.' Insights producers are Crystal Lee, Addie Minerva, and Thiago Tarraf Varella. This show is a reimagined version of the show formerly produced as Princeton Insights: The Highlights under the 145th Board of the 'Prince.'
Please direct pitches and questions to podcast@dailyprincetonian.com, and any corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.
Thiago:
Hi, everyone. My name is Thiago. I'm a graduate student at Princeton University and I'm your host, the Brains, Black holes and Beyond is a collaboration podcast between the Princeton insights newsletter and the Daily Princetonian. The Princeton insights is the newsletter written by Princeton undergrad grad students and postdocs write about the most exciting and groundbreaking research being conducted here at Princeton in the form of short, fun and easy to read reviews. We cover a range of topics including psychology, neuroscience, biology, computer science and physics to name a few. Make sure to check out our website at insights.princeton.edu
Today we're going to talk about some of the consequences of urbanization in how socio economic status affects people. For that we're inviting Benjamin Muhoya, Benjamin graduated from the Technical University of Kenya in Medical Laboratory Sciences, he worked as a medical laboratory technician, including in the Impala Research Center. Recently, he moved to Princeton, where he is now a graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with Professor Julian Errol. So welcome, Jimmy, it's really good to host you here.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Thank you so much. And yeah, thank you for the invite.
Thiago:
Yeah. So I would like to start asking more about you. So where are you from? I gather, it's from Kenya because your undergrad was in the University of Kenya. But tell us a bit more about where you're from and how you, how you ended up here.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Okay, so I am from Kenya, like, I've grown up in Kenya all my life. So coming to Princeton was such a big transition for me, because I've just grown up in East Africa. And as a young guy, a love a love lab work. Like when you go to school,and they teach you science, and then you see your teacher doing some experiments. That's kind of like how I got interested in like a course in lab work. And I ended up doing medical lab science in the Technical University of Kenya. But I didn't know like, at some point, I would be in the middle of nowhere researching the effects of urbanization on people. That was kind of like something that just happened. But I would say, kind of like, the most exciting thing that happened, that has happened to me.
Thiago:
How did it, how did it happen? What do you mean by it just happened.
Benjamin Muhoya:
So I, I, in my head, like when I was doing like our costs in lab, in lab science, I thought I would just be in the lab doing experiments and everything. And then so I used to work in a hospital lab before I applied for this job in a research center to work with Julian Errol. So he had, he has this cool project that is still ongoing in Kenya. So it's just I mean, when I applied or maybe just thinking, I'm just gonna go be another lab tech, but like, it's such a huge project, because we have to go to remote places to collect samples. So that had never occurred to me that at some point, I would be doing that. And I fell in love with like that kind of research cause it's, it's practical research. I mean, it helps. Not only, I mean, generally, but like even in developing countries like Kenya, where we have like this burden of non communicable diseases.
Thiago:
What are non communicable non communicable diseases, non communicable diseases?
Benjamin Muhoya:
Okay, maybe I should explain that first. So, historically, we've dealt with infectious diseases, like, let me use a very good example that everybody knows COVID when, if I have COVID right now, if we don't have mask I am gonna give it to you easily by just sneeze or something. So non communicable diseases is a whole is a term that tries to cover like all these other diseases, if I'm sitting next to you, I'm not gonna give it to you like cancer, obesity, hypertension, kidney disease, those are non communicable diseases.
Thiago:
Is it the same as not contagious?
Benjamin Muhoya:
Non contagious? That's another term that we can use.
Thiago:
Okay.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah. And right now, they are the leading causes of mortality around the world. And we, we, I mean, literature, or like research that has been done so far, blames urbanization, and like socio economic gradients. But we haven't still pointed out the specific thing that happens to lead to non communicable diseases to our non communicable disease. So that is what our research is about.
Thiago:
Okay. That's very interesting. So a little bit more about you. So you're now working here at Princeton in the evolutionary biology department.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah.
Thiago:
How is it conceptually like how what do you feel about this?transition because you used to work more in a medical setting. And now you're studying evolution. How does that work?
Benjamin Muhoya:
Okay, so working in the medical setting was, I liked it. And I felt that I was contributing to society in a good way, because I'm helping diagnose people in a hospital. But the medical system in Kenya, okay, it's good. But me showing up in hospital every day, and like being in an environment where I only see sick people was not very, I mean, I did not like it that much. So that's why I decided to maybe move into the research field, to maybe contribute even more to maybe society or like my country, or Kenya to help maybe make the health system better. And yeah, that was my thinking back then. So that's how I decided to go work in a research center to find out like, what's the cause of disease so that we can maybe deal with it at its root. And I love the work so much. And then like my, my advisor, right now, the guy I'm working with Julian Errol's in his lab right now, is his he's a cool boss. So we got along really well. And he is he's a professor in ecology, evolutionary biology. We talked a lot, we used to go to field with him. So we got to hang out, we got to talk a lot, I became super interested in like advancing my education further. So he was supportive and encouraged me to apply for a PhD in Princeton.
Thiago:
It's really cool.
Benjamin Muhoya:
And which I did, and now I'm here.
Thiago:
Yeah. And congratulations.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Thank you. So in evolutionary biology, there is this thing that is famous, where people say that nothing in biology makes sense, unless in the light of evolution. And that has resonated with me for a very long time. Because if you think about diseases, even COVID, you already know, like, it evolved and jumped from an animal to, to human. So evolution is something that, that we should think about a lot when even thinking about diseases, and very few people have thought about non communicable diseases from an evolutionary perspective. And that's kind of like how I am thinking about them right now. And that is why I love being in the evolutionary biology department cause, we can be able to clear the confusion that exists right now. All the fragmented information that we have about the causes of non communicable diseases. Yeah.
Thiago: Nice. So you met him in Kenya. That's what that was the first time you saw him?
Benjamin Muhoya:
That was the first time we met. Yeah.
Thiago:
Nice. And he went to do the project, like the one about socioeconomic status and how it affects health in Turkana?
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's a very broad project. And that is one of the papers that we have written so far, the one about socio economic effects on health. So that took a pastoralist community. And they are subsidiary, I mean, most of them have still retained their ancestral way of life, which is pastoralism and they are a very subsistence level kind of community. So the only real life on their heads for subsistence not for market not to sell them for meat or anything. Me and you are like market integrated, we drive in a market economy. So with the Turkana we have kind of like half half, you have still people following the ancestral way of life and people who have moved to urban locations. So we have this opportunity to compare people still leading a traditional way of life and a subsistence level kind of lifestyle and urban people. And that's where we are working with a Turkana community.
Thiago:
Turkana is a village in Kenya. Is that it?
Benjamin Muhoya:
It is a whole county. It is like a region.
Thiago:
Okay, yeah. Okay, cool.
Benjamin Muhoya:
One of the hottest places in Kenya.
Thiago:
Yeah, what are we talking about?
Benjamin Muhoya:
Oh, Okay. In degrees, like it gets to the 42 degrees Celsius.
Thiago:
Yeah. Wow. That's, that's probably over 110 Fahrenheit.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Exactly.
Thiago:
That's really hot.
Benjamin Muhoya:
And yeah, so people people are different. So with the Turkana like how you would measure maybe, rich person like that's what the people is based on like socio economic gradients of health. So maybe even, I'm in a market integrated place you like look at my bank account and see how many how many cars they have how much money but like it's harder to measure that like, say in US based systems level community. So we don't understand how maybe. And like in an urban setting, we we kind of like associate higher income with more diseases. But we don't know if higher wealth in maybe a subsistence level community is associated also with like poor health outcomes. And yeah, that's why we did that research. And we showed that actually, it's not the case like higher wealth in like the subsistence level, community in Turkana equates to better health better reported health. Whereas like in an urban setting, more wealth equates to more risk for these kinds of non communicable diseases.
Thiago:
So you're saying that the populations in a higher socio economic status in Turkana, there are different effects? If they were in rural areas, the pastoralists and the urban, the people that live more more in the city?
Benjamin Muhoya:
That is what I'm saying.
Thiago:
And the higher socioeconomic status in the city had were more prone to health diseases.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Thiago:
Oh, that is very interesting. That's, and that's not what we observe. Here in the US, is it?
Benjamin Muhoya:
In the US, it's different cause if you think about wealth, probably somebody who lives in like a higher economic status has more access, maybe to hospitals, people in like a lower socioeconomic status don't have as much access. So the outcome will be different, maybe in like a US setting. By its, yeah, it's hard to disentangle like those effects. So what the paper showed is that, we mean, what the researcher does that, indeed, socio economic status matters, but it's different. It's super context dependent. Cause, say, in a developing country, like Kenya, a social person in a newborn place, might be able to afford health care, but doesn't have as much access as maybe somebody in America and it's the same case, maybe somebody with like a lower socioeconomic status doesn't have access. So in an urban setting, in like a developing country in kenya will not matter as much as it will not have a significant effect as it would here in America.
Thiago:
How is the healthcare system like in Kenya?
Benjamin Muhoya:
In Kenya, so it cannot be able to accommodate everybody, the government has been trying to improve it, like having worked in the healthcare system, I've seen the improvements they've done over the years. But still, the ratio of like the number of doctors or like the number of equipment available to the number of sick people is not good enough to accommodate everybody. That's kind of like why didn't did not like working in the hospital system for so much. Because in a day, you get like, maybe 300 patients, if it's like a government hospital.
Thiago:
It is free, but the lines are so long, and everything's so crowded that it's not that great.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Exactly.
Thiago:
See, it's a similar situation in Brazil. Actually, we also have a free health care system, but depending on what you want to do, you have to be lined for mouths.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the biggest burden is being caused by these non communicable diseases. It's not even like dying for a dog collar or like malaria. It's people more or less coming in because of diabetes, hypertension, mostly the non communicable diseases.
Thiago:
Let's backtrack a little bit. So back to Turkana, just to understand more a little bit about this place. Is that a place that you visited before, like when you lived in Kenya?
Benjamin Muhoya:
No, no, I just went there for work. I see. It's a very remote place. It's hard to access even normally as a person who lives in Kenya and then like, there is nothing to go. Same day. It's under developed. It's people hiding so people don't usually go to Turkana region.
Thiago:
And how did you decide to kind of you and your team?
Benjamin Muhoya:
Okay, so it's it's such an interesting story, how it happened, so, okay, maybe my advisor is gonna listen to this, but like the story I've had him say, so he is a flies geneticist he is he works with genetics. So he had flies from all over the world in his lab, trying to understand, I mean, just fly genetics, so he was collecting flies around the world. To compare maybe how they will respond to different environments. So some he would expose to high sugar high sugar diet and see how maybe you can get to see the snips that will be affected by maybe a different environment. But something happened with the chamber where he had all his flights, they all died. So he went to Kenya like, you know, you kind of like want to take some time off to sober bit. And so he goes to visit a friend of his who works in Turkana. So they are on top of a cliff, just talking, he has a big water bottle. And then he says, a young boy just having cattle without any water bottle. And then he's like, How is this even possible? Even I, as a Kenyan cannot survive in Turkana region. I need like a very huge water bottle every minute. I'm there. So this is impossible. And he was like, Okay, I need to understand what's happening here. So it started with like adaptation to that environment. Because, you know, he was working with flies in different environments. And then the project has transitioned so much to include now even the health aspect of Lake because we have people from Turkana moving from the rural area to the urban area. So it transitions to like the health effects of lifestyle transition, but at first. So he just saw somebody driving in like this harsh environment, and was like there must be some adaptation maybe that people in this region have and that's how the project began.
Thiago:
That's cool. That's interesting.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah.
Thiago:
So it was basically trying to understand the evolution, like how people adapt to very hot environments and dry, something like that. And it ended up more of a understanding non communicable diseases and health in general.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Exactly.
Thiago:
Okay.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah.
Thiago:
That's pretty fun.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah.
Thiago:
And you mentioned that people are moving from rural to urban areas. So about this pastoralists, you said that they don't have like, they're not integrated in the market as we are. Does that mean that they do not have money at all, or they do have money, but most of his most of their transactions are like just exchanging objects and animals and not relying on the money, like, how does it work?
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah, so that's the thing, it's their culture. So if you grew up in that culture, money doesn't make sense. To them, you do find some people like, who might sell maybe one or two cows to send one of their sons to school, or like maybe to purchase something like when it's when it's during, like maybe a dry season, and there is not enough food. So it does happen occasionally, them going to the market to sell their heads, but like for them, it's more prestigious to have hundreds of cattle than it is to have money. So it's a very different setting. For me, it's for me, maybe me and you it's more prestigious, maybe to have a couple of thousands dollars in the bank. For them like that equates to having 1000 cattle and being like, all of these are my cattle.
Thiago:
But when they are like raising this 1000 cattle is it for everything is for eating like just to feed the community and they will give the meat away in exchange of like other sort of services that the community is providing?
Benjamin Muhoya:
That is exactly how it was very, it's just for substance.
Thiago:
I see. Yeah, that's very interesting. And this trend that they are moving to urban settings, has it been like this for a very long time? Or is it something newer?
Benjamin Muhoya:
It is actually that's one of the other interesting reasons that we are working with this community because they just started moving recently. So historically, there was a military blockade in the Turkana region because it's a different temperament of people like they have had people read each other for the cattle. So it's kind of like a lawless kind of location where everybody has a gun to protect their cattle. So there was a military blockade that was only abolished in the 1980s. So people have only started to move into towns super recently. So we have this perfect opportunity to look at or research or study the effects of lifestyle transition in real time because it's happening in real time you find somebody was born in their workplace maybe grew up there up to like when they were a teenager then moved to an urban setting.
Thiago:
Is the percentage of people with diseases higher in the urban setting it actually, that's one of the other papers that we showed
Thiago:
So you mentioned that the best pastoralists has had this very different lifestyle and cultural background that made it hard for you or harder for the data collection process.
Benjamin Muhoya:
It actually makes it difficult. But we've found a way to make it happen. So in our team we have, I don't speak Turkana, we, in our team, we have a person who does speak Turkana, who has grown up in that cultural setting, he is an old guide, like I don't know, in his 50s. So he's very in touch with that kind of lifestyle, he can do community sensitization talk to the people. But on top of that, we also do a lot of community engagement work where we work with chips in the area, village elders. So before we even go to do any data collection, we kind of like to send a team like maybe one week before everybody to go do community sensitization talk to the Chiefs make the community aware, because even the people there don't have a good understanding of research as you and me do. So for them to be able to do like informed consent, they have to be aware of what is going to happen. So we do a lot of community engagement to make the project work. And that has been one of the pillars of like what has led the project to become what it is right now. Community engagement.
Thiago:
Do you think that this process of engaging the community and educating the community might itself have an effect on the process of urbanization like Mark, maybe more people in Turkana will, like find out about what is science and maybe there'll be interested in moving or something like that, or getting the defector very minimal?
Benjamin Muhoya:
That's a good question. Actually, that's an area open for research because we don't know what makes people decide to move in transition into the town. Actually, there's so many people thinking about that. So before I like trying to understand it from a psychology perspective, like does maybe early childhood advocate, it is affect your decision to move because some people don't want to move actually offend some people who move to cities and like go back to the place. So we don't actually understand what would maybe make somebody to move but like, that's a very good question. Like if we educate them, or they they're gonna want to
Thiago:
How did it work data collection? What did you do?
Benjamin Muhoya:
So what we do is we we, we have a huge team of 10 plus people we usually like when we go to the remote place, it's usually more than 10 people. And then there is a questionnaire 10. So we have teams, we work in tents, you don't work in a tent in a place that is like 42 degrees 42 degrees Celsius, it's, it's so hot, so we have a fun in my tent I do when I was there. I used to work in the in the lab, but it's a tent. So I'm just processing samples. So we have our phlebotomy tent where the the samples are collected. And then we have a questionnaire tent and a consent tent where the people working there speak their Turkana language. And then the consent form, so is into Canada. So after sensitization, somebody reads the consent form, there is a person to guide them through the consent form and explain everything. So part of the team is from the Turkana region, so they speak the language. Some people do speak Swahili, which is like the common language in Kenya, but like not everybody speaks that language in Turkana, especially if you have grown up in the rural place your entire life. But to solve that challenge, we just have people who already speak the language and that has made things smooth for us.
Thiago:
Yeah. And what were you doing in the lab? I mentioned that you're processing samples in the lab, what samples?
Benjamin Muhoya:
So we do collect blood, urine, and stool or microbiome analysis.
Thiago:
Okay, yeah.
Benjamin Muhoya:
I they for stool you can store it. So what we do mostly when we are in the remote places, process them for storage, then bring them back to the main lab that is in Laikipia, Nanyuki.
So we have a main lab there. So in the field we collect, preserve, then go do further analysis in the lab when we get there because we cannot be able to be in the field for more than a week. It's not possible. It's so resource intensive. We cannot carry that many agents and beyond a week at 42 degrees Celsius, you just get me out of here, please.
Thiago:
Or do you remember some like fun facts or interesting things that happened during the data collection process?
Benjamin Muhoya:
It I don't know if it equates like fine. So to Kenya is a hot region as I've said. So this one day that it decided when rain decided to show up in the middle of fieldwork. When we go there, we are never prepared for rain because it never happens. So on this one day, it decided to rain. And when we go there, when we want to set up usually we look at the place with the most shade. And most of the trees grow around the dry riverbeds. So usually we station on the riverbed, because it's cooler, it's under the trees. So in this day, it decided to rain. We're in the tents working. So there is one team on the other side of the of the dry riverbed. I don't wanna call it a river because it it became a river within two hours, so we're just chilling, like not thinking anything is gonna happen. But like one hour later, somebody else to the river is flowing like this flash flood or something. And then we have another team stuck on the other side of the river, but they are not aware because they in the tent, they've zipped themselves up so that water doesn't get into the tent, so that they can finish processing the samples. Because on that day was a good day, like so many people showed up. So when people show up, we try to capitalize and get as many participants as we can. So they were working late into the night. So it was kind of like at seven 7:30pm. And we had to go rescue them on the other side of the riverbed. So the water was kind of like waist high for me at all guy. So it was a dangerous thing that I did. I don't I'm seeing it as a fun fact, but like somebody else might interpret it as something dangerous.
Thiago:
Yeah, well, looking back, everyone was okay.The adrenaline.
Benjamin Muhoya:
The adrenaline. Yeah.
Thiago:
So back to the results that you found. I was reading an article from New York Times that is not like super related. But it was saying that even in the US the highest socioeconomic status, black women had higher infant mortality than lower socioeconomic status white women. And they mentioned that's related to the way that these women are handled and taken seriously in a medical setting. So for example, they said that Sarah Norwegians, she had a pulmonary embolism after her pregnancy and the nurses were kind of like dismissing her. Okay, so do you think that in Canada, there's also some sort of structural issues that might be in play with things that you found about health? Because you also studied reproductive success? Right, in the in your paper? Yeah. Do you think that they're the way that people interact with the doctors might also influence
Benjamin Muhoya:
That is hard to say, in Kenya, but I don't think there is. There is a way that people would interact with different patients in a different way. Maybe that's a thing that happens in America more or less, because in Kenya, like, access, everybody has access, unless you are in a lower socio economic status and your limiting factor will be access or late transplant and transport, getting access to the hospital but like if you're there, everybody's treated the same. But say if you are in a lower socio economic status, that means you cannot afford maybe a better hospital. So you're gonna maybe go to the government one, they have better health status, even if they have this sort of potential access issues. In the urban places not as much they have poor health outcomes, low lower, less number of kids, but still it it comes down to being able to afford because when you are living in a town you cannot afford to have so many kids because then you cannot afford to feed them to take them to school. By liking the other place like in the rural place. You have enough cattle. You can sell another one if you want. To you can be able to afford anything. And then about health access to health. We are not sure why they have better. To you can be able to afford anything. And then about health access to health. We are not sure why they have better, better health, self reported health because they don't have access to any more than medical care that than we do. So. Yeah, we still don't know why they would have better health.
Thiago:
So just to clarify, I thought that earlier, you mentioned that in the urban area, high socioeconomic status had or had worse health. Yeah. But this is not the case for reproductive success. So higher economic status have more reproductive success.
Benjamin Muhoya:
They, have fewer kids. And I mean, their kids grow up.
Thiago:
So they have fewer kids, but the kids that are born are more likely to survive.
Benjamin Muhoya:
But the lake are fewer number of kids compared to somebody who is in a higher socioeconomic status in, in their remote places in rural places, they have more kids and still their kids survive, they have higher chances to get to adulthood.
Thiago:
Oh, interesting. Yeah. Is there any other finding that you think about this paper or about the project that you want to mention that we haven't talked about yet that I think it's very important, in your opinion.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Maybe so we have a paper in place right now, it's gonna come out very soon, which is kind of like our groundbreaking finding that kind of like expected by we were able to show it. So as I said Turkana very hot region, limited water availability. So we sequenced the genomes of, I think, 1000 1000 people. And we did this analysis to look for genes that might have Mitro signatures of selection. And what we found was there is actually a gene related to kidney function. It's called the SDC-One gene. And it's usually expressed when expressed more, it has something to do with dehydration. So that's kind of like a very cool finding, showing that the Turkana more able to concentrate urine better than other people. In other words, meaning they reabsorb so much water, their kidneys are so healthy, they reabsorb so much water, because you are already growing up in a place where water is not available. So that's one of the coolest finding, I would say about about the project. So that paper is was it's already in place right now. It's gonna be near.
Thiago:
Are you one of the authors.
Benjamin Muhoya:
I am one of the authors in the paper. Yeah,
Thiago:
Congrats. What are the next projects you're working on?
Benjamin Muhoya:
So the next one that I'm working on is, so I work with metabolomics? I don't know, if you know, metabolomic.
Thiago:
I have an idea, but maybe our listeners don't. So maybe you can explain a little.
Benjamin Muhoya:
So it's another omics technology, kind of like genomics, proteomics. So it's where you survey a bunch of metabolites, like very many. So if I say glucose, glucose is only one metabolite. So these are nicely everybody's familiar with like you can go have a glucose test. So metabolomics is a technology or a technique where you measure like, dozens of metabolites at the same time in your body. And then we have machines that do that. So that kind of like helps you estimate or predict the state of a person, it can be used for diagnosis, it can tell me how your head how healthy your liver is, how healthy your kidney is, all at once. Like it's just one test to do all of that. So I'm capitalizing on metabolomics to try and disentangle like some of the environmental factors that may be lead to their non communicable diseases. So that's what all my PhD is about,
Thiago:
oh, that's exciting
Benjamin Muhoya:
I don't have any data yet, or like some cool findings. But so far, I know people in rural places are healthier than people in urban places. That's all I can say. For now. It's a cliche everybody knows that. But we don't kind of like the data is fragmented being in regards of like, we don't know which part of the environment will lead to non communicable diseases because we have people eating what others would say is an unhealthy diet or like a high calorie diet, but they're fine like processed food by you find they're fine. And then some other people eating like what people in Turkana eat like the rural places. It's a very high protein diet like raw milk. Actually people drink milk. The water is not very clean, but you find they're healthy, which, which is weird in itself, because if I went on like Katakana Rura diet, I don't know who didn't survive for a month, but it's working for them. So it's fragmented in that we don't fully understand which environmental variable or lake, what's the tipping point for somebody to kind of like get an N communicable disease. So that is what my research is about.
Thiago:
Nice. So as a last question, then, how do you think that this findings, like from the paper discussed, or the new papers that you were working on, could be applied to health interventions and policy interventions in this transitioning populations from rural to urban areas?
Benjamin Muhoya:
That is a very, very good question. So as I don't know, if I mentioned this, I haven't mentioned so the hypothesis that we are using to maybe explain why we have these different outcomes in non communicable diseases is evolutionary mismatch. Evolutionary mismatch is basically a hypothesis that says, if there is a discrepancy between the phenotype or you are, how you are built right now, with what your ancestors used to do days bound to be some kind of like outcome, because you are mismatched, to say, your parents were like farmers, high activity, lifestyle, and then you transition maybe to this other kind of lifestyle that is dentistry, then that's not good for your cause. You got evolutionary mismatch,
Thiago:
so we evolved to behave in in live in a certain environment, but then all of a sudden, you change to a very different environment.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah, there is actually this other theory still under the the umbrella of evolutionary mismatch, there is something that we are so called the drifting Gene hypothesis, where if you grow up in a resource limited, kind of like environment, every food or every nutrient that you take into your body, your body is actually going to become so good at absorbing as much as it can. So it will make the best of like the limited amount of food. So say, now you've evolutionarily be in such kind of an environment and then you're moved into like a resource rich environment, your body still just as good as it was in absorbing as much food as it can take. But now you're mismatched because nowadays, more nutrients and maybe that is that will lead maybe to add on obesity, hypertension, because maybe your body is not in like it evolved environment of evolutionary adaptation. So, so in regards to policy, if we understand maybe the evolutionary histories of people going through these transitions, maybe to be easier for the government to put in place like maybe food regulation, or like, I had this idea where they were, I think it's in Nairobi, Kenya, where they wanted to have the bus stops more outside of town so that people can actually work. Do work, I don't really have like a practical way that you can use this kind of information so that it helps people. I mean, it's for the benefit of the pupil. Right? I don't know if that answers your question.
Thiago:
Yeah, no, I think it makes sense. So like, for example, making sure that food that is similar to what they had before is available.
Benjamin Muhoya:
Yeah, that sort of thing.Yeah, it's even easier to advise people because if you've historically grown up in a high protein diet, if you switch to one that doesn't, maybe that's not good for you, I don't have any data to back that. But yeah, that kind of that kind of thinking can help so much to be able to, to do away with these kinds of decisions like in a policy minimum like mindset. Yeah.
Thiago:
The best thing is kind of sketchy though. The bus
Benjamin Muhoya:
you don't buy that?
Thiago:
I don't know. They could like maybe try to convince people to go on a walk or something like have more parks. I don't know forcing people to walk. But yeah, sure if it works, it works
Benjamin Muhoya:
Exactly the same. And now I'm for it. I love walking myself. So yeah, if we had the bus stop like mode siteowner Then I had to work I will didn't complain by people in Kenya complain. They're like, No, I need to be dropped or.
Thiago:
I would complain as well. Okay, I think that's it then thank you very much for being here. That was a really, really fun talk. And your research is really cool, and I'm excited to eventually learn more about your metabolomics approach.
Benjamin Muhoya:
I'll keep you posted when I publish my profile. Thank you again for inviting me. It was fun. Yeah, thank you.
Senna:
This episode of B Cubed was hosted by Thiago Terra Vela sound engineered by me and produced under the 147 Managing Board of the prints. To learn more about Benjamin's research, visit the insights article linked in the description below. From the prints. My name is Senna Aldoubosh. Have a great rest of your day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai