Herman Pontzer

Journal Article Nat Food · January 13, 2025 Nutritional epidemiology aims to link dietary exposures to chronic disease, but the instruments for evaluating dietary intake are inaccurate. One way to identify unreliable data and the sources of errors is to compare estimated intakes with the total energ ... Full text Link to item Cite

Physical Activity and Pregnancy Norms Among Daasanach Semi-Nomadic Pastoralist Women in Northern Kenya.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · January 2025 ObjectivesIn subsistence populations, high physical activity is typically maintained throughout pregnancy. Market integration shifts activity patterns to resemble industrialized populations, with more time allocated to sedentary behavior. Daasanac ... Full text Cite

Decline in Isotope Dilution Space Ratio Above Age 60 Could Affect Energy Estimates Using the Doubly Labeled Water Method.

Journal Article J Nutr · December 2024 BACKGROUND: Doubly labeled water is gold standard for measuring total energy expenditure (TEE). Measurements using the method are sensitive to the isotope dilution space ratio (DSR). Accuracy and precision of the method might be improved if we could identi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Corrigendum to "The effect of bi-iliac breadth on core body temperature" [J. Hum. Evol. 195 (2024) 103580].

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · December 2024 Full text Cite

Urban eastern gray squirrels (sciurus carolinensis) show little seasonal variation in biochemical and hematological parameters

Journal Article Urban Ecosystems · October 1, 2024 Urban wildlife faces unique physiological and behavioral challenges compared to conspecifics which live in less altered natural habitats. Animals in urban habitats are also exposed to urban stressors and commonly make use of inappropriate food sources from ... Full text Cite

Mobility ideation due to water problems during historic 2022 drought associated with livestock wealth, water and food insecurity, and fingernail cortisol concentration in northern Kenya.

Journal Article Social science & medicine (1982) · October 2024 Climate change is triggering environmental mobility through chronic water problems and punctuated events. Thinking about moving locations, or "mobility ideation", is the precursor to migration intentionality and actual migration. Drawing on the embodiment ... Full text Cite

Beyond the here and now: hunter-gatherer socio-spatial complexity and the evolution of language.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · October 2024 Human evolutionary ecology stands to benefit by integrating theory and methods developed in movement ecology, and in turn, to make contributions to the broader field of movement ecology by leveraging our species' distinct attributes. In this paper, we revi ... Full text Cite

The effect of bi-iliac breadth on core body temperature.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · October 2024 Thermoregulation is argued to be an important factor influencing body breadth in hominins based on the relationship of surface area to body mass first proposed by Bergmann. Selection for a narrow thorax, and thus a narrow pelvis, increases body surface are ... Full text Cite

No evidence for metabolic adaptation during exercise-related energy compensation.

Journal Article iScience · June 2024 The constrained energy model posits that the increased total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) in response to exercise is often less than the energy cost of the exercise prescribed. The mechanisms behind this phenomenon, coined "exercise-related energy compe ... Full text Cite

Total daily energy expenditure and elevated water turnover in a small-scale semi-nomadic pastoralist society from Northern Kenya.

Conference Annals of human biology · February 2024 BackgroundPastoralists live in challenging environments, which may be accompanied by unique activity, energy, and water requirements.AimFew studies have examined whether the demands of pastoralism contribute to differences in total energy ... Full text Cite

Hypermetabolism and energetic constraints in mitochondrial disorders.

Journal Article Nature metabolism · February 2024 Full text Cite

Increased physical activity is not related to markers of cardiometabolic health in two lemur species.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · January 2024 Insufficient physical activity is a major risk factor for cardiometabolic disease (i.e., unhealthy weight gain, heart disease, and diabetes) in humans and may also negatively affect health of primates in human care. Effects of physical activity on energy e ... Full text Cite

Correction: 'A unified theory for the energy cost of legged locomotion' (2016), by Pontzer.

Journal Article Biology letters · December 2023 Full text Cite

Energetic costs of testosterone in two subsistence populations.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · November 2023 ObjectiveTestosterone plays a role in mediating energetic trade-offs between growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Investments in a high testosterone phenotype trade-off against other functions, particularly survival-enhancing immune function and ... Full text Cite

Energy constraint and compensation: Insights from endurance athletes.

Journal Article Comparative biochemistry and physiology. Part A, Molecular & integrative physiology · November 2023 The Constrained Model of Total Energy Expenditure predicts that increased physical activity may not influence total energy expenditure, but instead, induces compensatory energetic savings in other processes. Much remains unknown, however, about concepts of ... Full text Cite

Lifestyle and patterns of physical activity in Hadza foragers.

Journal Article American journal of biological anthropology · November 2023 ObjectivesPhysically active lifestyles are associated with several health benefits. Physical activity (PA) levels are low in post-industrial populations, but generally high throughout life in subsistence populations. The Hadza are a subsistence-or ... Full text Cite

Total Energy Expenditure and Nutritional Intake in Continuous Multiday Ultramarathon Events.

Journal Article International journal of sport nutrition and exercise metabolism · November 2023 Continuous multiday ultramarathon competitions are increasingly popular and impose extreme energetic and nutritional demands on competitors. However, few data have been published on energy expenditure during these events. Here, we report doubly labeled wat ... Full text Cite

The provisioned primate: patterns of obesity across lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · October 2023 Non-human primates are potentially informative but underutilized species for investigating obesity. I examined patterns of obesity across the Primate order, calculating the ratio of body mass in captivity to that in the wild. This index, relative body mass ... Full text Cite

Quantifying physical activity energy expenditure based on doubly labelled water and basal metabolism calorimetry: what are we actually measuring?

Journal Article Current opinion in clinical nutrition and metabolic care · September 2023 Purpose of reviewPhysical activity impacts energy balance because of its contribution to total energy expenditure. Measuring physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) is often performed by subtracting the estimated 24 h expenditure on basal meta ... Full text Cite

Applying an evolutionary mismatch framework to understand disease susceptibility.

Journal Article PLoS biology · September 2023 Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are on the rise worldwide. Obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes are among a long list of "lifestyle" diseases that were rare throughout human history but are now common. The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis p ... Full text Cite

Early childhood growth in Daasanach pastoralists of Northern Kenya: Distinct patterns of faltering in linear growth and weight gain.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · April 2023 ObjectivesInvestigations of early childhood growth among small-scale populations are essential for understanding human life history variation and enhancing the ability to serve such communities through global public health initiatives. This study ... Full text Cite

Total daily energy expenditure has declined over the past three decades due to declining basal expenditure, not reduced activity expenditure.

Journal Article Nat Metab · April 2023 Obesity is caused by a prolonged positive energy balance1,2. Whether reduced energy expenditure stemming from reduced activity levels contributes is debated3,4. Here we show that in both sexes, total energy expenditure (TEE) adjusted for body composition a ... Full text Link to item Cite

The co-occurrence of water insecurity and food insecurity among Daasanach pastoralists in northern Kenya.

Journal Article Public health nutrition · March 2023 ObjectiveWater plays a critical role in the production of food and preparation of nutritious meals, yet few studies have examined the relationship between water and food insecurity. The primary objective of this study, therefore, was to examine ho ... Full text Cite

The fire of evolution: energy expenditure and ecology in primates and other endotherms.

Journal Article The Journal of experimental biology · March 2023 Total energy expenditure (TEE) represents the total energy allocated to growth, reproduction and body maintenance, as well as the energy expended on physical activity. Early experimental work in animal energetics focused on the costs of specific tasks (bas ... Full text Cite

Exercise is essential for health but a poor tool for weight loss: a reply to Allison and colleagues.

Journal Article International journal of obesity (2005) · February 2023 Full text Cite

Impact of energy availability and physical activity on variation in fertility across human populations.

Journal Article Journal of physiological anthropology · February 2023 Human reproduction is energetically costly, even more so than other primates. In this review, we consider how the energy cost of physical activity impacts reproductive tasks. Daily energy expenditure appears to be constrained, leading to trade-offs between ... Full text Cite

Gray squirrels consume anthropogenic food waste most often during winter.

Journal Article Mammalian biology = Zeitschrift fur Saugetierkunde · January 2023 Urban habitats provide wildlife with predictable, easily accessible and abundant food sources in the form of human food waste. Urban eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) are commonly observed feeding in trash bins, but we lack data regardin ... Full text Cite

Water Insecurity, Water Borrowing, and Psychosocial Stress Among Daasanach Pastoralists in Northern Kenya.

Journal Article Water international · January 2023 This article quantifies Daasanach water insecurity experiences in Northern Kenya, examines how water insecurity is associated with water borrowing and psychosocial stress, and evaluates if water borrowing mitigates the stress from water insecurity. Of 133 ... Full text Cite

The effects of lifestyle change on indicators of cardiometabolic health in semi-nomadic pastoralists.

Journal Article Evolution, medicine, and public health · January 2023 Background and objectivesNon-communicable disease risk and the epidemic of cardiometabolic diseases continue to grow across the expanding industrialized world. Probing the relationships between evolved human physiology and modern socioecological c ... Full text Cite

Effect of influenza vaccination on resting metabolic rate and c-reactive protein concentrations in healthy young adults.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2023 ObjectivesChronic immune activation and severe inflammatory states are positively associated with resting metabolic rate (RMR; kcal/day), but the impacts of mild immune stimuli on metabolism are poorly understood. This study investigates the withi ... Full text Cite

Evolutionary Changes in Physical Activity, Diet, and Energy Expenditure: Implications for the Prevention of Obesity

Chapter · January 1, 2023 Obesity and related metabolic diseases are recent phenomena, products of our increasingly industrialized world. Our Paleolithic hunter-gatherer ancestors and the subsistence farming communities that succeeded them were largely protected from these diseases ... Full text Cite

The Human Engine: Studies of metabolism reveal surprising insights into how we burn calories-and how cooperative food production helped Homo sapiens flourish.

Journal Article Scientific American · January 2023 Full text Cite

Variation in human water turnover associated with environmental and lifestyle factors.

Journal Article Science · November 25, 2022 Water is essential for survival, but one in three individuals worldwide (2.2 billion people) lacks access to safe drinking water. Water intake requirements largely reflect water turnover (WT), the water used by the body each day. We investigated the determ ... Full text Link to item Cite

Comparing walking and running in persistence hunting.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · November 2022 It has been proposed that humans' exceptional locomotor endurance evolved partly with foraging in hot open habitats and subsequently about 2 million years ago with persistence hunting, for which endurance running was instrumental. However, persistence hunt ... Full text Cite

Variability in energy expenditure is much greater in males than females.

Journal Article J Hum Evol · October 2022 In mammals, trait variation is often reported to be greater among males than females. However, to date, mainly only morphological traits have been studied. Energy expenditure represents the metabolic costs of multiple physical, physiological, and behaviora ... Full text Link to item Cite

Human total, basal and activity energy expenditures are independent of ambient environmental temperature.

Journal Article iScience · August 19, 2022 Lower ambient temperature (Ta) requires greater energy expenditure to sustain body temperature. However, effects of Ta on human energetics may be buffered by environmental modification and behavioral compensation. We used the IAEA DLW database for adults i ... Full text Link to item Cite

Cross-cultural variation in thirst perception in hot-humid and hot-arid environments: Evidence from two small-scale populations.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · June 2022 ObjectivesThirst is an evolved central homeostatic feedback system that helps regulate body water for survival. Little research has examined how early development and exposure to extreme environments and water availability affect thirst perception ... Full text Cite

Balancing growth, reproduction, maintenance, and activity in evolved energy economies.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · June 2022 Economic models predominate in life history research, which investigates the allocation of an organism's resources to growth, reproduction, and maintenance. These approaches typically employ a heuristic Y model of resource allocation, which predicts trade- ... Full text Cite

Reindeer herders from subarctic Finland exhibit high total energy expenditure and low energy intake during the autumn herd roundup.

Conference American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · April 2022 ObjectiveHigh levels of total energy expenditure (TEE, kcal/day) have been documented among numerous human populations such as tropical climate horticulturalists and high-altitude agriculturalists. However, less work has been conducted among highl ... Full text Cite

Total energy expenditure is repeatable in adults but not associated with short-term changes in body composition.

Journal Article Nat Commun · January 10, 2022 Low total energy expenditure (TEE, MJ/d) has been a hypothesized risk factor for weight gain, but repeatability of TEE, a critical variable in longitudinal studies of energy balance, is understudied. We examine repeated doubly labeled water (DLW) measureme ... Full text Link to item Cite

Physical Activity and Total Daily Energy Expenditure in Older US Adults: Constrained versus Additive Models.

Journal Article Medicine and science in sports and exercise · January 2022 PurposeThis study aimed to examine the shape of the relationship between physical activity (PA) and total energy expenditure (TEE) and to explore the role of energy balance status (negative, stable, positive) in influencing this association.Me ... Full text Cite

Balancing the scales: Preliminary investigation of total energy expenditure and daily metabolizable energy intake in Matschie's tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei).

Journal Article PloS one · January 2022 Matschie's tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei) is an endangered arboreal marsupial native to Papua New Guinea. Detailed field studies of its behavior and ecology are scarce due largely to its occupation of remote cloud forests and cryptic nature. Althoug ... Full text Cite

Daily physical activity is negatively associated with thyroid hormone levels, inflammation, and immune system markers among men and women in the NHANES dataset.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2022 The acute effects of exercise on metabolic energy expenditure and inflammation are well studied, but the long-term effects of regular daily physical activity on metabolic and endocrine effects are less clear. Further, prior studies investigating the impact ... Full text Cite

Sedentary behavior and cardiovascular disease risk: An evolutionary perspective.

Journal Article Frontiers in physiology · January 2022 A ubiquitous aspect of contemporary societies is sedentary behavior (SB), defined as low intensity activities in a seated, reclined, or supine posture. Leading public health agencies, including the World Health Organization, have recognized the strong asso ... Full text Cite

The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · December 2021 The suite of derived human traits, including enlarged brains, elevated fertility rates, and long developmental periods and life spans, imposes extraordinarily high energetic costs relative to other great apes. How do human subsistence strategies accommodat ... Full text Cite

Physical activity and fat-free mass during growth and in later life.

Journal Article Am J Clin Nutr · November 8, 2021 BACKGROUND: Physical activity may be a way to increase and maintain fat-free mass (FFM) in later life, similar to the prevention of fractures by increasing peak bone mass. OBJECTIVES: A study is presented of the association between FFM and physical activit ... Full text Link to item Cite

Energy compensation and adiposity in humans.

Journal Article Curr Biol · October 25, 2021 Understanding the impacts of activity on energy balance is crucial. Increasing levels of activity may bring diminishing returns in energy expenditure because of compensatory responses in non-activity energy expenditures.1-3 This suggestion has profound imp ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effects of Evolution, Ecology, and Economy on Human Diet: Insights from Hunter-Gatherers and Other Small-Scale Societies.

Journal Article Annual review of nutrition · October 2021 We review the evolutionary origins of the human diet and the effects of ecology economy on the dietary proportion of plants and animals. Humans eat more meat than other apes, a consequence of hunting and gathering, which arose ∼2.5 Mya with the genus Ho ... Full text Cite

Daily energy expenditure through the human life course.

Journal Article Science · August 13, 2021 Total daily energy expenditure ("total expenditure") reflects daily energy needs and is a critical variable in human health and physiology, but its trajectory over the life course is poorly studied. We analyzed a large, diverse database of total expenditur ... Full text Link to item Cite

Total energy expenditure of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) of different ages.

Journal Article The Journal of experimental biology · August 2021 Marine mammals are thought to have an energetically expensive lifestyle because endothermy is costly in marine environments. However, measurements of total energy expenditure (TEE; kcal day-1) are available only for a limited number of marine mammals, beca ... Full text Cite

Total energy expenditure of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) of different ages.

Journal Article The Journal of experimental biology · July 6, 2021 Marine mammals are thought to have an energetically expensive lifestyle because endothermy is costly in marine environments. However, measurements of total energy expenditure (TEE; kcal/day) are available only for a limited number of marine mammals, becaus ... Full text Cite

Hotter and sicker: External energy expenditure and the tangled evolutionary roots of anthropogenic climate change and chronic disease.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · July 2021 BackgroundThe dual crises of climate change and chronic, or non-communicable, disease (NCD) have emerged worldwide as the global economy has industrialized over the past two centuries.AimsIn this synthesis I examine humans' dependence on ... Full text Cite

How can evolutionary and biological anthropologists engage broader audiences?

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · July 2021 ObjectivesWith our diverse training, theoretical and empirical toolkits, and rich data, evolutionary and biological anthropologists (EBAs) have much to contribute to research and policy decisions about climate change and other pressing social issu ... Full text Cite

Determinants of climbing energetic costs in humans.

Journal Article The Journal of experimental biology · July 2021 Previous studies in primates and other animals have shown that mass-specific cost of transport (J kg-1 m-1) for climbing is independent of body size across species, but little is known about within-species allometry of climbing costs or the effects of diff ... Full text Cite

Energetic and endurance constraints on great ape quadrupedalism and the benefits of hominin bipedalism.

Journal Article Evolutionary anthropology · July 2021 Bipedal walking was one of the first key behavioral traits that defined the evolution of early hominins. While it is not possible to identify specific selection pressures underlying bipedal evolution, we can better understand how the adoption of bipedalism ... Full text Cite

Drinking water salinity is associated with hypertension and hyperdilute urine among Daasanach pastoralists in Northern Kenya.

Journal Article The Science of the total environment · May 2021 Water salinity is a growing global environmental health concern. However, little is known about the relation between water salinity and chronic health outcomes in non-coastal, lean populations. Daasanach pastoralists living in northern Kenya traditionally ... Full text Cite

Gendered movement ecology and landscape use in Hadza hunter-gatherers.

Journal Article Nature human behaviour · April 2021 Understanding how gendered economic roles structure space use is critical to evolutionary models of foraging behaviour, social organization and cognition. Here, we examine hunter-gatherer spatial behaviour on a very large scale, using GPS devices worn by H ... Full text Cite

Evolution of water conservation in humans.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · April 2021 To sustain life, humans and other terrestrial animals must maintain a tight balance of water gain and water loss each day.1-3 However, the evolution of human water balance physiology is poorly understood due to the absence of comparative measure ... Full text Cite

Childhood Daily Energy Expenditure Does Not Decrease with Market Integration and Is Not Related to Adiposity in Amazonia.

Journal Article The Journal of nutrition · March 2021 BackgroundChildhood overweight and obesity (OW/OB) is increasingly centered in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as rural populations experience market integration and lifeway change. Most explanatory studies have relied on imprecise estima ... Full text Cite

Metabolism myths

Journal Article New Scientist · February 27, 2021 To discover the truth about diet and exercise, we need to look at our evolutionary past, says anthropologist Herman Pontzer ... Full text Cite

A standard calculation methodology for human doubly labeled water studies.

Journal Article Cell Rep Med · February 16, 2021 The doubly labeled water (DLW) method measures total energy expenditure (TEE) in free-living subjects. Several equations are used to convert isotopic data into TEE. Using the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) DLW database (5,756 measurements of adu ... Full text Link to item Cite

Hydration in relation to water insecurity, heat index, and lactation status in two small-scale populations in hot-humid and hot-arid environments.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · January 2021 Featured Publication ObjectivesThis study compared the prevalence of concentrated urine (urine specific gravity ≥1.021), an indicator of hypohydration, across Tsimane' hunter-forager-horticulturalists living in hot-humid lowland Bolivia and Daasanach agropastoralists ... Full text Cite

Metabolism myths

Journal Article NEW SCIENTIST · 2021 Cite

External Energy Exploitation and the Shared Evolutionary Roots of Climate Change and Chronic Disease

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2021 Cite

Daily Physical Activity is Associated with Suppressed Immune Activity in US Adults

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2021 Cite

Distinct patterns of early childhood growth represent variation in life history strategy among Daasanach pastoralists living in Northern Kenya

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2021 Cite

Interbirth interval and age at first reproduction in populations with disparate energy status

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2021 Cite

Effects of physical activity and relatedness on metabolic phenotype in ring-tailed lemurs

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2021 Cite

Ageing and physical function in East African foragers and pastoralists.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · November 2020 Human lifespans are exceptionally long compared with those of other primates. A key element in exploring the evolution of human longevity is understanding how modern humans grow older. Our current understanding of common age-related changes in human health ... Full text Cite

Air temperature and diet influence body composition and water turnover in zoo-living African elephants (Loxodonta africana).

Journal Article Royal Society open science · November 2020 African elephants, the largest land animal, face particular physiological challenges in captivity and the wild. Captive elephants can become over- or under-conditioned with inadequate exercise and diet management. Few studies have quantified body compositi ... Full text Cite

Ranging Ecology: The View from Above.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · November 2020 Featured Publication Animals use a variety of strategies to navigate their world, but few are thought to have detailed mental maps of their landscapes. New research with our closest relatives suggests chimpanzees may use cognitive maps to find the most energy efficient routes. ... Full text Cite

Air temperature and diet influence body composition and water turnover in zoo-living African elephants (Loxodonta africana): Water turnover in African elephants

Journal Article Royal Society Open Science · November 1, 2020 African elephants, the largest land animal, face particular physiological challenges in captivity and the wild. Captive elephants can become over- or under-conditioned with inadequate exercise and diet management. Few studies have quantified body compositi ... Full text Cite

How to sit

Journal Article New Scientist · July 18, 2020 Far from being a fast track to ill-health, sitting can be good for us, find Herman Pontzer and David Raichlen. The trick is how you do it ... Full text Cite

Prevalence and predictors of dehydration across distinct water insecure contexts: The Water Insecurity, Stress, and Hydration (WISH) study among Tsimane' in lowland Bolivia and Daasanach in northern Kenya

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY · April 1, 2020 Link to item Cite

The effect of lifestyle variation on health and life history in Daasanach pastoralists of Northern Kenya

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY · April 1, 2020 Link to item Cite

Sitting, squatting, and the evolutionary biology of human inactivity.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · March 2020 Recent work suggests human physiology is not well adapted to prolonged periods of inactivity, with time spent sitting increasing cardiovascular disease and mortality risk. Health risks from sitting are generally linked with reduced levels of muscle contrac ... Full text Open Access Cite