Hernias and lower back pain are caused by our upright posture.

Some hernias are caused by lifting an object incorrectly. Our ancestors (millions of years ago) never lifted things the way we do today. Muscles and supporting tissues in our lower abdomen (lower belly) are not built to take those vertical forces. Sometimes the body "gives" and a portion of the internal organs bulge outward, held in by only the skin! Not only is this painful but it can also be deadly. Surgery may be required to fix it.

People in their old age (especially heavy people) often suffer from lower back pain due to decades of an upright existence in a body poorly designed to handle the weight in that direction. Also, lifting heavy objects can put unusual strain on the body causing damage to the muscles and supporting tissue of the lower back.

Hernias and lower back pain are caused by a poorly designed human body. Natural selection "forced "our ancestors into an upright position in order to free the hands but didn't have time to fix everything. Instead, we "get by" with life's little errors.

It's not unusual for natural selection to make "mistakes". These mistakes are often a trade off between two different things. The advantages of an upright posture far outweigh the disadvantages it causes. Still, a good engineer would have seen the problem coming and included additional support to the back and lower body. Natural selection is "blind" to the future. It cannot see a problem coming, it can only respond to the trouble once it arrives. Apparently it's more difficult for nature to find and select the mutations that would fix our "posture problems" than it is to give us the problem in the first place. Regardless, having free use of our hands is a small price to pay, so natural selection caused us to evolve upright.

Lower back pain is just one of the mistakes natural selection has made in human evolution. There's another great "trade off" that natural selection made in the evolution of humans. Can you think of it? What has been the most significant step in our evolution? Think about what makes us "special" among animals and the problem that it can cause.