Objective and methods: In order to survive, organisms must pursue and capture prey to avoid starvation, and must either fight or flight to avoid being killed by predators. The starvation-resistance and risk-management systems were of great importance to humans for survival in ancient times. However, given the evolutionary time scale, humans seem not to be well adapted to modern times. Urbanization often puts the risk-management system in motion due to modern stressors, and can induce over-activation of the risk-management system.
Results: As a result, central sensitization and classical conditioning of the over-risk-management can occur due to repeated assaults, fears, or even anticipation of the modern predators. We refer to those diseases as risk-management syndrome, defined as an illness caused by the central sensitization and classical conditioning of over-risk-management without apparent organic damage.
Conclusion: These syndromes classified by each pathophysiological background, i.e. risk-management and metabolic syndromes are two major syndromes associated with urbanization.