Why Do Humans And Primates Get More Stress-related Diseases Than Other Animals?

The short answer being purveyed here is that we have emotionally-rich lives and time off from calorie-gathering and escaping predators. A pretty interesting article which has a further kicker for those of us interested in the place of religion in evolutionary terms.

"But once you control for that, religiosity in and of itself is good for your health in some ways, although less than some of its advocates would have you believe," Sapolsky said. "It infuriates me, because I'm an atheist, so it makes me absolutely crazy, but it makes perfect sense. If you have come up with a system that not only tells you why things are but is capped off with certain knowledge that some thing or things respond preferentially to you, you're filling a whole lot of pieces there--gaining some predictability, attribution, social support and control over the scariest realms of our lives."

Usual caveat: evolution is incapable either of proving or disproving God: in this case either God is helping things providentially towards fulfilment in godliness or blind evolution has thrown up an anomaly that make us function better with the 'fiction' of God. A furthre twist to the cosmological argument, but nothing essentially new.
ScienceDaily: Why Do Humans And Primates Get More Stress-related Diseases Than Other Animals?: Filed in: stress, religion, evolution, primates, health