Modern Humans Far More Robust Than Ancestors

joeljkp writes "The New York Times has an article up discussing how modern humans are 'So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn't Even Know You.' Despite the hyperbole, the article makes several excellent points regarding the impact of antibiotics and modern medicine on humans in their youth. The 'baby boomers' of today have an overall level of health far higher than their parents did in middle age, and reason stands that their children will have even better health to look forward to." From the article: "The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today, according to a federal study that directly measures it. And that is not just because medical treatments like cataract surgery keep people functioning. Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before. Even the human mind seems improved. The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades, and at least one study found that a person's chances of having dementia in old age appeared to have fallen in recent years."

Comments

I doubt it.

[Spazntwich]

I think we may have peaked with the baby boomers. They got to ride the wave of new medical advances and didn't have the weight of fast food (har har) holding them back.

Our generations (current teenagers up to 30-somethings) have grown up with McDonalds and more, and with obesity on the rise with no end in sight, I think we'll begin to see another decline with our generation, with arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease all coming on earlier.

Re:I doubt it.

[ColdWetDog]

I don't think it's going to be as black and white as this. We're in the midst of an ever changing, ever expanding experiment. Certainly, there are populations that will become increasingly ill (those who survive on fast foods, cigarettes and whose exercise appears to encompass all of walking to their car).

There are, however, large groups of people that are doing quite the opposite (as described in TFA). We have a better chance to see exactly what keeps people going longer, better.

As a physician, these are fascinating studies, although I wonder just how good the "data" is from the 1800's. Skimming some of the abstracts from the original data, they use Nasty Statistical Thingys to impute and imply things which always makes me wonder (there's a reason I went into the Biological sciences as opposed to math and physics) how much their working the data to get thier conclusions, but they've stuck to some clever data points to prove the bulk of thier thesis (body mass index which just relies on weight and height).

Again, we have the potential for creating a much more fined grained dataset if we could ever come up with a consistent language for describing health and disease and come up with a near universal, lifelong, electronic record so that these sorts of issues can be teased out.

Already, quite a lot of this sort of data is coming from the Scandanavians who 1) have a much less diverse population than the US 2) have had more centralized, coherent and universal medical records than the US.

So toss the pizza and cigarettes, unplug the computer and take a hike.

Re:I doubt it.

[kfg]

. . .the weight of fast food (har har) holding them back.

Have you never heard the phrase "greasy spoon"?

As a baby boomer let me inform you that McDonald's started serving fried burgers because that's where the demand already was. In fact, their food is a damned sight less greasy than was typical in prior times. Many older people go so far as to bemoan the fact that they can't get a properly greasy burger anymore, only that McDonald's crap.

We used to use butter as a staple. The five gallon can of lard/Crisco could be found in nearly any home's pantry. Fat puddings were revered. Colonel Sanders did not invent fried chicken.

Don't believe everything you read in the papers. If you'd ever been interviewed by one you'd know they're full of shit.

KFG

Re:Increasing IQ's?

[BrainInAJar]

What I find funny is the line "The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades", because if it has, someone dropped the ball...

The average IQ is 100, by definition if IQ. That's what the tests are normalized for.

War

[Mark_MF-WN]

You may be underestimating the breeding potential of soldiers. Yes, those who die in war don't get to spread their genes around as much at home. But they get a disproportionate number of opportunities to spread their genes around abroad. The number of French children with an American, German, or British daddy after WW1 was astounding. The same goes for British children after WW2, and no small number of German children. Canadian and American vets with an English wife that they met during the war were so common that it's a cliche.

Women dig out-of-towners, and occupying soldiers are just about the manliest out-of-towners anyone will ever meet. Plus, during an occupation, soldiers typically have the best food, sundries, and other assorted things that are great to have. The point being, it's entirely possible that the drive for war exists precisely because we evolved to wage war as a way of periodically spreading and mixing different gene pools. Just something to think about.