A Medical Mystery of the Best Kind: Major Diseases Are In Decline (nytimes.com)

Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from the New York Times: Something strange is going on in medicine. Major diseases, like colon cancer, dementia and heart disease, are waning in wealthy countries, and improved diagnosis and treatment cannot fully explain it...it looks as if people in the United States and some other wealthy countries are, unexpectedly, starting to beat back the diseases of aging. The leading killers are still the leading killers -- cancer, heart disease, stroke -- but they are occurring later in life, and people in general are living longer in good health.
The Times cites one researcher's pet theory that the cellular process of aging itself may be gradually changing in humans' favor.

Comments

Environmental impacts?

[Chrisq]

Previous generations worked with asbestos without precautions they would have to have today, had lead in the petrol, and eat food with additives that are now banned. Not to mention rarely using sunscreen and smoking more. It's hardly a surprise that things are improving.

Re:Environmental impacts?

[Mr0bvious]

will contribute positively in ALL, 100%, of aspects of life.

Citation required.

Re:Environmental impacts?

[spineboy]

Smoking is probably the biggest factor, although drinking less helps a bit as well. It would be amusing to see if something reviled, like high fructose corn syrup, was partially responsible for decreasing colon cancer. Granted - the people dying now are around 80, and so their eating/living habits to produce their health will be interesting to compare to todays younger people.

Re:Environmental impacts?

[clovis]

Maybe something like that.
The paper says the falloff in these diseases began in the 1960's, so we're talking about people born late 1800's to early 1900's.
It would not be due to asbestos use/disuse. Asbestos was a fairly new product - peak usage was around the 1960's and the symptoms take many years to decades to show, so if there were a relationship between the major diseases and asbestos, it would suggest that asbestos is good for you. (Note: I'm saying this means there is no relationship; I am not claiming that asbestos is good for you)

Same for food additives - the first generation to experience the falloff in diseases weren't raised on the wide rage of additives we have today, but rather just salt and nitrites for preservation. The drop-off in use of nitrites may explain some of the dropoff in colon cancer rates, but that is controversial.

The generation that would be dying in the 1960's and after would be the last generation that grew up dependent upon wood fires for heating and cooking .
Burning wood produces a witch's brew of chemicals including aromatic hydrocarbons.
And also there's the drop-off in cigarette smoking in recent generations.

Another thing that's different is recent generations are the first in which most people did not have the panoply of childhood diseases that used to be so common.
Measles, mumps, the chicken pox, etc have many serious side effects.

Pretty sure I know why these are on the decline

[Vermonter]

I'm willing to bet it is because sometime around 1990 or so we took something out of our diets... some synthetic additive or something, that was a big player in many cancers, but was never linked.

It is cell phone towers and remote control

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The reduction in diseases coincides with the rise of cordless phones and cell phones. The 900 MHz baby monitors and cordless phones first and then the 5.8 GHz cordless phone spectrum were phased in. Then came the cell phones and the IR remote control became ubiquitous and some remotes started using the 900 MHz and 5.8 GHz band (through the wall remotes for TiVo in another room).

During the cell division process radiation in these bands help tighten up the telemerese at the end of DNA. Every time the cell replicates the first few hundred basepairs come untangled, frayed and do not replicate well. But our DNA has very long sections on either end to cushion for the loss. Eventually the cushion is lost and actual genes start getting messed up and lost. That is how ageing happens. The radiation in these bands have positive effect in reducing the amount of fraying during cell replication.

Watch out pseudo scientists. Like real science, pseudo science is also cuts both ways. One can use it to spread fear and paranoia about any new technology or it can be used to ascribe totally unwarranted benefits to new things too.

How, with such crappy diet and pollution?

[Theovon]

At the same time, we’re eating a really horrible nutrient-poor diet made up of industrial foods designed to make us want to eat more industrial foods. Plus we’ve got massive amounts of pollution from burning petrolium, hormones in the ground water, antibiotics in our foods, PBA from our food containers, and all manner of other junk ruining our health. Some people are still stuck on this bogus idea that autism is caused by vaccines, while they continue to eat a horrible diet and pollute their bodies in other ways that are much more likely to account for this measurable increase in the rate of autism (not quite explained by just an increased rate of diagnosis).

This brings up an idea that my wife pointed out. In recent history, there has been an increase in the rate of transgendered individuals. This has resulted in political polarization, where some people are demonizing them and others are saying that body dismorphic disorder is somehow a good thing. Both are wrong. People with body dismorphic disorder have every right to their dignity and to manage and adjust their bodies as they see fit. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an external cause, and we think a major factor is all of these hormines being pumped into the water supply. Lots of women take birth control pills, which is putting estrogen and progesterone into the water, and hormones are given to food animals. These are having an impact on development in fetuses and young children. So the next time some fundamnetalist asshole tries to tell you that there’s something BAD about people who have gender identiy issues, you can point out to them that we, as a society, did this to them. It’s our fault for poisoning the water and food. And the consequences are that more people with gender identity issues, and this is something we have to accept, and we have to treat these people like human beings and stop trying to put forth the idea that these people are crazy or making immoral choices.

Re:How, with such crappy diet and pollution?

[EzInKy]

Perhaps those industrialized foods just aren't as bad for us as some people would like them to be? I don't know for sure but it could be we just need more data before we jump to conclusions? Who could ever forget the fiasco that followed the directives that cholesterol was bad for you? Talk about your increases in diabetes and dementia that came about because of that! It helps no one to jump on a train heading down the wrong track.

Re:How, with such crappy diet and pollution?

[Opportunist]

You're eating far healthier than your "all natural" ancestors did 150 years ago. Look up ergotism, something we don't even know anymore used to be a real problem less than a hundred years ago. Refrigeration was unknown a century ago and only half a century ago it became widespread. "Best before" used to be "oh it doesn't smell TOO bad, if we cook it it just might be ok". Drinking water is ... hell, even the crap that comes out of the taps in the south east of the US is better and less contaminated than most of the stuff our ancestors pumped out of wells they dug themselves.

And we actually have LESS pollution today than we had 100-150 years ago, when nobody gave a shit that untreated sewage was dumped into the rivers and seas where we get our fishes from. What we see in China today was very real over here with us not that long ago. Smog you can cut with a knife, kids that have lungs like someone dying from lung cancer after a life of heavy smoking, rivers you can't put your booted foot into fearing that not only the boot would be gone if you leave it in too long. That was the reality in our industrial centers in the 1800s.

The "good old times" were much, but certainly not healthy!

Re:How, with such crappy diet and pollution?

[Opportunist]

Another reason for having "more" transgendered people is simply that they now dare to actually come out instead of just living a lie and maybe, MAYBE, having a little private secret where they can at least for themselves, when nobody is looking, be themselves.

I don't think that it's really more people being that way. It's just more people daring to not pretend they aren't.

Re:How, with such crappy diet and pollution?

[jbmartin6]

How can you claim there is an increase in the rate of transgendered individuals? Granted there is certainly an increase in people stating they have this condition. But there's no evidence for an increase in numbers, merely more open attitudes towards it.

Re:Not on my channel they aren't

[jeffasselin]

Police violence, rape and autism only appear to have increased recently. The evidence shows they haven't.

What seems to be happening is that they are reported/accounted/diagnosed better. You hear more about them thanks to new channels. Violence against blacks in many areas of the US (as well as violence against minorities in general worldwide) has been common and stable over the recent past (correcting for the general drop in violence in industrialized countries since the late 70s that many attribute to removal of lead in gasoline). The general media had mostly ignored some of those issues. But they can't do so anymore now because of the prevalence of cell phones (video evidence), citizen reporting (blogs, twitter, facebook, etc) and new ways of organizing movements online.

Note that I chose those three exemples because of their clear recent increase in reporting and news coverage. For what it's worth (and will do to my karma) I support #BLM, social justice movements and I am convinced vaccines have nothing to do with autism.