Sunday, July 30, 2006

How we are bigger and healthier

From NYTimes:

People of Valentin Keller’s era, like those before and after them, expected to develop chronic diseases by their 40’s or 50’s. Keller’s descendants had lung problems, they had heart problems, they had liver problems. They died in their 50’s or 60’s.

Now, though, life has changed. The family’s baby boomers are reaching middle age and beyond and are doing fine....

The Keller family illustrates what may prove to be one of the most striking shifts in human existence — a change from small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable....

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.

Whenever I read "aint' it awful" articles about "the aging of America" or Europe, or about the terrible obesity epidemic, I compare it to what I saw thirty years ago in Africa....there, women were old at 45...and the number of people in villages who had poorly healed limb fractures or arthritis made the burden of disease much heavier than in the present day USA, where "ethicists" are moaning that we need medical rationing for older people....and living in the Philippines, one sees it here.

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