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What's interesting is what this article doesn't mention. Take, for example, antibiotics. It's easy to take these miraculous little pills for granted even thoug
by aazaa 7y ago
What's interesting is what this article doesn't mention. Take, for example, antibiotics.
It's easy to take these miraculous little pills for granted even though we've had them for fewer than 100 years. Take one wrong step, make one bad food decision, or cut yourself building something and it could be game over.
For example, take Calvin Coolidge Jr.:
> ... while playing lawn tennis with his brother on the White House grounds, sixteen-year-old Calvin, Jr. developed a blister atop the third toe of his right foot. Before long, the boy began to feel ill and ran a fever. Signs of a blood infection appeared, but despite doctors’ best efforts, young Calvin, Jr. was dead within a week.
https://www.coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-medical-context-of-calvin-jr-s-untimely-death/ https://www.coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-medical-context-...
Lincoln's son, William, died from typhoid fever. I bring up these two cases because the children of well-to-do, powerful men dying from these diseases today would be a scandal. But not long ago, it was to be expected from time to time.
I'd be curios whether Lynx has ever had to go to the hospital for an infection, or maybe childbirth.
- chrisco255 7y agoIsn't it generally a temporary lifestyle to teach lessons about self-reliance and adaptiveness and not some permanent lifestyle like say, the Amish, who do use modern healthcare despite living a 19th century lifestyle?
- asdkjh345fd 7y agoThe amish don't make any particular effort or have any particular desire to live a 19th century lifestyle. They simply avoid technology that they consider to have more downsides than upsides.
- blululu 7y agoThe Amish are more opposed to greed than technology. The two often go hand in hand but not always - individual congregations decide for themselves.
- jdkee 7y agoAlso protected from some nasty bugs by herd immunity from the vaccinated.
- btilly 7y agoTo be fair, we got those nasty bugs from domesticating herd animals who lived in herds big enough to support them Hunting gatherers didn't have to worry about most of those diseases either.
- lordnacho 7y agoI always bring up Darwin when thinking such thoughts. Rich guy as well, I think his father was a businessman. But the thing about Darwin is he articulated just how cruel nature can be while being a victim himself. Something near half his kids died.
- nemo1618 7y agoDarwin also suffered from chronic health problems for his entire adult life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Charles_Darwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Charles_Darwin "For over forty years Darwin suffered intermittently from various combinations of symptoms such as: malaise, vertigo, dizziness, muscle spasms and tremors, vomiting, cramps and colics, bloating and nocturnal intestinal gas, headaches, alterations of vision, severe tiredness, nervous exhaustion, dyspnea, skin problems such as blisters all over the scalp and eczema, crying, anxiety, sensation of impending death and loss of consciousness, fainting, tachycardia, insomnia, tinnitus, and depression." The time integral of his suffering must be enormous. I'm a little horrified that a man so famous can suffer so much, and yet almost no one knows about it. They remember him for his achievements; but the countless days he spent in pain are forgotten.
- JJMcJ 7y agoSome think it was Chagas disease, contracted while he was in South America during the Beagle's voyage.
- jl2718 7y agoI’ve just discovered that I’ve been living for with blood parasites from my travels many years ago. It’s been really terrible, chronic inflammation, years of doctors telling me that nothing is wrong. I only discovered it because one of the symptoms got so bad without explanation that I bought and refubished an old microscope and started looking at things for the last few months. First I saw their eggs, and I thought they were white blood cells. There were millions of them, but my WBC counts came back low. After a few months I finally saw one of the little monsters. I sent photos to my doctors and they ignored them. Finally, I got a video call with a doctor, went through the whole procedure with them and found one on the call. This got their attention, but they couldn’t re-order labs because they had already come back negative. The proper tests/treatment are very specific and expensive in the US, nearly impossible to get approved by insurance, although they are given for free in the third world. This stuff happens. Native people generally develop some form of neonatal immunity or tolerance. Travelers mostly stay safe in leisure travel, but some studies show it to be less rare than expected. For me it took a combination of an untreated flesh wound, and a flood of contaminated water. I’m reminded of the blood parasites support group in Fight Club. I can’t even begin to tell you how much of my life I’ve lost to this.
- jacobush 7y agoThere is a lot she won't die of too, like obesity.
- cortesoft 7y agoSure, but we objectively have a lot longer lifespan now than we did pre-antibiotics. Obesity is bad, but unchecked bacteria is worse.
- loktarogar 7y agoThe majority of the world not living 200k years in the past won't die to obesity, either.
- jacobush 7y agoA majority in the US will. Edit: maybe it's not in fashion to listen to the CDC in these times, but: "Obesity is a serious concern because it is associated with poorer mental health outcomes, reduced quality of life, and the leading causes of death in the U.S. and worldwide, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer." [0] Emphasis mine. 0: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes.html
- loktarogar 7y agoThey won't die to it because they don't have it - while the percentage of people who are obese in the US is higher than other parts of the world, it's still not a majority.
- naeemtee 7y agoNo, jacobush, the majority of people in the US will not die of obesity.
- zodiac 7y ago"Leading cause" means that among causes of death obesity would be the plularity, not the majority
- 7y ago
- tropdrop 7y agoI keep thinking of all of the young women on her retreats - since they're living completely in the wild for 30 days, what do they do about menstruation? I wish the article mentioned what her primitive solutions are (if any) for some of the more gross inconveniences of being human.
- amwelles 7y agoMy guess would be that they wear and wash reusable pads. There are modern versions of these, too! Thinx is the big name brand. Either that or they don’t use anything. Not to get too personal, but it’s not always necessary to use something aside from regular undergarments.
- ido 7y agoI read menstruation cups are encouraged in poor countries where women can't afford disposable pads, maybe that?
- smabie 7y agoThey could just take birth control.
- samatman 7y agoOne traditional solution is cattail fluff.
- evjim 7y agoPresident Garfield died from blood poisoning too. But interestingly, they think if he wasn't well to do he would have survived. Many poor people who fought in the civil war walked away with bullets still inside them and no healthcare to remove it. But Garfield being president had all sorts of excessive medical attention before proper sanitation procedures were common in US medical practice. By the way I've just read Candice Miller's book on him and find her writing style great.
- JJMcJ 7y agoBoth he and President McKinley had their wounds probed excessively, under not too sanitary conditions. With modern medical procedures, both would have likely survived.
- vinrob92 7y agoActually in several cases bullets are not removed as removing them may cause further damage: https://www.carenade.com/blog/bullet-time/ https://www.carenade.com/blog/bullet-time/
- watwut 7y ago> But interestingly, they think if he wasn't well to do he would have survived. Many poor people who fought in the civil war walked away with bullets still inside them Many of those poor soldiers died - including from infections.
- simonh 7y agoNobody is saying they didn't, that isn't the point being made.
- rozab 7y agoI get the impression that she lives the way she does because it makes her happy, not because of religion or ideology, like the Amish. She has no problem sending out emails to get in touch with people, and she has her solar panels and phone.
- qplex 7y agoThis is a good point. We might have antibiotics to fight serious infections but the modern way of living is still slowly killing us in many other ways.
- smabie 7y agoWell if we went back to the "old" way of living, it would very quickly kill almost all of us.
- idclip 7y agoA hammer and a hard place. We have alot to improve - I had days when i down right thought “this is hell”, when deeply thinking about “modern” life and the exploitation and existential issues needed to maintain it. I honestly wouldnt choose us, if i was starting a new. on the other hand murder or genocide arent an option either, so we have to improve, somehow, or suffer badly. Some of us already have no choice.
- GoofballJones 7y agoExactly this. The "old" way of living, you were considered in your old age if you made it to your 40s.
- mackrevinack 7y agotoday, kids think that being 30+ is old
- 2038AD 7y ago
- Alex3917 7y ago> It's easy to take these miraculous little pills for granted even though we've had them for fewer than 100 years. We've had effective antibiotics for thousands of years. When penicillin was first isolated in 1928, there was so little demand for it that it took over a decade before anyone even bothered working on a way to commercialize it. It wasn't particularly difficult to commercialize, but no one actually cared. Modern antibiotics are mostly only necessary if you get shot or you're a burn victim or something, which is why no one cared until WWII. Also, some of the berberine plants that were used before that were starting to become less common around that time. If we didn't have effective antibiotics before penicillin then human life expectancy would have gone way up after the discovery of penicillin. But looking at the data, it's pretty obvious that that didn't actually happen. Pretty much every scientific paper agrees with this, e.g.: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.66.12.1180 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.66.12... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8007898 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8007898
- jdm2212 7y ago> When penicillin was first isolated in 1928, there was so little demand for it that it took over a decade before anyone even bothered working on a way to commercialize it. That's false. Penicillin was discovered in 1928. It took until 1940 for researchers to show it could cure infections. It was put to use in a human the next year, and Fleming won the Nobel Prize in 1945. Infections that could be cured by penicillin (staph and strep) were on their own never a leading cause of death, and so you wouldn't expect penicillin on its own to drive big life expectancy improvements.
- Alex3917 7y ago> It took until 1940 for researchers to show it could cure infections. Because they didn't start working on it until 1939.
- jdm2212 7y agoThat's how research works. You have to wait for the researcher with the right skill set to attack the problem in the right way. Sometimes it takes a few years.
- kazinator 7y agoNot to mention that she probably had a bunch of shots while growing up in London.
- arthurcolle 7y agoDidn't realize antibiotics were only available in less than 100 years. Amazing progress in so little time. Makes me realize we are much better equipped to fight biological threats than ever before.
- pedrosorio 7y agohttps://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20150417/superbugs-what-they-are https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20150417/superbugs-...