10 ms·

Interested in how common broken bones are today, I stumbled across this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12111017/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/121110

Interested in how common broken bones are today, I stumbled across this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12111017/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12111017/ > There were 6451 men and 6936 women followed for a median of 3.0 years. During this time there were 140 incident limb fractures in men and 391 in women. Whereas OP's archaeological study had: > Fractures were more prevalent in males (40%, n = 57/143) than females (26%, n = 25/95).

radu_floricica 6y ago
Age, maybe? Primary cause for fractures nowadays is osteoporosis, which AFAIK is more serious to women after menopause. Primary cause historically was accidents, with the opposite distribution.
- greatpatton 6y ago
  Sport? I mean almost all the people I know had a broken bone or joint issue because of sport and then you have domestic accident. For instance in Switzerland each year you have 550k non-professional accident (declared one to your employer) for 8.5M inhabitants. (Ref: SUVA annual report but only available in GE and FR)
- hammock 6y ago
  Why is osteoporosis so prevalent in modern age? Diet?
  - nickff 6y ago
    Osteoporosis is (largely) an old person's disease, and people are now living long enough to get it.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    People just live longer.
  - stan_rogers 6y ago
    That, and like many cancers, just a larger number of people living long enough to fall victim to it. Women developing what are usually postmenopausal issues more or less requires living to and through menopause. (Yes, old people got to be nearly as old as they do now, but getting to be old was much less of a sure thing.)
  - lazide 6y ago
    Theory time - it could be due to reduced natural Vitamin D from lower sun exposure, a mostly sedentary life, combined with less life long physical labor (especially for women, who are severely under-represented in construction and heavy industry, which is about the only places you'd get that kind of exercise in modern society). Lifting weight helps bones get stronger, and Vitamin D is an essential nutrient in proper bone building. 100 years ago even, most people lived and worked on farms in the US (and many other places), now it's single digit percentages - and many of them spend it driving vehicles and similar less physical labor.
    - beckman466 6y ago
      > especially for women, who are severely under-represented in construction and heavy industry Seems an odd thing to mention/focus on. Any specific reason for including this?
      - lazide 6y ago
        Because women have dramatically higher fracture rates due to osteoporosis (and lower bone mineral density in general) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11063899/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11063899/], the only known way (outside of some, last I heard, unproven clinical vibration treatments) to get stronger bones is to lift heavy things while having proper nutrition, and about the only occupational exposure you're going to get to lifting heavy things on a regular basis is those industries? At least as of 2007 those industries (and related industries) were 78% male [https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/06/art2full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/06/art2full.pdf] There is also a similar visible skew in the power lifting, olympic lifting, or weight lifting communities for those into it recreationally. It used to be we all spent more time lifting heavy things. However, post WW2 that has rapidly declined. So one way to reduce or reverse this is if we ALL lifted heavy things more often. From a risk reduction perspective, that seems to be especially valuable for women?
        thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > So one way to reduce or reverse this is if we ALL lifted heavy things more often. From a risk reduction perspective, that seems to be especially valuable for women? Depends; women might be much more prone to injury from lifting heavy things.
  - rodgerd 6y ago
    You'd have to compare across a lot more fine-grained than medieval vs modern (which, in a historical sense, covers the Renaissance through to, well, now). * It's only the last couple of hundred years that a significant body of people doing work that does not have a large physical component - bone density is heavily influenced by stressing the bones regularly through exercise. * It's only the last hundred years that childbirth-related mortality for women has plummeted. A lot of women would die in childbirth. Early industrial revolution era saw some parts of Europe have 20-25% of women die of childbirth. Now it's an extraordinary event. * Following from that, menopause dramatically reduces bone density for women; one reason HRT was such a popular thing in the med-to-late 20th century was that it was seen as a panacea for removing the worst effects of menopause. Unfortunately it creates a lot of issues, as well. * Diets change dramatically. Medieval people ate (generally) much less meat and sugar, but a lot of fresh (when in season) vegetables, some fruit, and a lot of grains. Early industrial food quality plummets as people move to urban areas without the ability to grow their own food. Rickets are a huge, widespread plague on urban poor (places like Glascow had rickets endemic well into the mid 20th century) for most of the modern era. That's just wopk and diet. Consider that the averge medieval person walked everywhere, early moderns likewise, and only from the 19th century onwards did rail, cars, and so on see people getting about without considerable exercise being involved.
bt1a 6y ago
I find it difficult to compare these two sets of figures considering you're looking for fractures at any point in life on the skeletons, and for the study, the people were only followed for a median of 3 years (no need to say 3.0 for median).
- ghaff 6y ago
  And while they were apparently counting fractures that had healed, I assume that's an imperfect exercise for relatively minor, clean fractures from many years prior. I assume a pretty good portion of today's population gets a fracture on a limb at some point in their lives.
- awhitby 6y ago
  It's off topic but there may indeed be a need to say 3.0 rather than 3 for median - the use of a median is orthogonal to the choice of precision. Consider the median of: 2.9, 3.0, 3.1 years.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
Key info missing from your comment: > Men and women aged 50-79 years were recruited from population registers in 31 European centers. They followed older people for 3 years. It is well-known that menopause causes osteoporosis, which makes women more at risk of bone fractures in older age. And in fact this is a study on osteoporosis...
ndiscussion 6y ago
Men have had much more dangerous lives throughout history protecting women. I don't find this to surprising, although it is interesting to note.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  I don’t think it’s to do with protecting women. Males die more and from all sorts of things, even before birth and as infants. In terms of violent death, there is plenty that is unrelated to protecting women. “Men's higher unintentional injury, suicide, and homicide mortality rates are observed in all age groups in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. The sole exception is for homicide of children under the age of 15 years in low- and high-income countries, where the rates for girls are similar to or higher than those for boys.” I’m not sure how you would record whether a death was related to protecting a woman? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222499/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222499/
  - ndiscussion 6y ago
    In my mind, things like fighting in war, working high-risk jobs, etc, all fall under protecting reproductive resources through history. Things like suffocation, drowning, and fire are a bit harder to understand... but I believe they are derived from a high-risk mentality that men have gained as a result of this protector status. Ignoring the radical changes that we've seen in the last 50 years, if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      > if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly. If gender rolls were reversed wouldn’t be many examples where the death toll was high enough for this to occur. In Britain in the 1921 census there were 1,209 single women aged 25 to 29 for every 1,000 men. In 1931 50% were still single, and 35% of them did not marry while still able to bear children. After the war there were about 40% fewer single French men for every unmarried woman, compared to before. Devastating loses but nowhere near enough to threaten the existence of a country. Post WW2 Germany and Russia would also be grim examples. It is of note that the 20th century was the first time that deaths from actual enemy action exceeded deaths from disease during war. https://qz.com/389781/think-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-now-try-france-after-world-war-i/ https://qz.com/389781/think-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-now-t... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_women https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_women
ummonk 6y ago
Seems like a similar ballpark given historical life expectancy
dmurray 6y ago
If I'm reading this right, fractures are actually more prevalent these days? There isn't enough information to be sure - we need to know more about the life expectancy of the medieval subjects and the likelihood of multiple fractures. Eyeballing it suggests yes, but within a factor of 2 either way. Note though that the modern study involved older adults (50-79) who I would guess are more likely to get fractures: osteoporosis and weakened joints outweigh the increased risk from physical activity of younger people.

radu_floricica 6y ago

Age, maybe? Primary cause for fractures nowadays is osteoporosis, which AFAIK is more serious to women after menopause. Primary cause historically was accidents, with the opposite distribution.

greatpatton 6y ago
Sport? I mean almost all the people I know had a broken bone or joint issue because of sport and then you have domestic accident. For instance in Switzerland each year you have 550k non-professional accident (declared one to your employer) for 8.5M inhabitants. (Ref: SUVA annual report but only available in GE and FR)
hammock 6y ago
Why is osteoporosis so prevalent in modern age? Diet?
- nickff 6y ago
  Osteoporosis is (largely) an old person's disease, and people are now living long enough to get it.
- jandrese 6y ago
  People just live longer.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  That, and like many cancers, just a larger number of people living long enough to fall victim to it. Women developing what are usually postmenopausal issues more or less requires living to and through menopause. (Yes, old people got to be nearly as old as they do now, but getting to be old was much less of a sure thing.)
- lazide 6y ago
  Theory time - it could be due to reduced natural Vitamin D from lower sun exposure, a mostly sedentary life, combined with less life long physical labor (especially for women, who are severely under-represented in construction and heavy industry, which is about the only places you'd get that kind of exercise in modern society). Lifting weight helps bones get stronger, and Vitamin D is an essential nutrient in proper bone building. 100 years ago even, most people lived and worked on farms in the US (and many other places), now it's single digit percentages - and many of them spend it driving vehicles and similar less physical labor.
  - beckman466 6y ago
    > especially for women, who are severely under-represented in construction and heavy industry Seems an odd thing to mention/focus on. Any specific reason for including this?
    - lazide 6y ago
      Because women have dramatically higher fracture rates due to osteoporosis (and lower bone mineral density in general) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11063899/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11063899/], the only known way (outside of some, last I heard, unproven clinical vibration treatments) to get stronger bones is to lift heavy things while having proper nutrition, and about the only occupational exposure you're going to get to lifting heavy things on a regular basis is those industries? At least as of 2007 those industries (and related industries) were 78% male [https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/06/art2full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/06/art2full.pdf] There is also a similar visible skew in the power lifting, olympic lifting, or weight lifting communities for those into it recreationally. It used to be we all spent more time lifting heavy things. However, post WW2 that has rapidly declined. So one way to reduce or reverse this is if we ALL lifted heavy things more often. From a risk reduction perspective, that seems to be especially valuable for women?
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > So one way to reduce or reverse this is if we ALL lifted heavy things more often. From a risk reduction perspective, that seems to be especially valuable for women? Depends; women might be much more prone to injury from lifting heavy things.
- rodgerd 6y ago
  You'd have to compare across a lot more fine-grained than medieval vs modern (which, in a historical sense, covers the Renaissance through to, well, now). * It's only the last couple of hundred years that a significant body of people doing work that does not have a large physical component - bone density is heavily influenced by stressing the bones regularly through exercise. * It's only the last hundred years that childbirth-related mortality for women has plummeted. A lot of women would die in childbirth. Early industrial revolution era saw some parts of Europe have 20-25% of women die of childbirth. Now it's an extraordinary event. * Following from that, menopause dramatically reduces bone density for women; one reason HRT was such a popular thing in the med-to-late 20th century was that it was seen as a panacea for removing the worst effects of menopause. Unfortunately it creates a lot of issues, as well. * Diets change dramatically. Medieval people ate (generally) much less meat and sugar, but a lot of fresh (when in season) vegetables, some fruit, and a lot of grains. Early industrial food quality plummets as people move to urban areas without the ability to grow their own food. Rickets are a huge, widespread plague on urban poor (places like Glascow had rickets endemic well into the mid 20th century) for most of the modern era. That's just wopk and diet. Consider that the averge medieval person walked everywhere, early moderns likewise, and only from the 19th century onwards did rail, cars, and so on see people getting about without considerable exercise being involved.

bt1a 6y ago

I find it difficult to compare these two sets of figures considering you're looking for fractures at any point in life on the skeletons, and for the study, the people were only followed for a median of 3 years (no need to say 3.0 for median).

ghaff 6y ago
And while they were apparently counting fractures that had healed, I assume that's an imperfect exercise for relatively minor, clean fractures from many years prior. I assume a pretty good portion of today's population gets a fracture on a limb at some point in their lives.
awhitby 6y ago
It's off topic but there may indeed be a need to say 3.0 rather than 3 for median - the use of a median is orthogonal to the choice of precision. Consider the median of: 2.9, 3.0, 3.1 years.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

Key info missing from your comment: > Men and women aged 50-79 years were recruited from population registers in 31 European centers. They followed older people for 3 years. It is well-known that menopause causes osteoporosis, which makes women more at risk of bone fractures in older age. And in fact this is a study on osteoporosis...

ndiscussion 6y ago

Men have had much more dangerous lives throughout history protecting women. I don't find this to surprising, although it is interesting to note.

lostlogin 6y ago
I don’t think it’s to do with protecting women. Males die more and from all sorts of things, even before birth and as infants. In terms of violent death, there is plenty that is unrelated to protecting women. “Men's higher unintentional injury, suicide, and homicide mortality rates are observed in all age groups in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. The sole exception is for homicide of children under the age of 15 years in low- and high-income countries, where the rates for girls are similar to or higher than those for boys.” I’m not sure how you would record whether a death was related to protecting a woman? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222499/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222499/
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  In my mind, things like fighting in war, working high-risk jobs, etc, all fall under protecting reproductive resources through history. Things like suffocation, drowning, and fire are a bit harder to understand... but I believe they are derived from a high-risk mentality that men have gained as a result of this protector status. Ignoring the radical changes that we've seen in the last 50 years, if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    > if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly. If gender rolls were reversed wouldn’t be many examples where the death toll was high enough for this to occur. In Britain in the 1921 census there were 1,209 single women aged 25 to 29 for every 1,000 men. In 1931 50% were still single, and 35% of them did not marry while still able to bear children. After the war there were about 40% fewer single French men for every unmarried woman, compared to before. Devastating loses but nowhere near enough to threaten the existence of a country. Post WW2 Germany and Russia would also be grim examples. It is of note that the 20th century was the first time that deaths from actual enemy action exceeded deaths from disease during war. https://qz.com/389781/think-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-now-try-france-after-world-war-i/ https://qz.com/389781/think-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-now-t... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_women https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_women

ummonk 6y ago

Seems like a similar ballpark given historical life expectancy

dmurray 6y ago

If I'm reading this right, fractures are actually more prevalent these days? There isn't enough information to be sure - we need to know more about the life expectancy of the medieval subjects and the likelihood of multiple fractures. Eyeballing it suggests yes, but within a factor of 2 either way. Note though that the modern study involved older adults (50-79) who I would guess are more likely to get fractures: osteoporosis and weakened joints outweigh the increased risk from physical activity of younger people.