3 ms·

A bigger question might be "Why is the demand for "wellness" so great?" Generations and generations before us have not had the issues we have currently. You ca

A bigger question might be "Why is the demand for "wellness" so great?" Generations and generations before us have not had the issues we have currently. You can blame diet, environment, activity level, whichever, but clearly there has been a wellness degradation in the last few decades.

jiveturkey42 4y ago
Human bodies are evolutionarily maladapted to sitting at a desk all day
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
Probably because back then people hadn't figured out yet that you could make a lot of money with it. There was no supply and no demand. Wellness had to come into being first. Then grow up and become an industry.
- phasersout 4y ago
  Cities in ancient Rome were full of public baths which were places of communication, cleanliness and wellbeing. Cleopatra even bathed in milk... Wellness as a business is around forever...
jwally 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_Education_Act_of_1994 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_... > The deal that DSHEA and NCCAM made with the public was this: Let the supplement industry have free reign [sic] to market untested products with unsupported claims, and then we’ll fund reliable studies to arm the public with scientific information so they can make good decisions for themselves. This "experiment" (really just a gift to the supplement industry) has been a dismal failure. The result has been an explosion of the supplement industry flooding the marketplace with useless products and false claims.[16]
- cratermoon 4y ago
  Oh hey, another public policy decision driven by the "informed individual choice" dogma and ignoring systemic factors. FYI I'm old enough to have been able to actually see the explosion of supplements and the rise of the supplement industry. It's crazy how much shelf space even in a standard grocery store is taken up by everything from acai berry to zinc lozenges, of which maybe 10% have even promising evidence for being beneficial[1]. Note that Zinc is among the 10%, showing good evidence for reducing the length and severity of colds. However, there are people making a lot of money, and the advice given in this article can't be sold in bottle. 1 https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-scientific-evidence-for-nutritional-supplements-vizsweet/ https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-...
jhbadger 4y ago
Things like cancer, Alzheimer's and so on that are higher in modern times are primarily diseases of the elderly. They were less common prior to recent generations because of the smaller number of people who managed to get to the age where those would be problems. Yes, you can argue that (in some countries but not at all globally) there has been a small decrease in life expectancy over the last couple of decades but that is insignificant compared to the advances made over the last century.

jiveturkey42 4y ago

Human bodies are evolutionarily maladapted to sitting at a desk all day

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

Probably because back then people hadn't figured out yet that you could make a lot of money with it. There was no supply and no demand. Wellness had to come into being first. Then grow up and become an industry.

phasersout 4y ago
Cities in ancient Rome were full of public baths which were places of communication, cleanliness and wellbeing. Cleopatra even bathed in milk... Wellness as a business is around forever...

jwally 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_Education_Act_of_1994 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_... > The deal that DSHEA and NCCAM made with the public was this: Let the supplement industry have free reign [sic] to market untested products with unsupported claims, and then we’ll fund reliable studies to arm the public with scientific information so they can make good decisions for themselves. This "experiment" (really just a gift to the supplement industry) has been a dismal failure. The result has been an explosion of the supplement industry flooding the marketplace with useless products and false claims.[16]

cratermoon 4y ago
Oh hey, another public policy decision driven by the "informed individual choice" dogma and ignoring systemic factors. FYI I'm old enough to have been able to actually see the explosion of supplements and the rise of the supplement industry. It's crazy how much shelf space even in a standard grocery store is taken up by everything from acai berry to zinc lozenges, of which maybe 10% have even promising evidence for being beneficial[1]. Note that Zinc is among the 10%, showing good evidence for reducing the length and severity of colds. However, there are people making a lot of money, and the advice given in this article can't be sold in bottle. 1 https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-scientific-evidence-for-nutritional-supplements-vizsweet/ https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-...

jhbadger 4y ago

Things like cancer, Alzheimer's and so on that are higher in modern times are primarily diseases of the elderly. They were less common prior to recent generations because of the smaller number of people who managed to get to the age where those would be problems. Yes, you can argue that (in some countries but not at all globally) there has been a small decrease in life expectancy over the last couple of decades but that is insignificant compared to the advances made over the last century.