5 ms·

This is not likely. Life expectancy is going down while chronic disease is going up. Most of it has to do with lifestyle in ways the average person isn't aware

by mfer 4y ago

This is not likely. Life expectancy is going down while chronic disease is going up. Most of it has to do with lifestyle in ways the average person isn't aware of. The health care system is more capable than ever before. But, lifestyles that are poor to long term health are taking the trend in the opposite direction.

terran57 4y ago
Exactly, people aren't taking care of themselves so that they don't get the chronic diseases that reduce their lifespans. The majority don't realize that what they do in their middle-age years has a profound impact on their life expectancy.
- artificial 4y ago
  Pay a little for your health now or pay a lot later.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  I'm 29 and healthy to my knowledge. I see a doctor every year. Is there anything in particular I should be doing?
  - yoyohello13 4y ago
    Exercise regularly, ideally a mix of weights and cardio. Eat fruits and vegetables. Don't get too fat. That's pretty much it.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Sleeping well. Getting enough sunlight (even if it is cloudy) for sufficient vitamin D, but also not too much UV radiation that it causes skin cancer. At least that is what you might be able to control.
    - justinator 4y ago
      I would add, "don't drink alcohol", "don't smoke/vape anything", but that's just me.
      - ryandvm 4y ago
        Smoking sure, but mild alcohol use is pretty prevalent in all the blue zones.
        justinator 4y ago
        I think the problem is that it has to be mild, and being an addictive substance, isn't always that easy. Have you not had a friend that had ONE drink, then became a completely different person from that point forward? Multiply that with the fact that alcoholism not only affects the person drinking, but inherited trauma is a really terrible thing. My life expectancy and quality of life have both been severely impacted due to the drinking habits of someone who hasn't even been alive for 20 years. Maybe mild drinking will only impact your person with say: a shittier night sleeping, but a good night's sleep is one of the best things you can do for your health - and isn't even noticable perhaps until you get a few weeks in a row of it, believe me. It's a fine line for advice, as I don't feel I'm a teetotaler, but being a culture where drinking is seen as "perfectly fine, if under control" is also not exactly the right message. My country (USA) can attribute more than a half a million deaths every year to alcohol abuse. That's not a stat one should ignore. I actually haven't had a drink all year (and little last year). I've cut out sugary soda as well - which could be even more impactful to my overall health. As a 40+ year old (that's scary to type), just some observations, given perspective.
  - mfer 4y ago
    Most doctors (in the US anyway) don't cover things until there is a problem. For example, someone can eat a diet that will lead to heart disease. But, doctors won't tell them to make changes until problems are already showing up. This has to do with the way billing works for healthcare in the US. It's billed as sick care. And, most doctors have almost no training on things like nutrition. So the impact of that isn't something they can help with. If I were to suggest self study I would look at a couple things: 1. The Blue Zones. These are areas that researchers have identified where people live longer and thrive for longer. Something like 10x the number of people live past 100. Much lower rates of disease. Looking at how they live. There's a good book on it at https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Zones-Second-Lessons-Longest/dp/1426209487 https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Zones-Second-Lessons-Longest/dp/.... 2. A good book by a dietitian. I like "The Proof Is In The Plants". Despite the author being vegan and the book talking about plants, the book covers meat and dairy along with amounts that are healthy. All of the recommendations include explainations of how this is known. https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Plants-science-plant-based-planet-ebook/dp/B085ZZ21RG https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Plants-science-plant-based-plan...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - 98codes 4y ago
    45 checking in -- essentially, preventative maintenance. Increasingly, a focus on joints and the muscle groups that support them, particularly towards range of movement/flexibility. Annual physicals to catch problems early, ask your parents about family health history if you haven't yet, and don't ignore the small things that linger. The better health habits you can lock in now, the better -- it's only going to get harder from here on out to lay that foundation.
  - diydsp 4y ago
    You're fine until 40. Then you have to earn your existence. You'll slowly begin lifting, stretching, vegetarian eating, cutting out other foods like sugar and saturated fat, getting the proper supplements such as D, B12. Also bringing in lots of fiber, mixing sitting and standing, various forms of stress relief like breathing, meditation, etc. Smart things to get started on now include: skin care, at least SPF and moisturizing, posture - watch out for gluteal amnesia and "cell phone neck," hand/wrist/finger stretching and strain care, eating low-sugar, learning to cook, finding sports/physical activity you can enjoy long-term, taking care of your eyes, follow the 20/20/20 rule, scalp massage to reduce baldness if applicable. Also paperwork: start an organized system that's mirrored and on offline, and get a basic will set up.
    - justinator 4y ago
      >You're fine until 40. Then you have to earn your existence Save up with better health and fitness before your 40 and being 40 won't exactly feel like the end of the world. Before 40 is when you should be doing all the things you note.
    - voisin 4y ago
      > scalp massage to reduce baldness if applicable Is this a thing?
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    Most of the good advice I would summarize as "do what athletes do to achieve higher performance, minus the stuff with known downsides." So, periodized training, quality sleep, managing gut health with a mix of probiotics and fasts, occasional tests to homeostasis to help your body recalibrate. But not the extreme diets, performance-enhancing pharma, heroic training sessions. The way in which I've noticed most people get themselves in trouble when they didn't start from a position of impoverishment is simply because their response to problems is to, instead of noticing and addressing them, to normalize them and spend their energy making arguments to change nothing. Which is basically baby behavior: "no sleep, no food, no potty, wait why am I crying". Everyone does end up being in "poor health" someday, but it's often a case of how long you want to continue to struggle and preserve what you have, and some people seem to give up when they're, like, 17 years old.
  - more_corn 4y ago
    Stop drinking. Build strong exercise habits.
stemlord 4y ago
Healthcare in america is also too expensive
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
But at the same time, we are learning more about different pathways. I think Ozempic and other similar drugs that target the hunger/metabolic pathways will be game changers. While they are expensive and inconvenient now, looking at a horizon of decades, you could easily see them becoming widely adopted.
raghudotcc 4y ago
I agree, I feel chronic diseases due to bad lifestyle is going to be the single biggest cause of mortality unless we figure a way out of it. These things compound and don’t show up as cause for concern until early 30s/40s. You then are left with notions like treatments, management, and maintenance. Even if you end up living like this till 80 or 100, I don’t think you can have the same quality of life that you could have had if it weren’t for them.
goodpoint 4y ago
The word "lifestyle" might imply an amount of blame on individuals but we should not forget: - Healthy food is becoming increasingly expensive and seen as a luxury. The amount of sugar and carbs in the "average" product has been increasing for decades. - Working hours are becoming less equally distributed. A lot of people work way too much, even in highly skilled jobs like lawyers, medicine interns, game developers, while other work less. - Worker rights are being rolled back and many working environments are becoming more competitive.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I think it's proof enough that individuals are the wrong place to focus, that people from much-skinnier countries who visit the US often report gaining quite a bit of weight, even if they try to keep it under control. How are the natives supposed to do any better than foreigners who are starting fairly trim and bringing healthy habits with them from home? The problem is clearly environmental/cultural and must run damned deep if it's that hard to avoid it. Which is terrible news because that's damn hard to fix without top-down initiatives, the likes of which the US has been allergic to since the '80s (though we didn't used to be). [EDIT] By "visit" I mean for years, not tourists.
standardUser 4y ago
> Most of it has to do with lifestyle in ways the average person isn't aware of. Please, enlighten us as to what we're not aware of. If we're to trust your take more than the article, which at least references research in the field.
anonporridge 4y ago
The data tells me you are completely wrong in your assertion. Life expectancy (in the US) has been on a very steady and continuous increase. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life... However, lifespan is a crude metric. Healthspan is really what we should be targeting. I don't want to live to 150 if 60 of those years are spend miserable in a nursing home hooked up to machines keeping me alive.
- standardUser 4y ago
  Life expectancy has actually dropped over the last two years, but it would be some severe cherry-picking to not acknowledge the role COVID played in that, let alone the multi-decade trend of increasing life expectancy overall.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    [dead]
- Retric 4y ago
  Your chart show’s declining life expectancy from 2014-2018, but it’s recent data also disagrees with other sources. “In 2021, an American was expected to live 76.1 years—down 2.8 years from the 2014 peak of 78.9 years. This backslide has erased all life expectancy gains since 1996, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/life-expectancy-is-declining-in-the-us https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/life-expectancy-is-declini... For more data check here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf
  - standardUser 4y ago
    Like I said in my related comment, some severe cherry-picking.
    - Retric 4y ago
miguelazo 4y ago
Not only that, "deaths of despair" have skyrocketed in the US.
defensem3ch 4y ago
the missing piece is all the toxins accumulating and causing disease. most doctors have absolutely zero idea what is going on
Oxidation 4y ago
I talked to a heart surgeon in his late 50s about 10 years ago. "Who knows, we'll all probably live to 100!" I said, lightheartedly (don't remember the exact context). "No", he said, "my generation might, yours is too unfit, too young, to live that long".
disparate_dan 4y ago
> The health care system is more capable than ever before Not to take issue with your main point, but, I’d say that _medicine_ is more capable than ever before, but health care systems are struggling to deliver the benefits to growing populations, for lots of reasons like funding and budgets, education and misinformation, or ideology.

by mfer 4y ago

terran57 4y ago

Exactly, people aren't taking care of themselves so that they don't get the chronic diseases that reduce their lifespans. The majority don't realize that what they do in their middle-age years has a profound impact on their life expectancy.

artificial 4y ago
Pay a little for your health now or pay a lot later.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I'm 29 and healthy to my knowledge. I see a doctor every year. Is there anything in particular I should be doing?
- yoyohello13 4y ago
  Exercise regularly, ideally a mix of weights and cardio. Eat fruits and vegetables. Don't get too fat. That's pretty much it.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Sleeping well. Getting enough sunlight (even if it is cloudy) for sufficient vitamin D, but also not too much UV radiation that it causes skin cancer. At least that is what you might be able to control.
  - justinator 4y ago
    I would add, "don't drink alcohol", "don't smoke/vape anything", but that's just me.
    - ryandvm 4y ago
      Smoking sure, but mild alcohol use is pretty prevalent in all the blue zones.
      - justinator 4y ago
        I think the problem is that it has to be mild, and being an addictive substance, isn't always that easy. Have you not had a friend that had ONE drink, then became a completely different person from that point forward? Multiply that with the fact that alcoholism not only affects the person drinking, but inherited trauma is a really terrible thing. My life expectancy and quality of life have both been severely impacted due to the drinking habits of someone who hasn't even been alive for 20 years. Maybe mild drinking will only impact your person with say: a shittier night sleeping, but a good night's sleep is one of the best things you can do for your health - and isn't even noticable perhaps until you get a few weeks in a row of it, believe me. It's a fine line for advice, as I don't feel I'm a teetotaler, but being a culture where drinking is seen as "perfectly fine, if under control" is also not exactly the right message. My country (USA) can attribute more than a half a million deaths every year to alcohol abuse. That's not a stat one should ignore. I actually haven't had a drink all year (and little last year). I've cut out sugary soda as well - which could be even more impactful to my overall health. As a 40+ year old (that's scary to type), just some observations, given perspective.
- mfer 4y ago
  Most doctors (in the US anyway) don't cover things until there is a problem. For example, someone can eat a diet that will lead to heart disease. But, doctors won't tell them to make changes until problems are already showing up. This has to do with the way billing works for healthcare in the US. It's billed as sick care. And, most doctors have almost no training on things like nutrition. So the impact of that isn't something they can help with. If I were to suggest self study I would look at a couple things: 1. The Blue Zones. These are areas that researchers have identified where people live longer and thrive for longer. Something like 10x the number of people live past 100. Much lower rates of disease. Looking at how they live. There's a good book on it at https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Zones-Second-Lessons-Longest/dp/1426209487 https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Zones-Second-Lessons-Longest/dp/.... 2. A good book by a dietitian. I like "The Proof Is In The Plants". Despite the author being vegan and the book talking about plants, the book covers meat and dairy along with amounts that are healthy. All of the recommendations include explainations of how this is known. https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Plants-science-plant-based-planet-ebook/dp/B085ZZ21RG https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Plants-science-plant-based-plan...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 98codes 4y ago
  45 checking in -- essentially, preventative maintenance. Increasingly, a focus on joints and the muscle groups that support them, particularly towards range of movement/flexibility. Annual physicals to catch problems early, ask your parents about family health history if you haven't yet, and don't ignore the small things that linger. The better health habits you can lock in now, the better -- it's only going to get harder from here on out to lay that foundation.
- diydsp 4y ago
  You're fine until 40. Then you have to earn your existence. You'll slowly begin lifting, stretching, vegetarian eating, cutting out other foods like sugar and saturated fat, getting the proper supplements such as D, B12. Also bringing in lots of fiber, mixing sitting and standing, various forms of stress relief like breathing, meditation, etc. Smart things to get started on now include: skin care, at least SPF and moisturizing, posture - watch out for gluteal amnesia and "cell phone neck," hand/wrist/finger stretching and strain care, eating low-sugar, learning to cook, finding sports/physical activity you can enjoy long-term, taking care of your eyes, follow the 20/20/20 rule, scalp massage to reduce baldness if applicable. Also paperwork: start an organized system that's mirrored and on offline, and get a basic will set up.
  - justinator 4y ago
    >You're fine until 40. Then you have to earn your existence Save up with better health and fitness before your 40 and being 40 won't exactly feel like the end of the world. Before 40 is when you should be doing all the things you note.
  - voisin 4y ago
    > scalp massage to reduce baldness if applicable Is this a thing?
- syntheweave 4y ago
  Most of the good advice I would summarize as "do what athletes do to achieve higher performance, minus the stuff with known downsides." So, periodized training, quality sleep, managing gut health with a mix of probiotics and fasts, occasional tests to homeostasis to help your body recalibrate. But not the extreme diets, performance-enhancing pharma, heroic training sessions. The way in which I've noticed most people get themselves in trouble when they didn't start from a position of impoverishment is simply because their response to problems is to, instead of noticing and addressing them, to normalize them and spend their energy making arguments to change nothing. Which is basically baby behavior: "no sleep, no food, no potty, wait why am I crying". Everyone does end up being in "poor health" someday, but it's often a case of how long you want to continue to struggle and preserve what you have, and some people seem to give up when they're, like, 17 years old.
- more_corn 4y ago
  Stop drinking. Build strong exercise habits.

stemlord 4y ago

Healthcare in america is also too expensive

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

But at the same time, we are learning more about different pathways. I think Ozempic and other similar drugs that target the hunger/metabolic pathways will be game changers. While they are expensive and inconvenient now, looking at a horizon of decades, you could easily see them becoming widely adopted.

raghudotcc 4y ago

I agree, I feel chronic diseases due to bad lifestyle is going to be the single biggest cause of mortality unless we figure a way out of it. These things compound and don’t show up as cause for concern until early 30s/40s. You then are left with notions like treatments, management, and maintenance. Even if you end up living like this till 80 or 100, I don’t think you can have the same quality of life that you could have had if it weren’t for them.

goodpoint 4y ago

The word "lifestyle" might imply an amount of blame on individuals but we should not forget: - Healthy food is becoming increasingly expensive and seen as a luxury. The amount of sugar and carbs in the "average" product has been increasing for decades. - Working hours are becoming less equally distributed. A lot of people work way too much, even in highly skilled jobs like lawyers, medicine interns, game developers, while other work less. - Worker rights are being rolled back and many working environments are becoming more competitive.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I think it's proof enough that individuals are the wrong place to focus, that people from much-skinnier countries who visit the US often report gaining quite a bit of weight, even if they try to keep it under control. How are the natives supposed to do any better than foreigners who are starting fairly trim and bringing healthy habits with them from home? The problem is clearly environmental/cultural and must run damned deep if it's that hard to avoid it. Which is terrible news because that's damn hard to fix without top-down initiatives, the likes of which the US has been allergic to since the '80s (though we didn't used to be). [EDIT] By "visit" I mean for years, not tourists.

standardUser 4y ago

> Most of it has to do with lifestyle in ways the average person isn't aware of. Please, enlighten us as to what we're not aware of. If we're to trust your take more than the article, which at least references research in the field.

anonporridge 4y ago

The data tells me you are completely wrong in your assertion. Life expectancy (in the US) has been on a very steady and continuous increase. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life... However, lifespan is a crude metric. Healthspan is really what we should be targeting. I don't want to live to 150 if 60 of those years are spend miserable in a nursing home hooked up to machines keeping me alive.

standardUser 4y ago
Life expectancy has actually dropped over the last two years, but it would be some severe cherry-picking to not acknowledge the role COVID played in that, let alone the multi-decade trend of increasing life expectancy overall.
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  [dead]
Retric 4y ago
Your chart show’s declining life expectancy from 2014-2018, but it’s recent data also disagrees with other sources. “In 2021, an American was expected to live 76.1 years—down 2.8 years from the 2014 peak of 78.9 years. This backslide has erased all life expectancy gains since 1996, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/life-expectancy-is-declining-in-the-us https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/life-expectancy-is-declini... For more data check here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf
- standardUser 4y ago
  Like I said in my related comment, some severe cherry-picking.
  - Retric 4y ago

miguelazo 4y ago

Not only that, "deaths of despair" have skyrocketed in the US.

defensem3ch 4y ago

the missing piece is all the toxins accumulating and causing disease. most doctors have absolutely zero idea what is going on

Oxidation 4y ago

I talked to a heart surgeon in his late 50s about 10 years ago. "Who knows, we'll all probably live to 100!" I said, lightheartedly (don't remember the exact context). "No", he said, "my generation might, yours is too unfit, too young, to live that long".

disparate_dan 4y ago

> The health care system is more capable than ever before Not to take issue with your main point, but, I’d say that _medicine_ is more capable than ever before, but health care systems are struggling to deliver the benefits to growing populations, for lots of reasons like funding and budgets, education and misinformation, or ideology.