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How do i square this finding with the supposed increasing obesity epidemic in America?
by clircle 3y ago
How do i square this finding with the supposed increasing obesity epidemic in America?
- mbg721 3y agoThe article points out that they're not sure if it's due to better prevention of heart attacks or better treatment that prevents death once an attack occurs. It could be that obese Americans used to ignore symptoms but no longer do, for example.
- dangwhy 3y agoarticle says decline of smoking is one of the big factors.
- ggm 3y agoThere would be a shittonne of confounding factors. I don't doubt smoking is part of it saying that, but over the last 20 years diet has gone from "fat is bad" to "this fat is less bad" to "fat isn't bad its sugar, stupid". Hydrogenated margerine was just heading out the door 20 years ago. The cohort who lived off it probably had their heart attacks by now. (I don't think "i can't believe its not butter" caused the heart attacks, I just point out there's been wider societal changes than just smoking: Exercise is trendy again, and TV has got crap so people do less couch time than they used to) I'm sure the real science here is good. If they say it's smoking, and they ran the numbers, I'd believe them. You know, it says "smoking" in a sentence which says "and other factors" to me. The truly interesting thing is the variance in survival rates between POC and white America has reduced. Thats really good. Because survival is about improved treatment and detection. It may mean a POC harming bias in social/medical services and access to quality healthcare has improved, or that their income levels have aligned more with mainstream america and so the health improvement is about lifestyle lift.
- riffraff 3y ago> Exercise is trendy again Is it a last 20 year development? I remember people going to the gym in the '90s. Step aerobics anyone?
- ggm 3y agothe cohort who died of heart attacks were not young. If you were gym young in the 90s, you formed the body of people who didn't die over the next 30 years, and helped moved the dial. If you were gym old in the 90s, and lived on tater tots smothered in lard, chain smoked and drank sprite out of a bucket, you were the cohort who did die over the next 30 years. Mr Kurtz, he dead. (Marlon Brando wouldn't have known a Gym after the waterfront)
- HlessClaudesman 3y agoYeah, remember we are talking about effects in the aggregate, was the 1980s / 90s fitness trend actually widespread in different cohorts or just more visible in your cohort? I dont know, but today we do see quite a few men of prime heart attack age in their 50s who are absolutely Jeff Bezos jacked. Increased fitness and decreased smoking in most groups seems to explain the results.
- sokoloff 3y ago> TV has got crap so people do less couch time than they used to Do they do less couch time? I’d have guessed that streaming/on-demand services and mobile phone usage at home have well more than made up for what traditional TV has lost.
- dangwhy 3y ago> Exercise is trendy again, and TV has got crap so people do less couch time than they used to This is not true at all. Sedentary time increased to all time highs to 12hrs/day and 3/4 of population is obese.
- ggm 3y agoA problem which will solve itself in mortality stats in the future. An economist minded colleague said if you want to reduce end of life costs in healthcare then encourage smokers over 45 to puff more not less and remove the problem faster.
- paulpauper 3y agobut increased fatness should offset this, i would assume
- xupybd 3y agoA decline in deaths from one cause can signal another cause is killing people before the other cause gets a chance.
- carlmr 3y agoFamous example: motorcyclists get less cancer.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoIt works the other way around, too. Currently, the top 5 causes of death in the US are, in descending order, heart disease, cancer, COVID, accident, and stroke. If you could wave a magic wand and make it so that nobody ever died of heart disease anymore, those people would still die eventually of something else. So, curing 100% of all heart disease would actually cause more people to die of cancer, COVID, accident, stroke, etc.
- flakeoil 3y agoCOVID is probably just a short term anomaly and not a major cause of death going forward. COVID was probably also a cause of death that decreased some of the other death causes.
- smt88 3y agoThe opioid crisis has killed relatively young people in huge numbers. Suicide has risen too.
- yieldcrv 3y agoYeah if someone under 50 dies randomly and the family isn't specifying then I automatically assume accidental fentanyl A lot of people dont want their idols to be associated “with drugs” but thats just childish at this point
- xupybd 3y agoWhile the absolute numbers are not a huge percentage of the population they are tragically high. https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates#:~:text=More%20than%20106%2C000%20persons%20in,drugs%20from%201999%20to%202021 https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd....
- dclowd9901 3y agoI wonder if any of that movement can be attributed to many companies moving away from saturated fats, as an actual selling point for their food products. Not long ago it was basically a dirty word when it came to food. Doesn’t mean that people consumed fewer carbohydrates.
- spirit557 3y agoLook at this graph comparing saturated fat consumption and rate of heart disease: https://www.cureamd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Saturated-Fat-and-Vegetable-Oils-Versus-Heart-Disease-USA.jpg https://www.cureamd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Saturated... This data comes from a book by Chris Knobbe, MD studying consumption of different fats. It is supposed to be released this month not sure if it has yet. Blaming saturated fats has basically been a complete lie IMO.
- dclowd9901 3y agoWow, great callout. Is this an issue with Vegetable oil specifically? If one uses olive or avocado oil, are issues of heart disease correlated?
- spirit557 3y agoIf you still see this I doubt they would be compared to seed oils. Avocados and olives were consumed for thosuands of years before 1900. Seed oil extraction is a modern, heavily processed invention and was introduced into the food supply by industry looking to get rid of its waste product after 1900
- RC_ITR 3y agoA meaningful driver of heart attacks was older people working manual jobs that stressed their cardiovascular system. Now those same types of people sit in F-150s and use laptops to control heavy machinery. Fitness is worse, but risk for a single catastrophic event is less.
- xyst 3y agoThis article means that identifying and treating heart attacks has improved tremendously. People shouldn’t correlate it with the general health of the population though.
- laratied 3y agoNo doubt. My father would be dead if not for the advances in treatment. He also practically changed no bad habits after the heart attack. We have got better when the heart attack happens and better at keeping people alive who want to eat pizza and drink beer all the time.
- inglor_cz 3y agoQuite well. Smokers who quit tend to gain weight.
- poorbutdebtfree 3y agoThe same way you square "food insecurity."