9 ms·

Did the ancient Greeks and Romans experience Alzheimer's?

90 points by joveian 3y ago

brigadier132 3y ago
There is evidence that cardiovascular exercise results in neurogenesis which results in lower incidences of dementia in older adults. This is speculation but it wasn't until the past 70 or so years that large amounts of people were able to be sedentary. I know the "simple explanation for why everything is fucked up" answer is almost always wrong but I'm very convinced that lack of walking is a major contributor to all of this stuff.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Alzheimer's is a side effect of a sugar rich diet. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9099768/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9099768/
- jjulius 3y ago
  >Alzheimer's is a side effect of a sugar rich diet. Careful with those absolutes. That linked article overall discusses obesity as a likely risk factor for it. On the sugar point, "sucrose" only appears once in the piece and the referenced study involved mice, not humans.
  - zadokshi 3y ago
    Yes, but there are other studies that make this link. The link is apparently strong enough that some prefer the phrase “type three diabetes” as a way to describe Alzheimers. “Currently, there is a rapid growth in the literature pointing toward insulin deficiency and insulin resistance as mediators of AD-type neurodegeneration, but this surge of new information is riddled with conflicting and unresolved concepts regarding the potential contributions of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), metabolic syndrome, and obesity to AD pathogenesis.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/#:~:text=Type%203%20diabetes%20mellitus%20(T3DM,pathogenic%20mechanism%20of%20AD%20neurodegeneration https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/#:~:tex....
    - acdha 3y ago
      That’s still far from established at the level to warrant the original expression of absolute certainty. Considering that people have been studying it for decades, and that it’s like 70% heritable, it’s unlikely that everyone missed something as simple as “they are eating too much sugar” – something like this is likely to involve multiple genetic and lifestyle risk factors. I would defer to the researchers who still characterize it as a hypothesis - for example, this article is recent but is still careful not to overstate the case: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/12/1/99 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/12/1/99 Part of why that matters is that you will have no trouble finding people who ate little sugar and still developed it, or sweet fiends who didn’t, and presenting such a simple explanation can feel cruel to people who saw their loved ones die a pretty ugly death since it sounds like you’re saying it’s a choice.
ascotan 3y ago
Alzheimer's is a prion disease. Prions are proteins that cause other proteins to misfold. What's interesting is that most prion diseases are transmitted through ingestion or physical contact - possibly there's a correlation with population density and/or sanitation. It's also possible that there are low occurrences in ancient populations because most people died of other things. For example, 200 years ago bacteria diseases were the most common cause of death. Now that we have conquered most infection disease the primary cause of death now is cancer and cardiovascular issues. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02768-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02768-9
- unrealp 3y ago
  I dont know why this was downvoted. cadaver-derived growth hormone supplementation correlation with alzheimer's is well established.
  - JPLeRouzic 3y ago
    In 5 cases in the UK, where hundreds of thousands have dementia. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2#Sec9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2#Sec9
robocat 3y ago
Paper about Alzheimers and the Tsimane people: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.12626 https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz... Notable quotes: as most dementia is found among individuals ≥ 75 years of age, the pyramid-shaped age structure of the Tsimane and Moseten populations means that the crude prevalence would be expected to be low. Relatively low exposure to traffic and industrial sources of environmental pollution are offset to an unknown extent by cooking fires and biomass burning. Evidence is converging as to the major modifiable risk factors for dementia and AD.5, [6] These include low formal education[7]; vascular factors, including midlife hypertension and diabete[8]; cardiovascular disease other than stroke[9]; physical inactivity[10]; and—a recently recognized addition—air pollution.[6] Higher coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores—a marker of atherosclerosis—is related to increased risk of dementia.[11] Evidence-based dietary recommendations for reducing risk of dementia and AD include regular consumption of fresh vegetables, fruits, and fish.[12] In addition, several microbial pathogens have been associated with AD. Perhaps few ancient greeks lived long enough (75+) to get Dementia. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/ says In a study of all men of renown, living in the 5th and 4th century in Greece, we identified 83 whose date of birth and death have been recorded with certainty. Their mean +/- SD and median lengths of life were found to be 71.3+/-13.4 and 70 years, respectively.
aranchelk 3y ago
What was their average life expectancy? 45? How many were living long enough to develop Alzheimer's? Am I missing something?
- madaxe_again 3y ago
  Life expectancy is heavily skewed by infant mortality, which was of course rampant. If you made it past your tenth birthday, you had a 50% chance of making it to 50, and a 25% chance of making it to 65. En masse, that makes for an amply large population of people in the age range for dementia to draw conclusions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empi...
- chris37879 3y ago
  Average life expectancy is a very bad number to compare across such vast amounts of time, especially when you're looking at a disease that only happens in advanced age. Infant mortality rates were dramatically higher in the past and drag that average way down, for instance, say I have a 1 day old infant, and a 100 year old person and they both die, they have a combined 'average life expectancy' of 50 years old. But, once you made it out of the 'childhood illness' mortality stage, most folks could expect to see 70 years old. https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-not-a-modern-phenomenon.php https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-n...
aussieguy1234 3y ago
and what was the life expectancy during these times? 20-30 years for the population as a whole, according to GPT-4. It did mention some wealthier folk might live longer if they can avoid the many other dangers like war, disease etc...
- whythre 3y ago
  There’s lies, damned lies, and statistics quoted by AI. Average ancient life expectancy numbers are substantially lowered due to high infant mortality. Once this early danger had passed, most people lived to approximately the same age we do now: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/#:~:text=Their%20mean%20%2B%2F%2D%20SD%20and,of%20life%20in%20classical%20Greece https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/#:~:text=Their%20me.... This wasn’t a children of the corn situation.
jhoechtl 3y ago
Maybe we can explain it by intense TV consumption in the childhood? Occam's law applies.
XzetaU8 3y ago
"Brain volume, energy balance, and cardiovascular health in two nonindustrial South American populations" https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205448120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205448120 [Significance] This article explores brain volume and aging in two indigenous societies. Whereas brain volume is lower with greater body mass index (BMI) in industrialized populations, the association of BMI and non-HDL cholesterol with brain volume is largely positive, only declining with high BMI and cholesterol. This discrepancy represents a form of evolutionary mismatch we call an “embarrassment of riches” due to recent changes in diet, activity, and other environmental exposures. The minimal dementia and coronary artery disease in Tsimane and Moseten, combined with these findings, imply that aging outcomes are optimized at intermediate lifestyle values. Future research should focus on how our evolved biology interacts with conscious goals in relation to eating, exercise, and physiology. [Abstract] Little is known about brain aging or dementia in nonindustrialized environments that are similar to how humans lived throughout evolutionary history. This paper examines brain volume (BV) in middle and old age among two indigenous South American populations, the Tsimane and Moseten, whose lifestyles and environments diverge from those in high-income nations. With a sample of 1,165 individuals aged 40 to 94, we analyze population differences in cross-sectional rates of decline in BV with age. We also assess the relationships of BV with energy biomarkers and arterial disease and compare them against findings in industrialized contexts. The analyses test three hypotheses derived from an evolutionary model of brain health, which we call the embarrassment of riches (EOR). The model hypothesizes that food energy was positively associated with late life BV in the physically active, food-limited past, but excess body mass and adiposity are now associated with reduced BV in industrialized societies in middle and older ages. We find that the relationship of BV with both non-HDL cholesterol and body mass index is curvilinear, positive from the lowest values to 1.4 to 1.6 SDs above the mean, and negative from that value to the highest values. The more acculturated Moseten exhibit a steeper decrease in BV with age than Tsimane, but still shallower than US and European populations. Lastly, aortic arteriosclerosis is associated with lower BV. Complemented by findings from the United States and Europe, our results are consistent with the EOR model, with implications for interventions to improve brain health.
sydbarrett74 3y ago
Since the EU already classifies Alzheimer's as Type 3 Diabetes, its increased incidence might be in line with increased T2D incidence.
methuselah_in 3y ago
I guess it has to do with the no social connections. I am introvert but not because of looking at the end of life I start to change myself. Internet devolopment are already taking toal on people's mental health. I got ridoff of Facebook and Instagram long back because of this as well
_Microft 3y ago
Maybe this is an interesting article in this context: „They Were Labeled Witches. They Just Had Dementia“, https://narratively.com/they-were-labeled-witches-they-just-had-dementia/ https://narratively.com/they-were-labeled-witches-they-just-... Discussed in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27343868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27343868 This might be interesting because here people with dementia were not classified as suffering from cognitive impairment but as witches. It went as far as considering dementia purely a white people disease that didn’t occur in Africa. Maybe the Greeks and Romans did similar mistakes (e.g. treating them as seers, oracles or such)?
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  Or maybe the people with dementia died off early in the cycle before it became pronounced enough for other people to truly notice and remark on it. Life is much safer nowadays and we tend to forget all the guardrails we have up for everyone
  - kcplate 3y ago
    Honestly this seems to me to be much more likely a reason than industrial society environmental factors. My father was in his early 80s before he could no longer “fake away” the mental decline he was experiencing due to Alzheimer’s. At 86 and moving into stage 7 of the disease. I have to think people reaching that advanced an age was relatively rare in pre industrial times, coupled with the fact that today Alzheimer’s affects only about 10% at age 65. You would need a large population reaching that age and beyond to the later stages where the disease becomes problematic before it would become noticeable in a society.
    - ComputerGuru 3y ago
      This complete fallacy that "people didn't live that long" can't die soon enough. Mortality numbers are horribly skewed by high birth and infancy mortality rates and a spike for military-aged individuals, but people that made it to forty didn't wait to turn fifty then keel over and die.
genter 3y ago
> with sedentary behavior and exposure to air pollution largely to blame. Both of my grandpas worked manual labor their entire lives. One had Alzheimer's, the other started to develop dementia but is on medicine now. Interesting thing to note, both were extremely intelligent. Seems like the more intelligent of my extended family were also more likely to have memory issues.
- joveian 3y ago
  How was their sleep? I have sleep difficulty (including a non-24 hour circadian rhythm) and significant early memory issues. I also have a family history of dementia (I only know anything about the sleep of one family member with dementia, who did have significant sleep issues). I did a quick search and found there are some signs of a potential connection and this seems to be under more intense research at this point. Also, manual labor isn't the same as cardiovasular exercise and it is possible (and likely much easier these days with all of the powered machinery and transport) to not get much cardiovascular exercise despite a physically intensive job. Although I'm guessing even today a logger would.
  - bluSCALE4 3y ago
    I'm convinced sleep has something to do with it. If sleep is an issue, then stress is likely also a factor so I imagine a racing mind with no rest is was does it.
    - joveian 3y ago
      Sleep issues can be stress related but aren't always (and aren't in my case, at least at this point). Stress does seem to make everything worse though and I could see it playing a role in my family members developing dementia. I could potentially see sleep issues and stress triggering a process. I was thinking more along the lines of circadian issues since the immune system works differently at night so I could imagine that confusion over if it should be in night mode or day mode could potentially cause serious trouble.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
tptacek 3y ago
This article uses the example of the Tsimané people of Bolivia as a model for pre-industrial society, and notes that a very low percentage of older Tsimané experience measured dementia (something like 1% compared to 11% in North America). But it's also the case that the at-birth life expectancy of a Tsimané person is quite low compared to the rest of North America; a smaller percentage of Tsimané survive to the age at which Alzheimers becomes a major epidemiological issue in modern societies. How does a researcher account for that? It seems like it could be a confounder.
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  I often wonder what the effects of reduced infant mortality will be on the population. For all of human history before about 100 years ago, we were aggressively selected for survival at birth or shortly after. Now, we're not. All those people who would have died might not only suffer other health problems in their life but propagate the "die as a baby" genes to their offspring. Optimistically, it might mean that humans both become dependent on those medical technologies that save babies and mothers, and maintain the capability to provide them so we're fine. It could be a positive direction for evolution, like how we're already adapted to depend on ancient technologies like housing, clothing, and cooking. But maybe it's just bad and future generations will be generally get less and less healthy.
  - tomthe 3y ago
    The head sizes of babies are actually getting larger over the past decades [1]. This might be because of better nutrition, but maybe it is by a large part because we can do caesarean sections in every hospital now and head size is not as limited as it was before anymore. [1]: not the best source, but one I could find now: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/07853890.2011.558519 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/07853890.2011.5...
    - ComputerGuru 3y ago
      The corollary to that is that narrower (maternal) hips are also not being weeded out of the gene pool.
cubefox 3y ago
So far I heard mention of unknown environmental contaminants as suspected causes for rising rates of: - obesity - cancer - depression, ADHD, autism, gender dysphoria - dementia
- lanstin 3y ago
  All worth exploring. You forgot low sperm production. We are surrounded by manufactured molecules that mimic hormones from our bodies, an experiment with not much of a control group, and an experiment where the naive materialist model would lead one to expect effects.
- stevenwoo 3y ago
  Asthma, IIRC there was also a study that showed just living adjacent to roads with high truck traffic caused sizable increases in percent of children who developed asthma compared to other local neighborhoods.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    In that case the environmental contaminant in question is much easier to figure out though. (Something in the air presumably and produced by cars.)
    - stevenwoo 3y ago
      Off the top of my head it was postulated to be diesel fumes, equivalent mixed use motor vehicle traffic was not enough.
A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
Here's the abstract of the actual paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38277296 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38277296 > "Conclusions: The modern 'epidemic level' of advanced dementias was not described among ancient Greco-Roman elderly. The possible emergence of advanced ADRD in the Roman era may be associated with environmental factors of air pollution and increased exposure to lead. Further historical analysis may formulate critical hypotheses about the modernity of high ADRD prevalence." Air pollution has near-zero explanatory power, though. See: "Global, regional, and national burden of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, 1990–2019" at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.937486/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.9374... "High-income North America" has the highest age-standardized incidence rate, whereas smog-shrouded South Asia has the lowest. East Asia, infamous for industrial and urban air pollution, is also fairly low on the list. From this data, there's apparently zero correlation between pollution and incidence rate.
- matteoraso 3y ago
  >> "Conclusions: The modern 'epidemic level' of advanced dementias was not described among ancient Greco-Roman elderly. The possible emergence of advanced ADRD in the Roman era may be associated with environmental factors of air pollution and increased exposure to lead. Further historical analysis may formulate critical hypotheses about the modernity of high ADRD prevalence." It's not as if they were doing detailed demographic studies back then, though. There's just certain things that can't be known, and this is one of them.
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    You don't need demographic studies. These were people's parents, grandparents. Part of their lived life. Enough random diaries are sufficient.
- madaxe_again 3y ago
  Indeed - it could equally be explained by dementia/Alzheimer’s being a contagious disease, such as a prion or similar protein malformation, which quite a bit of current research seems to suggest, and it simply had not become endemic at that point.
marcinzm 3y ago
I'm curious about the day to day environment the Tsimané live in since I can see a relationship between dementia and increased accidental deaths in more dangerous environments. Let's say you need to walk 5 miles a day through a predator infested jungle for water. Getting lost one day due to an episode of dementia could easily kill you. Same for eating a poisonous plant or drinking water from the wrong source or even getting a simple cut that becomes infected due not paying attention. The study used 65 as a cutoff which is before most physical deteriorations so individuals are likely still self-reliant.
frozenport 3y ago
Whats up with the fixation on air pollution? Indoor air pollution was astronomically higher when people were gathered around a warm hearth.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  The more problems that can be attributed to air pollution, the stronger the argument against cars/industry. The green movement is therefore putting lots of effort into researching this topic.
  - acdha 3y ago
    The “green movement” is not setting research agendas or funding for Alzheimer’s. The vast majority of this research operates in the opposite direction, starting with patients and figuring out what they have in common.
    - spacebanana7 3y ago
      The most scarce resource in academia is attention, of which funding and resource agendas are downstream. This isn’t a criticism of the research. Research into tobacco harms thrived on the political opposition to big companies. Nevertheless lots of life saving findings came out of it.
- e44858 3y ago
  Air pollution had high amounts of lead before leaded gasoline was banned in cars. Lead is way more toxic than wood smoke.
  - frozenport 3y ago
    Yeah but as the article mentioned this wasn't really a issue until the Romans were conquered by the Lombards and their nearly invincible Lamborghinis.
acadapter 3y ago
The first part of Book 3 in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations has this description of "dementia". ... If dementia sets in, there will be no failure of such faculties as breathing, feeding, imagination, desire: before these go, the earlier extinction is of one's proper use of oneself, one's accurate assessment of the gradations of duty, one's ability to analyse impressions, one's understanding of whether the time has come to leave this life - these and all other matters which wholly depend on trained calculation. So we must have a sense of urgency, not only for the ever closer approach of death, but also because our comprehension of the world and our ability to pay proper attention will fade before we do.

90 points by joveian 3y ago

There is evidence that cardiovascular exercise results in neurogenesis which results in lower incidences of dementia in older adults. This is speculation but it wasn't until the past 70 or so years that large amounts of people were able to be sedentary. I know the "simple explanation for why everything is fucked up" answer is almost always wrong but I'm very convinced that lack of walking is a major contributor to all of this stuff.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Alzheimer's is a side effect of a sugar rich diet. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9099768/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9099768/

jjulius 3y ago
>Alzheimer's is a side effect of a sugar rich diet. Careful with those absolutes. That linked article overall discusses obesity as a likely risk factor for it. On the sugar point, "sucrose" only appears once in the piece and the referenced study involved mice, not humans.
- zadokshi 3y ago
  Yes, but there are other studies that make this link. The link is apparently strong enough that some prefer the phrase “type three diabetes” as a way to describe Alzheimers. “Currently, there is a rapid growth in the literature pointing toward insulin deficiency and insulin resistance as mediators of AD-type neurodegeneration, but this surge of new information is riddled with conflicting and unresolved concepts regarding the potential contributions of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), metabolic syndrome, and obesity to AD pathogenesis.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/#:~:text=Type%203%20diabetes%20mellitus%20(T3DM,pathogenic%20mechanism%20of%20AD%20neurodegeneration https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/#:~:tex....
  - acdha 3y ago
    That’s still far from established at the level to warrant the original expression of absolute certainty. Considering that people have been studying it for decades, and that it’s like 70% heritable, it’s unlikely that everyone missed something as simple as “they are eating too much sugar” – something like this is likely to involve multiple genetic and lifestyle risk factors. I would defer to the researchers who still characterize it as a hypothesis - for example, this article is recent but is still careful not to overstate the case: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/12/1/99 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/12/1/99 Part of why that matters is that you will have no trouble finding people who ate little sugar and still developed it, or sweet fiends who didn’t, and presenting such a simple explanation can feel cruel to people who saw their loved ones die a pretty ugly death since it sounds like you’re saying it’s a choice.

ascotan 3y ago

Alzheimer's is a prion disease. Prions are proteins that cause other proteins to misfold. What's interesting is that most prion diseases are transmitted through ingestion or physical contact - possibly there's a correlation with population density and/or sanitation. It's also possible that there are low occurrences in ancient populations because most people died of other things. For example, 200 years ago bacteria diseases were the most common cause of death. Now that we have conquered most infection disease the primary cause of death now is cancer and cardiovascular issues. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02768-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02768-9

unrealp 3y ago
I dont know why this was downvoted. cadaver-derived growth hormone supplementation correlation with alzheimer's is well established.
- JPLeRouzic 3y ago
  In 5 cases in the UK, where hundreds of thousands have dementia. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2#Sec9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2#Sec9

robocat 3y ago

Paper about Alzheimers and the Tsimane people: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.12626 https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz... Notable quotes: as most dementia is found among individuals ≥ 75 years of age, the pyramid-shaped age structure of the Tsimane and Moseten populations means that the crude prevalence would be expected to be low. Relatively low exposure to traffic and industrial sources of environmental pollution are offset to an unknown extent by cooking fires and biomass burning. Evidence is converging as to the major modifiable risk factors for dementia and AD.5, [6] These include low formal education[7]; vascular factors, including midlife hypertension and diabete[8]; cardiovascular disease other than stroke[9]; physical inactivity[10]; and—a recently recognized addition—air pollution.[6] Higher coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores—a marker of atherosclerosis—is related to increased risk of dementia.[11] Evidence-based dietary recommendations for reducing risk of dementia and AD include regular consumption of fresh vegetables, fruits, and fish.[12] In addition, several microbial pathogens have been associated with AD. Perhaps few ancient greeks lived long enough (75+) to get Dementia. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/ says In a study of all men of renown, living in the 5th and 4th century in Greece, we identified 83 whose date of birth and death have been recorded with certainty. Their mean +/- SD and median lengths of life were found to be 71.3+/-13.4 and 70 years, respectively.

aranchelk 3y ago

What was their average life expectancy? 45? How many were living long enough to develop Alzheimer's? Am I missing something?

madaxe_again 3y ago
Life expectancy is heavily skewed by infant mortality, which was of course rampant. If you made it past your tenth birthday, you had a 50% chance of making it to 50, and a 25% chance of making it to 65. En masse, that makes for an amply large population of people in the age range for dementia to draw conclusions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empi...
chris37879 3y ago
Average life expectancy is a very bad number to compare across such vast amounts of time, especially when you're looking at a disease that only happens in advanced age. Infant mortality rates were dramatically higher in the past and drag that average way down, for instance, say I have a 1 day old infant, and a 100 year old person and they both die, they have a combined 'average life expectancy' of 50 years old. But, once you made it out of the 'childhood illness' mortality stage, most folks could expect to see 70 years old. https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-not-a-modern-phenomenon.php https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-n...

aussieguy1234 3y ago

and what was the life expectancy during these times? 20-30 years for the population as a whole, according to GPT-4. It did mention some wealthier folk might live longer if they can avoid the many other dangers like war, disease etc...

whythre 3y ago
There’s lies, damned lies, and statistics quoted by AI. Average ancient life expectancy numbers are substantially lowered due to high infant mortality. Once this early danger had passed, most people lived to approximately the same age we do now: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/#:~:text=Their%20mean%20%2B%2F%2D%20SD%20and,of%20life%20in%20classical%20Greece https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/#:~:text=Their%20me.... This wasn’t a children of the corn situation.

jhoechtl 3y ago

Maybe we can explain it by intense TV consumption in the childhood? Occam's law applies.

XzetaU8 3y ago

"Brain volume, energy balance, and cardiovascular health in two nonindustrial South American populations" https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205448120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205448120 [Significance] This article explores brain volume and aging in two indigenous societies. Whereas brain volume is lower with greater body mass index (BMI) in industrialized populations, the association of BMI and non-HDL cholesterol with brain volume is largely positive, only declining with high BMI and cholesterol. This discrepancy represents a form of evolutionary mismatch we call an “embarrassment of riches” due to recent changes in diet, activity, and other environmental exposures. The minimal dementia and coronary artery disease in Tsimane and Moseten, combined with these findings, imply that aging outcomes are optimized at intermediate lifestyle values. Future research should focus on how our evolved biology interacts with conscious goals in relation to eating, exercise, and physiology. [Abstract] Little is known about brain aging or dementia in nonindustrialized environments that are similar to how humans lived throughout evolutionary history. This paper examines brain volume (BV) in middle and old age among two indigenous South American populations, the Tsimane and Moseten, whose lifestyles and environments diverge from those in high-income nations. With a sample of 1,165 individuals aged 40 to 94, we analyze population differences in cross-sectional rates of decline in BV with age. We also assess the relationships of BV with energy biomarkers and arterial disease and compare them against findings in industrialized contexts. The analyses test three hypotheses derived from an evolutionary model of brain health, which we call the embarrassment of riches (EOR). The model hypothesizes that food energy was positively associated with late life BV in the physically active, food-limited past, but excess body mass and adiposity are now associated with reduced BV in industrialized societies in middle and older ages. We find that the relationship of BV with both non-HDL cholesterol and body mass index is curvilinear, positive from the lowest values to 1.4 to 1.6 SDs above the mean, and negative from that value to the highest values. The more acculturated Moseten exhibit a steeper decrease in BV with age than Tsimane, but still shallower than US and European populations. Lastly, aortic arteriosclerosis is associated with lower BV. Complemented by findings from the United States and Europe, our results are consistent with the EOR model, with implications for interventions to improve brain health.

sydbarrett74 3y ago

Since the EU already classifies Alzheimer's as Type 3 Diabetes, its increased incidence might be in line with increased T2D incidence.

methuselah_in 3y ago

I guess it has to do with the no social connections. I am introvert but not because of looking at the end of life I start to change myself. Internet devolopment are already taking toal on people's mental health. I got ridoff of Facebook and Instagram long back because of this as well

_Microft 3y ago

Maybe this is an interesting article in this context: „They Were Labeled Witches. They Just Had Dementia“, https://narratively.com/they-were-labeled-witches-they-just-had-dementia/ https://narratively.com/they-were-labeled-witches-they-just-... Discussed in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27343868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27343868 This might be interesting because here people with dementia were not classified as suffering from cognitive impairment but as witches. It went as far as considering dementia purely a white people disease that didn’t occur in Africa. Maybe the Greeks and Romans did similar mistakes (e.g. treating them as seers, oracles or such)?

readthenotes1 3y ago
Or maybe the people with dementia died off early in the cycle before it became pronounced enough for other people to truly notice and remark on it. Life is much safer nowadays and we tend to forget all the guardrails we have up for everyone
- kcplate 3y ago
  Honestly this seems to me to be much more likely a reason than industrial society environmental factors. My father was in his early 80s before he could no longer “fake away” the mental decline he was experiencing due to Alzheimer’s. At 86 and moving into stage 7 of the disease. I have to think people reaching that advanced an age was relatively rare in pre industrial times, coupled with the fact that today Alzheimer’s affects only about 10% at age 65. You would need a large population reaching that age and beyond to the later stages where the disease becomes problematic before it would become noticeable in a society.
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    This complete fallacy that "people didn't live that long" can't die soon enough. Mortality numbers are horribly skewed by high birth and infancy mortality rates and a spike for military-aged individuals, but people that made it to forty didn't wait to turn fifty then keel over and die.

genter 3y ago

> with sedentary behavior and exposure to air pollution largely to blame. Both of my grandpas worked manual labor their entire lives. One had Alzheimer's, the other started to develop dementia but is on medicine now. Interesting thing to note, both were extremely intelligent. Seems like the more intelligent of my extended family were also more likely to have memory issues.

joveian 3y ago
How was their sleep? I have sleep difficulty (including a non-24 hour circadian rhythm) and significant early memory issues. I also have a family history of dementia (I only know anything about the sleep of one family member with dementia, who did have significant sleep issues). I did a quick search and found there are some signs of a potential connection and this seems to be under more intense research at this point. Also, manual labor isn't the same as cardiovasular exercise and it is possible (and likely much easier these days with all of the powered machinery and transport) to not get much cardiovascular exercise despite a physically intensive job. Although I'm guessing even today a logger would.
- bluSCALE4 3y ago
  I'm convinced sleep has something to do with it. If sleep is an issue, then stress is likely also a factor so I imagine a racing mind with no rest is was does it.
  - joveian 3y ago
    Sleep issues can be stress related but aren't always (and aren't in my case, at least at this point). Stress does seem to make everything worse though and I could see it playing a role in my family members developing dementia. I could potentially see sleep issues and stress triggering a process. I was thinking more along the lines of circadian issues since the immune system works differently at night so I could imagine that confusion over if it should be in night mode or day mode could potentially cause serious trouble.
anonymouskimmer 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

This article uses the example of the Tsimané people of Bolivia as a model for pre-industrial society, and notes that a very low percentage of older Tsimané experience measured dementia (something like 1% compared to 11% in North America). But it's also the case that the at-birth life expectancy of a Tsimané person is quite low compared to the rest of North America; a smaller percentage of Tsimané survive to the age at which Alzheimers becomes a major epidemiological issue in modern societies. How does a researcher account for that? It seems like it could be a confounder.

EnigmaFlare 3y ago
I often wonder what the effects of reduced infant mortality will be on the population. For all of human history before about 100 years ago, we were aggressively selected for survival at birth or shortly after. Now, we're not. All those people who would have died might not only suffer other health problems in their life but propagate the "die as a baby" genes to their offspring. Optimistically, it might mean that humans both become dependent on those medical technologies that save babies and mothers, and maintain the capability to provide them so we're fine. It could be a positive direction for evolution, like how we're already adapted to depend on ancient technologies like housing, clothing, and cooking. But maybe it's just bad and future generations will be generally get less and less healthy.
- tomthe 3y ago
  The head sizes of babies are actually getting larger over the past decades [1]. This might be because of better nutrition, but maybe it is by a large part because we can do caesarean sections in every hospital now and head size is not as limited as it was before anymore. [1]: not the best source, but one I could find now: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/07853890.2011.558519 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/07853890.2011.5...
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    The corollary to that is that narrower (maternal) hips are also not being weeded out of the gene pool.

cubefox 3y ago

So far I heard mention of unknown environmental contaminants as suspected causes for rising rates of: - obesity - cancer - depression, ADHD, autism, gender dysphoria - dementia

lanstin 3y ago
All worth exploring. You forgot low sperm production. We are surrounded by manufactured molecules that mimic hormones from our bodies, an experiment with not much of a control group, and an experiment where the naive materialist model would lead one to expect effects.
stevenwoo 3y ago
Asthma, IIRC there was also a study that showed just living adjacent to roads with high truck traffic caused sizable increases in percent of children who developed asthma compared to other local neighborhoods.
- cubefox 3y ago
  In that case the environmental contaminant in question is much easier to figure out though. (Something in the air presumably and produced by cars.)
  - stevenwoo 3y ago
    Off the top of my head it was postulated to be diesel fumes, equivalent mixed use motor vehicle traffic was not enough.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

Here's the abstract of the actual paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38277296 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38277296 > "Conclusions: The modern 'epidemic level' of advanced dementias was not described among ancient Greco-Roman elderly. The possible emergence of advanced ADRD in the Roman era may be associated with environmental factors of air pollution and increased exposure to lead. Further historical analysis may formulate critical hypotheses about the modernity of high ADRD prevalence." Air pollution has near-zero explanatory power, though. See: "Global, regional, and national burden of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, 1990–2019" at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.937486/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.9374... "High-income North America" has the highest age-standardized incidence rate, whereas smog-shrouded South Asia has the lowest. East Asia, infamous for industrial and urban air pollution, is also fairly low on the list. From this data, there's apparently zero correlation between pollution and incidence rate.

matteoraso 3y ago
>> "Conclusions: The modern 'epidemic level' of advanced dementias was not described among ancient Greco-Roman elderly. The possible emergence of advanced ADRD in the Roman era may be associated with environmental factors of air pollution and increased exposure to lead. Further historical analysis may formulate critical hypotheses about the modernity of high ADRD prevalence." It's not as if they were doing detailed demographic studies back then, though. There's just certain things that can't be known, and this is one of them.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  You don't need demographic studies. These were people's parents, grandparents. Part of their lived life. Enough random diaries are sufficient.
madaxe_again 3y ago
Indeed - it could equally be explained by dementia/Alzheimer’s being a contagious disease, such as a prion or similar protein malformation, which quite a bit of current research seems to suggest, and it simply had not become endemic at that point.

marcinzm 3y ago

I'm curious about the day to day environment the Tsimané live in since I can see a relationship between dementia and increased accidental deaths in more dangerous environments. Let's say you need to walk 5 miles a day through a predator infested jungle for water. Getting lost one day due to an episode of dementia could easily kill you. Same for eating a poisonous plant or drinking water from the wrong source or even getting a simple cut that becomes infected due not paying attention. The study used 65 as a cutoff which is before most physical deteriorations so individuals are likely still self-reliant.

frozenport 3y ago

Whats up with the fixation on air pollution? Indoor air pollution was astronomically higher when people were gathered around a warm hearth.

spacebanana7 3y ago
The more problems that can be attributed to air pollution, the stronger the argument against cars/industry. The green movement is therefore putting lots of effort into researching this topic.
- acdha 3y ago
  The “green movement” is not setting research agendas or funding for Alzheimer’s. The vast majority of this research operates in the opposite direction, starting with patients and figuring out what they have in common.
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    The most scarce resource in academia is attention, of which funding and resource agendas are downstream. This isn’t a criticism of the research. Research into tobacco harms thrived on the political opposition to big companies. Nevertheless lots of life saving findings came out of it.
e44858 3y ago
Air pollution had high amounts of lead before leaded gasoline was banned in cars. Lead is way more toxic than wood smoke.
- frozenport 3y ago
  Yeah but as the article mentioned this wasn't really a issue until the Romans were conquered by the Lombards and their nearly invincible Lamborghinis.

acadapter 3y ago

The first part of Book 3 in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations has this description of "dementia". ... If dementia sets in, there will be no failure of such faculties as breathing, feeding, imagination, desire: before these go, the earlier extinction is of one's proper use of oneself, one's accurate assessment of the gradations of duty, one's ability to analyse impressions, one's understanding of whether the time has come to leave this life - these and all other matters which wholly depend on trained calculation. So we must have a sense of urgency, not only for the ever closer approach of death, but also because our comprehension of the world and our ability to pay proper attention will fade before we do.