61–70 of 152 posts
I always wondered if the removal of lead in gasoline could account for a lot of this. Especially the dementia drop.
It is never one thing; your lead assessment is probably a serious contender among other pollutants. Then there is better hygiene via food handlers, stiffer USDA rules, cleaner water, less smoking and second hand smoke, more people exercising too.
The question I guess is not what diseases are in decline, but which ones are going up
Apparently Parkinson's disease has been on the rise over the past several disease, some say due to the decrease in smoking. Which is fascinating, as smoking has been shown to be actually protective against Parkinson's.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some doctors and researchers believe the benefit from statins is more to do with the decrease in inflammation caused by them. Possibly widespread use of statins has beneficial effects on other disease processes too.
Yeah I think there was a large study done comparing a newer cholesterol lowering drug with statins. The result was the new non-statin drug wasn't effective at all even though it lowered cholesterol levels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CETP_inhibitor
Anacetrapib is still in stage III trials so it's too early to consider the concept a failure, but I think the bad results so far are evidence that hyperlipidemia is a symptom not a cause of cardiovascular disease, and that statins have some mechanism of action beyond just modifying cholesterol levels (eg. anti-inflammatory, as some people have suggested).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weird. Why would lung cancer go the opposite direction as smoking prevalence? I understand the dynamic of "cancer only kills people who outlive every other cause of death", but for the discorrelation to be that strong?
The correlation is one of the strongest there is, and indeed, causal -- there's a almost perfect lag time of ~20 years [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer#/media/File:Cancer...
wow - I have no clue (obviously) but possible reasons : - better home heating (less open fires, more heated bedrooms) - increased time from atmospheric nuclear bomb testing (and the various dispersals of plutonium in the 60's and 70's) - better nutrition in general - higher genetic diversity in breeding populations; not many peoples grandparents all come from the same village in the developed world now - less polluti…
It's called radiation hormesis. Though I don't think there's a scientific consensus on this issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancer is caused by swelling?
The cancers that involve "lumps" are not swelling, but performing angiogenesis [1]. Not sure about the blood cancers because, well, I'm not an expert, but I believe that all cancers involve unrestricted cell division of some kind, at least some of the time as a result of a DNA or RNA error. I believe swelling is typically caused by individual cells or tissues (or even pockets in the body) building up fluids of one ki…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is never one thing; your lead assessment is probably a serious contender among other pollutants. Then there is better hygiene via food handlers, stiffer USDA rules, cleaner water, less smoking and second hand smoke, more people exercising too.
Smoking rates are only decreasing in developed nations. Globally it's increasing by ~1% each year.
I always wondered if the removal of lead in gasoline could account for a lot of this. Especially the dementia drop.
There have been a number of meta studies which have tried to link the removal of lead from gasoline and the drop in violent crime. The correlate well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found a chart showing the prevalence of multiple forms of cancer over time: http://i52.tinypic.com/r9euci.jpg .
Weird. Why would lung cancer go the opposite direction as smoking prevalence? I understand the dynamic of "cancer only kills people who outlive every other cause of death", but for the discorrelation to be that strong?