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U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

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Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#201

Post by anovikov »

remarkEon wrote: post #22
eric4smith wrote: post #3

Obesity. Covid literally attacks obese people. And obese people also are at huge risk. I'm overweight and I was literally frightened during covid. Now I lift weights every day and work on my diet very hard. But we are literally ignoring the elephant (literally) in the room.

Hear, hear. One of the greatest failings of our "modern" healthcare system is that there's no plan to address this crisis. Obesity is the gateway to what seems like an infinite amount of health complications - not to mention the additional burden on the health care system itself when they get sick. I fully acknowledge that it's a difficult subject, it upsets people, and it's uncomfortable. The greatest healthcare adv…

Obese people are simply a market for healthcare system. They have totally no incentive to do anything about it - will mean leaving tons and tons of money on the table. Preventative healthcare kills repeat business.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#202

Post by enw »

eric4smith wrote: post #3

Obesity. Covid literally attacks obese people. And obese people also are at huge risk. I'm overweight and I was literally frightened during covid. Now I lift weights every day and work on my diet very hard. But we are literally ignoring the elephant (literally) in the room.

I wish our culture also stopped normalizing being fat.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#203

Post by davedx »

eric4smith wrote: post #3

Obesity. Covid literally attacks obese people. And obese people also are at huge risk. I'm overweight and I was literally frightened during covid. Now I lift weights every day and work on my diet very hard. But we are literally ignoring the elephant (literally) in the room.

The article has figures backing up its claims. Do you have any evidence to support your statement that obesity/COVID have caused this decline in overall life expectancy?

I wonder why this is the top voted comment

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#204

Post by extragood »

erklik wrote: post #189
nu11ptr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, they could stop encouraging unhealthy eating ( cough food pyramid cough ). We should be be eating like our grandparent's grandparents (or as I call it: 'A real food' diet) but instead they tell us to shun meat but feel free to eat all the heavily processed carbs with HFCS and canola oil foods you want. Don't eat red meat, but pizza and fries are just fine!

> eating like our grandparent's grandparents Is there any science showcasing exactly what that was?

Michael Pollan advocates for this in his book, "In Defense of Food" [1], and to a lesser degree in "The Omnivore's Dilemma". The big take-away for me was (paraphrased) that ethnic cuisines worldwide built and supported civilizations over many generations. It's only been over the past couple generations that we've been able to deviate from traditional cooking, with the globalization and industrialization of our food supply, and that's led to poor eating habits. It's especially pronounced in the US because we have a pretty short and heterogeneous cultural history and identity. He basically advocates choosing an ethnic cuisine and sticking with it.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/315425.In_Defense_of_Foo...

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#205

Post by davedx »

stouset wrote: post #84
eric4smith wrote: post #3

Obesity. Covid literally attacks obese people. And obese people also are at huge risk. I'm overweight and I was literally frightened during covid. Now I lift weights every day and work on my diet very hard. But we are literally ignoring the elephant (literally) in the room.

Anecdata of n = 1 but two weeks ago I was hospitalized due to a stroke (IA). I'm 38 years old, exercise vigorously for 10-12 hours per week, am a healthy weight for my height, have good blood pressure and cholesterol, and have zero known risk factors other than a COVID infection a bit under a year ago. I'm not ready to blame COVID just yet (we're still searching for an underlying cause) but my doctors and nurses all…

Sorry to hear about your experience. Meanwhile everywhere I talk to Americans about this they casually claim it's all down to obese people.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#206

Post by worldshit »

noduerme wrote: post #132
nu11ptr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, they could stop encouraging unhealthy eating ( cough food pyramid cough ). We should be be eating like our grandparent's grandparents (or as I call it: 'A real food' diet) but instead they tell us to shun meat but feel free to eat all the heavily processed carbs with HFCS and canola oil foods you want. Don't eat red meat, but pizza and fries are just fine!

This is true. There are also, though, other environmental factors that make it harder to maintain healthy weight in postindustrial countries than it was in the past, even if you eat no processed foods, cap your calories and work out regularly. Pharmaceutical and industrial waste in the water supply, Roundup in the grain supply, pesticides, hormones in the meat. Personally I'm swayed by the argument that these are at…

> unless you grow your own food and drink from your own well

there was a post a few days ago about Australia: home-farmed eggs have 40x more lead than the industrial ones, because of unchecked pollution in non-agricultural areas...

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#207

Post by vandreas2 »

californical wrote: post #111
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will literally rezone entire cities rather than saying we need to eat less food and workout more.

My point was that making it a personal choice seems to be failing us. We’ve been telling people to do that for decades, and they’re not — make it a societal choice so that it’s individuals are automatically enrolled in a system that promotes their health rather than forcing them to sit in a car seat for hours per week

The "you are beautiful no matter how you look" social campaign probably doesn't help here. There are literally visual cues that you 're doing something in excess and your doctor tells you to lose weight but Instagram says it's ok to be obese. I wonder if there's a limit to it, is it still ok to be twice your normal weight overweight?

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#208

Post by stouset »

nomel wrote: post #194
stouset wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sudden onset as far as I can tell. I woke up almost entirely unable to move anything on the right side of my body, and was only able to speak individual words with significant effort.

I had a mini stroke, with long lasting problems. Look up “dormant neurons” and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I did a relatively extended treatment and it helped me tremendously . I really wish I would have done it sooner. I might have been able to save a bit more of my brain. Besides significant improvements in my work life, the big win for me was eliminating some anger problems that showed up after the TIA, and getting…

I'm sorry to hear about your situation but extremely glad to hear you've found a path towards recovery!

As I said in my previous post, I'm extremely lucky. I recovered on my own about 30 minutes post-onset, although I do have a small remaining permanent clot (presumably from the original one breaking up) that has caused permanent injury to a small area that my neurologist says should cause no noticeable impact.

I'm terrified though that even though we haven't found any deficiencies yet, there might be long-lasting personality changes that are harder to pin down. At least so far all my friends seem to believe that I'm still pretty much the same person I was prior to the stroke, which is an enormous relief. But I'll look into that therapy just in case we do find a reason to pursue something like that, thanks!

If I may ask, the worst part of it for me so far is that I haven't had a good night of sleep since. Since it happened while I was sleeping, it's like I don't trust that my body won't try to off me in my sleep again for no reason. So I wake up halfway through the night in a panic that my body is betraying me again, and it takes awhile for me to convince myself that everything is alright to be able to go back to sleep. Have you dealt with anything that at all?

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#209

Post by cies »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #44
obblekk wrote: post #30

This even shows up in countries that had lax lockdowns vs. strict lockdowns: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?end=2020... This data next year will be very telling to see the true efficacy of strict lockdowns (I suspect very effective at preventing death since vaccines arrived so quickly). Australia data should be interesting next year (very strict to very lax after vaccines).

It didn't show up in China... their life expectancy has consistently risen. It's above the US life expectency now.

I also do not trust their data as much.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#210

Post by ahtihn »

c54 wrote: post #200
nu11ptr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that: we are celebrating it Now I'm not saying we need to shame anyone, but saying "healthy at any size" is a terrible lie and in the long term helps no one.

“Healthy at any size” is a reasonable stance, and one in reaction to a medical system and social norm of being mean and hateful towards overweight people. BMI is not the only measure of health, but doctors will regularly tell heavyset patients with real other diseases to lose weight. Fat people are literally the only group where it’s just OK to make fun of them, in many circles. Even for those who are overweight and…

Shaming works. There's nothing wrong with doctors telling overweight patients to lose weight. Because it is unhealthy.
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