171–180 of 280 posts
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What about in every western country where it isn't profitable?
I disagree with the comment you are replying to, but I also disagree with yours too. Healthcare is crazy profitable. Insurance companies, healthcare providers, suppliers etc form a decent chunk of most western economies, the US of A in particular.
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> but I have to wonder if there is some chemical we are exposed to more that might be causing mental disorders in addition to early onset cancers. It's always easy to point the finger at a single cause, but the reality is that it's a series of factors that together act like a sophisticated, compound "attack" to the psyche: - Social media weakens your self-confidence and makes you feel in a constant state of inferiori…
Excluding the microplastics thing, I think that your two latter points are actually both derived from the social media changes. Life today for almost everyone in the West is better than ever before, but people are exposed to a lot of thought on social media that 1. life is worse now, 2. in your lifetime there will be terrible destruction happening, which contributes to a sense of fatalism and doom. It is super appeal…
Being young in todays world is exponentially harder than it was, say, 40 years ago. Many young people have given up on the idea of home ownership. I'm 26 and I've had friends laugh in my face when I suggested owning instead of renting. It's simply unattainable unless you're in a lucrative field. I'm in Canada for reference (our home price to income ratio is one of the worst in the world).
>> Increased use of screening programmes has contributed to this phenomenon to a certain extent, although a genuine increase in the incidence of early-onset forms of several cancer types also seems to have emerged. How do they separate these two. Early testing is becoming more common so you expect to see more cancer simply due to looking for it. Doc: Early screening has increased the 5-year survival rate for various…
Early-stage cancer survivorship rates are much higher, and early detection catches cancers at an earlier stage. Studies have been done that show the benefit of early screening, separate from the bias.
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But I also think "back in the days" life was more fixed. Probably getting a full time job as employee, starting a family, getting a house was not really optional. Now there are much more choices. Add to that all the hyper-connectivity. I don't really think people were better off but were just forced to handle everything more calmly. Growing up in the 90s, what I've found is that things changed a lot when people were…
Not to mention living in America is like playing life on hard mode; at least relative to other OECD countries. There's a lot more things you have to take care of / think about in America. There's a level of mental overhead that does not exist in other developed countries that many Americans do not realize are optional. eg health insurance, education, unemployment safety net, or even little things like way too many co…
I think a lot of HN doesn’t understand that all the shitty things about the US that people from other countries love to rag on basically don’t apply to many people in the US. If you have a job that is in demand you will not need to worry any more about these things than if you live in another developed country. Especially in American corporate culture, sure people are worried about their mortgage and some do live paycheck to paycheck, but the culture of excessive work in places like tech or finance is not generally about getting thrown out to the streets with cancer.
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Still not sure how post-Covid, we haven't concluded that improving indoor ventilation should be a massive public health priority.
Seems like there'd be a lot of tension between that goal, and reducing energy use.
The most disturbing part, to me, is this: > The early-onset cancer epidemic might be one manifestation of increasing trends in the development of many chronic diseases in young and future generations. Why are chronic diseases trending upwards? Is it the obvious things (pollution, microplastics, obesity, massive drain on mental health from the modern lifestyle, etc.), or is there something else going on?
Just adding a bit about the subject at hand: I am convinced the cancer epidemic is due to us grossly misusing our biological equipment: we are meant to feast & fast, and not have insulin's anabolic effects constantly activated. Fasting is crucial for "system maintenance", via autophagy (self-eating of damaged cells). Average person constantly stimulates insulin with following the advice of eating small meals often, w…
Anecdotally, I've found out in recent year about many women having serious thyroid issues. I'm sure more people being open about their health increases this, but the sheer frequency seems absurd. Whatever industrial chemicals we're ingesting need to be drastically controlled, and this poisoning needs to be branded so that the general population knows about it. I don't want years of my life to be an externality to a s…
After going through a profound burnout in 2019 which caused me to develop chronic digestive issues, I worry that I injured my thyroid because I've had chills since even before having COVID. The proteins in gluten are similar to ones in the thyroid, so when the body becomes sensitized to something like wheat, it can also start attacking the thyroid (see autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto's). The problem is that flareups can by cyclical and not get detected by thyroid tests for years, until the damage is permanent.
Also I've been researching how gluten sensitivity can destroy the lining of the small intestine in Crohn's disease. That damage can cause permanent loss of ability to absorb nutrients. It's unclear if the rise of the severe non-Crohn's gluten sensitivity we're seeing causes similar but smaller injuries, lumped into pseudo-science terms like leaky gut. The western high-sugar diet is highly inflammatory, disrupting the endocrine system and eventually leading to metabolic syndrome, neuropathy, possibly even multiple sclerosis (MS). The epidemiological studies aren't there to show that definitively, but I feel that's due to factory farm industry/pharmaceutical lobby suppression of government funding for those studies.
I believe my issues started due to self-medicating my stress and depression with a finger of rye whiskey or cheap beer way too many nights of the week, chronic dehydration from working out, and not knowing how hard casein protein supplements and whole wheat/barley/rye are on the gut. Switching to half a glass of red wine with dinner each night, eating rice/corn instead of wheat, and avoiding all FODMAPs/milk/tree nuts for a year drastically improved my health to the point where I'm back at my old strength in the gym and consider my issues to be in remission as long as I avoid certain triggers.
Anyway, I wasn't sure where to chime in on this, because the corruption of our food supply and rise of severe mental health issues are all connected. When I burned out, I lost the ability to take care of myself for about 6 months as bills started piling up. Burnout from anxiety can be devastating to neurodivergent thinkers like me who already struggle with ADHD and/or autistic symptoms. I didn't truly begin my healing journey until the pandemic. So simple tasks like getting insurance, going to the doctor or seeking counseling feel can feel insurmountable. I'm still trying to get ahead of the curve enough to take more tests and get some definitive answers. But I'm grateful beyond words to have gotten this far and be able to write this now.
If anyone has experienced anything similar to what I'm saying, do you remember what year your symptoms started, or when your friends and family started reporting them?
Edit: deleted my rant about globalization's affect on our food supply/climate/health.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excluding the microplastics thing, I think that your two latter points are actually both derived from the social media changes. Life today for almost everyone in the West is better than ever before, but people are exposed to a lot of thought on social media that 1. life is worse now, 2. in your lifetime there will be terrible destruction happening, which contributes to a sense of fatalism and doom. It is super appeal…
Life today is better if you're already established, i.e. have a well paying job, own a home, etc. Being young in todays world is exponentially harder than it was, say, 40 years ago. Many young people have given up on the idea of home ownership. I'm 26 and I've had friends laugh in my face when I suggested owning instead of renting. It's simply unattainable unless you're in a lucrative field. I'm in Canada for referen…
In terms of the material abundance that one experiences today, it is just on a different level from 40 years ago.
Housing ownership is also not the be all end all. And while the prices are higher, the rates are lower so that you will not be paying a greater proportion of your income on housing.
Compare to 40 years ago: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP
To look at housing and say that the high price of homes negates all quality of life improvements in the last 40 years seems wrong to me.
If we're going to throw out random theories for the cause like diet and pollution, what about all the volatile chemicals off-gassing from freshly manufactured goods?
Getting an air quality monitor was enlightening and terrifying. My child’s room (which unfortunately doesn’t have great ventilation) would sometimes hit 4000 ppb VOCs, which I tracked down to some of her stuffed animals…