Climate/ecological breakdown

Environmentalism
741

Absolutely. We are living longer, but not better. And in fact this current generation now in their 70s/80s/90s may well be the peak of the curve in terms of longevity and it may fall away again quite quickly. Looking at today’s younger generations - overweight, poor diet, little or no exercise (sitting is the new smoking), stress, low self-image, poor social interactions - and we are likely to find that they are dying much younger.

Ultimately, we WILL live longer and better. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be fit and well practically to the day we leave this mortal coil - but by then the world population will be smaller, science and medicine will recognise the importance of prevention and not cure and from birth our genetic pathway will be mapped and monitored to make sure we are getting what we need to stay well - it will be a very different world. I HOPE to live to see at least a little of this come to fruition. It’s going to be painful for mankind in the meantime.

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742

In what sense “not better” - our health in later life is much better than it used to be.

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743

I think you only had to look at the people in nursing/care homes who were dying through the very dark days of the beginning of COVID. The last 18 months of a person’s life often cost half the value of a house in terms of healthcare, to what end? What quality of life does someone who is propped up in a bed in a care home being spoon fed have? It may sound callous. but there was a time when a final dose of pneumonia, or indeed the doctor himself with some carefully administered morphine, let someone go and maybe covid in fact was being kind.
My m-i-l in her 80s, spent the last 6 years of her life in a care home in the UK. She increasingly lost her English (it was her second language) and became more and more isolated and confused, towards the end she never left her room. She did not know her son and thought he was her brother who had died many years before. The care home closed and she was moved. She died in a matter of weeks. That is not the type of end I want and I wonder who does? That is what I mean about living longer but (alright I qualify it) not necessarily better. My paternal grand parents died in their 70s and were fit/active up to the final (brief) few days. That is how I would like to go.
My mother had a series of small heart “events” and then one big one - in her late 80s. At 2am in the morning the young doctors were using paddles on her heart and came rushing over to my brother and me to say they’d “saved her”. We were crying because we knew she wanted to go - in fact later in the night she was saying “this is not right, this is not right”. Finally, when her kidneys shut down, they agreed we could bring her home to die. Modern medicine does not “allow” us to die. People have to be kept alive at all costs. We still have much to learn about the role allopathic medicine should play in our lives.

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744

This is sharply pointed for me right now. My mother, now almost 90, has lost her strength and fitness in the last 8 or 9 weeks and has suddenly gone from living largely independently to spending most of her time in bed. Our concern is not that she dies now, but rather that she continues to live at this level.

On her behalf I’m grateful for the large bucket full of meds she’s had to take every day, because they’ve given her a good quality of life where she’d otherwise have been sick and unhappy for a long time. She’s outlived her father by 4 years now, although he had quite serious dementia for the last couple of years.

We’ve talked about end of life quite a bit, and she has a DNR certificate to make sure no-one brings her back.

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745

Quite a long post which, I think, reflects more your own personal experience rather than the general case.

First off I think looking at care homes during Covid is quite the wrong thing - circumstances were most assuredly not normal during that period.

True, the period I have seen is actually the last three years but the principle is the same.

It is not surprising though considering that we all become much more frail as we get older - but not all of that healthcare spend is on spoon feeding people. What of the octaganarian who’s “end of life healthcare spending” is a new hip and with it several more years improved quality of life?

Maybe not much but who are you to ask. Why not ask @David_Spardo who clearly worries himself witless about getting Fran to eat and his devotion to doing so, I am sure, improves her quality of life immeasurably.

Given that we are now living longer, often into extreme old age it is not surprising that diseases of extreme old age such as Alzheimer’s are becoming more common.

Alzheimer’s, of course, is a terrible disease. My mother died with it and did so in a care home, but there is no realistic alternative because families can’t cope. We’re now going through it with my mother in law and the increased care burden is falling heavily on her two daughters, sadly I think we are some way from the point that social care services will move her to a home - if they think family are coping they will let the do just that, but the fact is that all too often families are not coping.

Who wouldn’t - I’d quite like to shuffle off this earth with a massive heart attack in my sleep, preferably fer my 100th birthday and with no pre-existing comorbidities.

It’s a myth, though, to think that there was some halcyon age where everybody got their three score and ten in good health then woke up one morning to find themselves chatting with Anubis and hoping the scales thing worked out OK for them

The main improvements in health and longevity have, of course, arisen from

[there has been a short delay, the rest of the post will be along imminently]

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746

It is hard to see the decline in a loved one. Mum passed last year at 94. The last 3 years she seemed to age 5 years for each actual 1. The battery chair gave her an extra year of independance outside of her carers visits and the falls almost stopped.

I think that generation and a bit below ours might be the exceptions, although its hard to generalise outside of the blue zones and America does have one or two its the Japanese that go on the longest and are the best health wise right up to their 110-120 year life spans. I have no interest in going on passed 80 ish but would like to enjoy being active and healthy until then.

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747

So, to continue - sorry for the interval, thanks to @Corona for filling in :slight_smile:

It’s annoying that the forum software can’t cope with two replies simultaneously.

Now where were we, oh yes…

The main improvements in health and longevity have, of course, arisen from public health improvements - nutrition, sanitation, maybe vaccines, clean(er) air, reduction in smoking, improved health and safety at work.

In the 19th century malnutrition in childhood often left its mark in terms of long term ill health in adults, incdustrial accidents frequently left people maimed and iincapable of work or with long term disability and exposure to industrial carcinogens was rife because no one understood the association.

In the 20th century things like nutrition and sanitation improved but there was still a burden of chronic ill health - lung cancer might have finished people off quickly but that was often on top of years of chronic bronchitis from smoking or the effects of industrial lung disease (often both). The heart attack might have been a merciful end but after years of angina limiting the amount of exercise you could tolerate.

The evidence is that we are living longer and healthier lives - there is a lot of truth in the statement 50 is the new 30 - more and more people are reaching 50 with *no* major illnesses which will limit their lifespans.

I’m truly sorry for your experience it was, indeed, wrong. I am also sorry that you had to watch your mother in law’s decline with dementia - as I said I have direct experience and know how awful it is.

However this should not happen these days. I don’t know what arrangements France has but the UK has the ReSPECT process which allows these sort of decisions to be made ahead of time. Also, since 2007, the old “Enduring power of attorney” has been replaced with the newer “Lasting power of attorney” which can include delegating healthcare decisions so that relatives can make medical treatment decisions on behalf of loved ones.

Admittedly the flip side of better nutrition is the rise of obesity and diabetes - and we seem to have peaked, and are slipping back even. The challenges don’t go away, they merely evolve.

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748

Thats not better nutrition. Thats metabolic poison. Getting better? Diabetes rates rising in US and UK. Cancer 1:2 people

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749

Yes, if you define malnutrition as nutrition which is not healthy then the modern diet is not good nutrition, I agree.

But starving is worse.

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750

Couldn’t agree more @Corona We do NOT have better nutrition. A few well-informed (often affluent) people do. The great majority do not. Completely the wrong foods are subsidised and “cheap” food is crap food. I say cheap in inverted commas because we are going to learn as a society very quickly that we have been poisoning the population and that healthcare costs are going to rocket.

751

What or when is your baseline?

Can you prove that nutrition was “better” then?

Starving will kill you quickly or leave you with severe adult chronic illness.

Against that baseline modern nutrition is definitely better.

It just isn’t without its own problems.

752

I think you and I are going to have to differ on this one Billy. There is a lot of research that shows as people move from rural areas to cities, especially if they move to 1st world countries from other parts of the world where diet is largely plant based, their health deteriorates - they are more likely to get diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.
Yes, obviously there are parts of the world where there is malnutrition and starvation - interestingly (IMO) often not due to diet / what they eat but to the appalling impact of social conditions - war, corruption, poor infrastructure so that crops do not get to market, etc.

753

I’d better say I’ve only skimmed some of the long replies on diet etc here - but my impression is you are at slight cross-purposes. Isn’t it only over very recent decades that ultra-processed foods, industrial chemical farming, etc, have really saturated western diets and lifestyles? Have these things really had time to feed through into many illness, longevity, etc, statistics?

754

Yes, I am not disagreeing with that.

What I am disputing is that here is some halcyon age in the UK, and maybe even France, where the diet was “better” in an absolute sense.

Yes, previous diets - especially, say, in the 1940’s and 1950’s had elements which were better (as I said already - less red meat, less processed carbohydrate, more fibre) - but just getting enough to eat was a battle, children were often chronically malnourished and were small as adults as a consequence at the very least and obesity and diabetes from poorly balanced diets were hardly unheard of (but people often died of other things first).

I suspect we are a bit - Sue is focussing on a very narrow definition of “better” for one thing, though I agree with a lot of what she is saying about the problems of the modern, western, diet.

Yes, the modern refined diet is recent - say 1950’s/1960’s in the US (TV dinners) and a bit later in the UK. I’m not sure France has totally embraced it yet but the proliferation of MacDo’s suggests it is well on the way.

It might just be starting to filter through to longevity, incidence of diabetes etc

755

On the prevalence of diabetes I found this graphic from the BMJ though it is, I have to say, rather confusing to follow, it does show a generally increasing ttrend since the 1990’s

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756

Malnutrition was borderline normal in some parts of the population in the UK up to the early part of the 20th century. My English grandmother (died of a stroke in her 60s) had a hump from spinal curvature that was a result of childhood malnutrition. Diet is potentially much better now than it ever was previously, but it does require that people make choices that they may not enjoy as much as their normal choice.

Organisms on near-starvation diets can be apparently healthy and possibly even live longer provided they get their essential nutrients, but it’s a hell of a way to live, always being hungry. There’s been quite a lot of work demonstrating this, so I’ll leave you to google if you’re interested.

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757

Seems again to be a disease of the west. The build up of amyloid plaques from a poor diet. Extreme old age, again the Japanese 110-120 but little mental loss.
I eat once, maybe another snack but not always and not hungry as I avoid a lot of what makes the hunger. Intermittent fasting to induce autophagy basically the reverse of the populous continually grazing.

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758

Ancient and Sue - melding what you’ve both said - in something similar I mentioned to someone who was ready to go, with not much to look forward to, what a DNR was snd why they might want to have one.

After it was done we were quietly told: in an emergency not to call an ambulance. It was explained that even if the DNR is on the chair next to someone and it’s pointed out, it will be ignored by ambulance staff, as their targets are different. They gave us another number to call instead. Luckily it wasn’t needed

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759

People don’t have to go into care homes or hospital, surely they will be happier in familiar surroundings, even if they die a bit sooner?

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760

Maybe no longer?

Intermittent fasting, or mild continuous calorie restriction (in adults) does seem to have the potential for health benefits, I agree.

Not always.

Unfortunately that is only an option if adequate care can be provided in the community - which is an inefficient way of doing it and a large percentage of which falls to families - and can be a considerable strain as modern family life rarely allows the time necessary.

Also Alzheimer’s sufferers are frequently a danger to themselves if not continuously supervised - our neighbour had a tendency to wander & get lost (something which is very common) and then get very confused and agitated when people tried to return her, and by the time they fail to recognise their own house as "home"or no longer recognise family members they are no long (and can never be) in "familiar surroundings.

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