People Are Living Longer, With More Disabilities Than Ever 129
skade88 writes "Worldwide, people are living longer. Their lives are starting to look more like the lives of Americans: too much food is a problem, death in childhood is becoming less common, and so on. Yet with a population that lives through what would once have killed us, disabilities are starting to become the norm. A research report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has a good glimpse into the new emerging world we find ourselves in."
The Guardian has a nice visualization of the mortality data (but take note of shifting scales on the Y-axis).
Not too much food. Too much BAD food. (Score:5, Interesting)
As in:
- Destruction through heating (like that whole heated dairy protein causing auto-immune diseases thing, but also destroying vitamins and enzymes).
- Extreme concentrations that would never appear in nature and cause strong imbalances (to the point of collapse) in the body (like sweets / stuff that's nearly pure starch, etc. but also salt or saturated fats).
- Lack of vital substances in plants grown on depleted soil that are only bigger because they have more water in them (adding to the imbalances, and causing many diseases).
- Thousands of drugs and unnatural substances given to animals and added to processed "food".
We shouldn't be surprised we get sick from them. We should be surprised our bodies are so resilient to survive this nasty waste at all!
Dr. M. O. Bruker studied these exact problems for five decades with over 50,000 patients... as did many others. And the result was always, that those so-called "age-related diseases" didn't come because of age, but *with* age... with decades of bad nutrition!
We've known this for 50 years now. But as long as the industry doesn't put the illness and pain of seven billion people above corporate greed, and as long as we the people don't stop buying their trash, and start supporting people people that *do* make good food for us... as long as *we* don't make that happen, nothing will change.
(Ask your local farmer and butcher and baker, etc. He'd love to sell you something of better quality. But he can't give you the illusion of cheapness because he won't employ the tricks and lies and shit that make you sick and will *really* cost you in the long term.)
Final conclusion: Thinking for the long term... thinking ahead... equals intelligence. The more a life-form can predict the future, and manipulate things so it ends up in his favor, the more intelligence it is. But it seems that nowadays, both people and companies, are just really fuckin' stupid.
Re:Speaking as an example... (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that while there has a been a great deal of success in keeping people alive, there has been little success in keeping them healthy.
And assorted people, including those working in the health industry, have explained that this is a simple result of a "market" health system. Thus, I've heard or read a number of exchanges in which an interviewer asks a Pharm rep why their company has gotten out of the vaccine business. The reply is generally of the form "Because vaccines aren't profitable". The interviewer asks for further details. The rep explains that a vaccine cures the patient, or prevents them from even getting sick. This means that you sell them nothing, or maybe a few doses of a medicine, and then you make no more money from them. The profitable drugs/treatments are those that maintains the patient as a patient, requiring ongoing treatment for the rest of their lives.
I first ran across this, years ago, as a criticism of the commercial health system. But now I'm hearing it from the supporters and reps of that health system, as an explanation for why they're so profitable.
So if you want to be kept healthy, maybe you should be pushing for a system that wants you to be healthy, rather than one that wants you as a (paying) patient. The current system (at least here in the US) punishes the companies that market things that keep you healthy, and rewards those who convert you to a patient with a chronic condition.
Re:Speaking as an example... (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently it seems to be more a tool to create fantasies about why under 1% of the population have a natural right to own more than half of everything while others die from overpriced medical care.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's not an obesity (Score:1, Interesting)
It's probably a problem, but it's much less of a problem than overeating, lack of exercise, stress and being under rested. I remember some years back dropping 30 lbs., just by cutting out between meal snacks and getting more shut eye.
It's probably worth researching, but until people are doing the things that are known to prevent obesity, there isn't much point in worrying about the possibilities of chemicals and such causing problems. In fact, you really need to rule out the things I listed to have any hope of narrowing down the cause.
Also, if we told the pro-obesity morons to shut the fuck up when they try to rationalize the choice to be obese we might get somewhere. Anybody who consumes less than what they are burning will lose weight and if you manage it with exercise you'll get healthier in that respect. Telling people that it's not their fault that they're fat, just dis-empowers them and gives people the idea that being fat is a legitimate lifestyle choice. In reality it's an extremely selfish thing people do to themselves and those around them.
I'm off about 80 pounds from my peak and feeling better than ever. But, it probably wouldn't have been 80 pounds if I had been hearing about the fact that I was gaining too much weight.
WOW!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
The most wasteful system ever devised by human is suggested as a "tool we invented to understand and control how limited resources are used"?
The system that burns hydrocarbons instead of using them only for organic synthesis (plastics, medicine). The system that resulted in planned obsolesce? The system that...I am lost for words.
There is only one sensible thing in your post - the word "believe" There is no other way to support this inhuman, irrational, wasteful socioeconomic system that to accept it is faith....