What is happening to health in this wonderful country of ours?

[The Q]

There is a simple reason for many of these allergies, many of these things people people can't take weren't eaten 50 Years ago. Back in those days you were lucky to get a bacon roll. These days you get some sesame seeded roll filled with all sorts of strange things..

PS i am a lot heavier, that's because all those sports I had to do to keep fit in the past,  have left me with so many injuries, it gets painful to walk around at times..
Mind yyou the RAF had some strange targets they reckoned someone 6ft  (183cm )should weigh 11 stone (70kg)

[daffy]

A great reply @NeMo . Thanks.

I'm a heavier version of the skinny kid I was back in my youth, but I'm still a relatively lithe 6 footer at 12st 7lbs. Problem for me, according to more than one of my Doctors over the past 27 years, is that as that skinny child I never had any of the childhood diseases. I'm thinking of things like Chicken Pox, Measles, etc, and even Flu and Colds were not something I experienced until I was well past my teens. Consequently, so they surmise, I didn't build up my body's auto-immune system, leaving me open to later problems - those same problems that have, until very recently, plagued every day of my life since 1990, and at times before that.
Some are healthier, some of us are fitter, and some of us will live longer than our parents. But I look around the crazy World about me and sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder if living longer is all it's cracked up to be.

[Snowwolflair]

OK. I freely admit this has nothing to do with railways, real or model, but it has been baffling me for many a year and i thought I'd throw it out to our erudite 'collective to see if someone can educate me.
Where have all these allergies and syndromes etc come from? We have wheat, gluten, nut, dairy and Lord knows what allergies and this morning a new one on me has popped up in the news i.e. '22Q Deletion Syndrome' (who came up with that moniker?) I confess to being in my mid 60s and can't remember all these tribulations being visited on anyone I knew when I was younger. Maybe it's just they were there and no one understood them or had given them any credence/importance? I suspect despite best efforts to pollute this world with plastics, fossil fuels etc society has become too sanitised to the extent our immune systems can't fight the 'bugs'. I can remember playing in the gutter with melted tar, living with steam railways, making mud pies and my Mum always wondering where I got the water from and so on. I do feel great sympathy for those afflicted by allergies and think it's quite horrific someone can die simply from a nut or sting.
Did I just live in a bubble in my youth or is it really a more recent thing? I would really appreciate those living in other countries giving their views so I can get an idea if this is a world wide thing or more localised.

Most of them are not new only these days being specifically identified as people don't die of them first.  Some are new and are due to the level of environmental pollution.

For instance air pollution raises the incidence of type 2 diabetes.

It is clear death rates have dropped, why?  the weakest in our population are surviving longer with modern medicine and therefore the percentage of ill people still living goes up (along with the cost to the health service).

A hundred years ago children were classified as sickly or ailing but no one knew why and in many cases and they died before becoming adults.

Sorry if this is a miserable response but it what is happening and at least more people these days get to live longer and I appreciate that.

You never hear of diseases like Diptheria these days a serious killer that weakens your heart.  My grandfather had it three times and was invalided in WW1 because of it.

[Newportnobby]

Some very interesting replies especially that of @NeMo which has certainly expanded my knowledge of genetics. I had always thought diarrohea was hereditary as it seemed to run in my jeans.
Seriously, though, the flip of better health and longer life is, of course, keeping everyone fed and finding space for them on the planet. If anyone likes Dan Brown novels try "Inferno" and that will really give you pause for thought.

[Trainfish]

Just a personal hunch but I wonder how much the drop in breast-feeding has affected health.

I agree, we should all breast feed more. I'll speak to the wife to see if I can start tonight 

[daffy]

I had always thought diarrohea was hereditary as it seemed to run in my jeans.

SWMBO still laughing after I read that line to her. Thanks Mick.

[MalcolmInN]

I haven't yet had the courage to say to a heart consultant "don't tell me to cut down
the forum and put this packet of choc chip cookies away

Ah ha ! so that is what you get up to when the forum is slow
It's all the forum's fault 

But dont worry, despite not smoking, not drinking excessively, plenty of excersize (2acres on a hillside to look after ), not a desk-bound job (up and down to the computer suite and in-out of the lab ) , etc&etc, in other words a modestly model lifestyle,  I also have a tame heart consultant

[MalcolmInN]

things like Chicken Pox,

so you probably will not have to suffer shingles later in life ! (or even not so very late in life,,,dont ask )

[daffy]

things like Chicken Pox,

so you probably will not have to suffer shingles later in life ! (or even not so very late in life,,,dont ask )

That's what I thought. At least until three years ago when I finally went down with Chicken Pox at the age of 63.
And then late-onset asthma a year and a half later.

[joe cassidy]

Doctors told me I would grow out of hay fever.

To quote Diana Ross "I'm still waiting".

Best regards,


Joe (61 years)

[MalcolmInN]

until three years ago when I finally went down with Chicken Pox at the age of 63.

Argh!

I dont know any statistics on elapsed time between CP and Shingles onset, but in my case (statistical sample of one) it was about 35y,, soooo, you may be lucky 63+35=98
(or not!!!)


Only one attack that I wish not to be repeated, so I have accepted our wonderful NHS offer of an anti-S jab 

[NeMo]

I'm thinking of things like Chicken Pox, Measles, etc, and even Flu and Colds were not something I experienced until I was well past my teens. Consequently, so they surmise, I didn't build up my body's auto-immune system, leaving me open to later problems - those same problems that have, until very recently, plagued every day of my life since 1990, and at times before that.

Indeed. Chickenpox is interesting, because the immune response is actually the thing that causes the most discomfort. Hence, infants, with much weaker immune responses, largely sail through chickenpox without the need for antiviral medications. But adults have a much harder time because their immune system reacts so much more violently, not just in terms of the symptoms (e.g., fever) but also being more likely to develop additional complications, such as pneumonia.

A wise doctor once said that the secret of good health is "50% keeping clean, 50% getting dirty". The so-called hygiene hypothesis suggests that if infants and children are kept too clean, too isolated from pathogens, their immune system doesn't properly develop, for example being more likely to treat something harmless as a pathogen -- in other words, an allergy.

This is by no means widely accepted, and there's plenty of evidence cited against it, not to mention the fact it doesn't entirely fit with how we believe the immune system works. In any event, it seems pretty unlikely that any infant is truly isolated from pathogens, particularly in homes with other children, pets, even adults who leave the house and come back in presumably laden with bacteria they've been exposed to.

The reality is that we don't have anything like a convincing theory as to why allergies are more common. It's likely a mix of things, and the precise explanations may well vary from person to person.

Our diet is probably one factor, containing too much meat, fat and refined sugar, and not nearly enough fibre and green plant material. This will, in turn, dramatically change the biome of bacteria in our guts, and these seem to play an important role in food intolerances especially.

There's some evidence that avoiding potential allergens (like peanuts) when feeding very young children actually makes allergies more common, and what we should be doing is exposing infants during the weaning process to the sorts of foods they're going to encounter, rather than waiting until they're much older.

The decrease in breastfeeding, and even when done, its relative brevity, is another possible factor. Consider that "wild" humans would have weaned their babies after 2-3 years, that's a very long period of time through which the baby would be exposed to chemicals in the mother's diet. Very few women breastfeed that long nowadays, at least in the West.

As I say, it's incredibly complicated, and as you've observed, if the immune system is off-kilter in some ways, it can cause all sorts of problems. Diabetes (type 1) and rheumatoid arthritis are just two examples of autoimmune diseases that aren't often thought about in this way.

Cheers, NeMo

[MalcolmInN]

Doctors told me I would grow out of hay fever.
61 years

I did.

bad in my 20's (inherited from maternal g.mother) diminished by 40's gone in 50's,,, till the morning of my 65th birthday (65 ! someone up there was having a larf )  when I had my first heart attack, now returned during winter as well ! go figure - I blame all the pills I am now on.

[kesdrive]

I have coeliac disease which means I have a gluten intolerance. If I consume gluten it will damage my intestines and I will quickly become very ill. A gluten free diet controls the condition. (Not cheap by the way £3 for a loaf of bread.)
I was apparently born with the condition but was not diagnosed until I was 55!
When my GP suggested I had coeliac disease I had never heard of it. When he printed off all the possible symptoms it was obvious all my previous GP's hadn't either!
I had had all of the symptoms at one time or another while growing up.
Medicine is developing all the time as my case proves.
Chris

[MalcolmInN]

Re breast feeding:
I think the major benefit arises in the early feeding, colostrum, so even mothers who start but dont continue pass on most of the benefit.

I cannot quantify it, not my field ! I only know of it from my daughter's amateur pig keeping hobby where abandoned piglets (oh, and lambs, been ther done that as well !)  can be raised quite well artificially if they have had that early feed.

What an odd thread