Is Our Sloth Killing Us?
Has our sloth finally caught up with us?
Experts in the United Kingdom fear that it has in some cases.
The problems stem from too much food, alcohol and exposure to the sun, according to figures from Cancer Research UK.
Cases of melanoma, the most virulent form of skin cancer, have risen by 40 percent in the past decade. Mouth cancer, linked with smoking and excessive drinking, has risen by almost a quarter.
Rates of kidney and womb cancer, linked with obesity, have also spiked in the last decade.
Many nutrition and health experts, including the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Robert Keith, have seen it coming. But in his case, Keith also discerns an intriguing irony in all of this, despite all the trouble it may portend.
The irony is that despite these statistics, we’re doing a few things right — right in ways that even our ancestors from only a century ago would have found unimaginable. And it’s reflected in a 21st century generation that is healthy and more robust than any other in human history.
Following is a list of some of the things we’re doing right:
• Comparatively recent advances in modern science, which have equipped us to avoid much of the chronic suffering routinely associated with preindustrial life. Much of this stems from better sanitation and medication — most notably, antibiotics and vaccines. Likewise, surgical techniques even have been developed to repair damage that already has occurred, such as the damaged heart valves that often accompany rheumatic fever — a common health problem in earlier centuries.
• Science’s deeper insight into the role that diet and exercise play in safeguarding against human disease, certain forms of cancer, and other chronic disease. In fact, science and the social reform that followed also have gone a long way toward eliminating the toxic industrial practices that contributed to premature death among countless industrial workers.
• The growing emphasis on prenatal health — fetal programming, as it’s commonly called, which is based on the premise that what happens in the womb is going to affect an infant’s health and growth for the rest of his or her life.
Yet, as human history has proven time and again, technology often proves a double-edged sword — the reason why modern life is laced with such troubling irony, Keith says.
Scientific advances associated with food-processing and mechanical conveniences — plus the incredibly large chunks of leisure time that economic and scientific progress also have afforded us within the last few decades — have been linked with obesity and sedentary lifestyles.
Keith and other experts have debated for years whether these poor lifestyle factors will eventually pull humanity in the opposite direction by lowering life expectancies saddling us with higher incidences chronic diseases comparatively early in life.
Whether this ultimately translates into a greater incidence of premature chronic diseases and reduced life expectancies remains an open question, he says.
It’s the reason why he finds the British statistics so disturbing.
Posted by Jim Langcuster at August 10, 2007 03:12 PM