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Why do "Babyboomers" appear to be sicker?
Just Want to Talk | Last Active: Jul 24, 2023 | Replies (34)Comment receiving replies
My theory is we are a generation that has been victimized by what they call progress, the evidence is all around us, our parents are the ones that are benefiting more than us because they lived most of their lives in a much cleaner world, in turn they are also getting the best medical care to keep them alive. I do a lot of research in my own time, I did this type of work for my living, statistics are fascinating but they can also be scary. Our generation was exposed to so many dangerous elements, even our classrooms has asbestos in the walls, our pencils contained lead, they put chemicals in our water, the list is endless and at the end of the day, our bodies are showing the effects of all this progress and although we do have better treatments today, we have already suffered too much damage. In closing one more statistic is that only twenty five percent of seniors will go past seventy five years of age, not very encouraging news I'm sorry to say.
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You said "Our generation was exposed to so many dangerous elements, even our classrooms has asbestos in the walls, our pencils contained lead, they put chemicals in our water, the list is endless and at the end of the day, our bodies are showing the effects of all this progress" - but that is true of the generations before us as well. Those things have been around for a long time, people sickened and died from them, and nobody knew why. Asbestos has been in use for over 100 years, mines and factories dumped raw pollutants into our water since the 1800's, lead pipes to carry water since ancient times. Our parents and grandparents had no vaccines, no antibiotics, no OSHA workplace protection...so in 1940, if you got pneumonia, hepatitis, cancer, or heart disease, or asbestosis, or ???, you were sick for a short while and you died. If you got pneumonia, scarlet fever, a strep infection or if your body wasn't strong you might not recover - or be left with lifelong health issues and die young.
What has changed is what we KNOW about both the pollutants and disease and illness. And how to treat them.
And life expectancy has changed - when my grandma died in 1957 at the age of 74, no one said "oh she died so young" but when my Dad died in at the same age 1999 we heard that over and over. Now I am nearly there, and don't even really think of myself and my contemporaries as "old" - even though our bodies are!
Sue