The non-communicable chronic diseases are what my parents new, when they were still alive.
Recently I had to get my late father's paperwork in order and this meant going through lots of medical stuff. There was also paperwork regarding my mum, it was IPF that got her.
I also had to take a sack full of pills down to the chemist to get disposed of. This is in the UK where we have the NHS. The NHS would prefer to have people in good health whereas I suspect that the private healthcare system of the USA prefers to have people in bad health and medically dependent. It is just a different business model.
What surprised me about the NHS paperwork was how much of it was focused on lifestyle choices, so that means living a physically active life and eating certain foods.
My dad did the doctor visits and the pills but he did not do the lifestyle recommendations. He would behave like a tired toddler if you put fruit and vegetables on his plate. He was also heavily car dependent, as if any other mode of transport was not 'manly' enough for him. We had concerns for other road users with his driving but we could not get him to take the train, never mind walk as far as the nearest shop, five minutes away.
Alcohol was another cause for concern. Although never drunk, he would drink every day. He would have it with his greasy food, thinking he was eating like a king.
I know diet and nutrition is controversial, however, the NHS were wanting him to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, and there were forms so that he could fill in how many grains, nuts, seeds, potatoes, vegetables and pieces of fruit he was eating. He wasn't eating any of those things, he was on the saturated fats, which invariably come from animal products. There were no checkboxes on the form for meat, cheese or processed foods, which is no surprise since there is no fibre in any of this stuff. There aren't any antioxidants either.
The NHS prefers lifestyle interventions rather than pills. This varies by doctor, but, this is the general idea.
Age related diseases are not due to age, in this day and age. They are down to poor lifestyle choices, cancer and all. Forget genetics too, sure, some people win the lottery, and others lose the cancer lottery. But the more you know then the more you realise that no amount of pills, procedures and testing will spare anyone from blocked arteries due to saturated fats with side portions of bad cholesterol.
It is the same with alcohol. If we treated pensioners as if they were under age, to ban them from obtaining alcohol, then there would be a lot of miserable pensioners but they would be living a lot longer. Same with processed food and animal products, if we banned pensioners from such things then they would be miserable but live out to be a hundred years old.
Face to face with my dad's NHS paperwork made me realise that I knew what I was reading all along. For decades we have known what gives you the non-communicable chronic diseases. We have also known that it is fibre and phytonutrients from whole foods that enable your body to protect itself against things such as inflammation.
Looking for cures is grift. There is no cure or treatment for those that spend hours a day consuming toxins whilst they pretend they are living like a king just because they are eating heavily marketed animal products that are sold as 'good for protein'. With health and longevity, you can't have your cake full of transfats and eat it.
> Age related diseases are not due to age, in this day and age. They are down to poor lifestyle choices, cancer and all. Forget genetics too, sure, some people win the lottery, and others lose the cancer lottery. But the more you know then the more you realise that no amount of pills, procedures and testing will spare anyone from blocked arteries due to saturated fats with side portions of bad cholesterol.
I wish more people understood that. Medicine definitely has its place but if you don't put in the preventative work on your side it's a losing battle.
I know 80+ years old who go skying every single day in winter, still chop their own fire wood, &c. Meanwhile there are plenty of ~50 years old who are already in worse health/shape, eat like shit, sleep like shit, never exercise, complain about their bad backs and bad knees, bad digestion, &c.
Medicine is very good at keeping you alive, but if you want to keep a good quality of life there is nothing medicine can provide that is even remotely as good as being fit. And even if you lose the genetic lottery: medicine will be much more effective if you have a clean base, you better go to chemo with an extra 20kg of muscle rather than 20kg of fat, high blood pressure and diabetes
Age related diseases are not due to age
30 year olds don't get Alzheimer's no matter how unhealthy their diet and lifestyle is. There are things you can and should do to improve your odds, but overall old people are going to be less healthy than young people.
Ya for Alzheimer's, the two people in my family who've had it had bad diets (think dining out lavishly every night or sugar-addiction) and poor hygiene (like having every single tooth pulled). I also suspect chronic lack of sleep is my dad's worse health trait. I don't get why they don't work on this stuff personally.
Except they are due to age. While lifestyle changes may make some conditions less likely or less severe, don't kid yourself into thinking you can avoid them all forever. Nor is lifestyle change an easy path for most people. If it were, many of the lifestyle diseases would be gone, because we know so much about them. Of the diseases in the article, only NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, called MASH in most of the article, presumably a typo) seems to be strongly related to lifestyle.
The government (or society, whatever) could reduce lifestyle diseases by closing the roads so that people do not drive, requiring jobs to be 50% physical, turning off electric lighting after 9pm, banning overly tasty packaged food, observing a sabbath, etc. Like that will ever happen. The studies are clear, so why don't we do this?
GLP-1 agonists are showing us that behavior has deeper roots than simple choice. People on these medications are able to choose the healthier choice without feeling something lacking, but when they are discontinued they typically return to old habits.
In the meantime, there have been successes at treating lifestyle diseases and giving people better, happier lives. I wish they could stop their behaviors, but I like that they have a chance to treat atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, etc.