Are we healthier than our fathers generation?

Galwayguy35

I think the average guy these days in his 30s and 40s is in a lot better shape than previous generations.

The majority of men in the past might have been doing more physical labour but IMO they probably drank more as well. These days while young lads still drink a good bit, most men by the time they reach their 30s are spending less time in the pub, taking regular exercise and looking after their health.

Duggys Housemate

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

I think the average guy these days in his 30s and 40s is in a lot better shape than previous generations.

The majority of men in the past might have been doing more physical labour but IMO they probably drank more as well. These days while young lads still drink a good bit, most men by the time they reach their 30s are spending less time in the pub, taking regular exercise and looking after their health.

Really? Take a look at pictures of people from the 80's or early nineties. Even then far fewer porkers. People in the 50's looked starved.

Yes, if guys look after themselves they will be fitter - not smoking alone will do that. Most people don't look after themselves.

GalwayGuy2

Really? Take a look at pictures of people from the 80's or early nineties. Even then far fewer porkers. People in the 50's looked starved.

Yes, if guys look after themselves they will be fitter - not smoking alone will do that. Most people don't look after themselves.

Skinny doesn't necessary mean healthy...

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

We have a much better lifestyle healthcare and diet available to us now, but theres a lot more junk food around too, its a matter of choice. Obesity is unquestionably a bigger problem now than a generation ago. All in all I'd say we are slightly healthier now.

Duggys Housemate

GalwayGuy2 wrote: »

Skinny doesn't necessary mean healthy...

You said in better shape. Empirically we aren't.

seamus

I guess it depends. As a teenager/early twenties I was undoubtedly less healthy than my father would have been at the same age; less active, more food, more booze.
But then it flipped and now at 30 I would be far healthier than my father was at 30 - I eat less junk, drink less booze, don't smoke and get way more exercise.

I think in their teens/twenties people now go a bit mad because they can, because the money and time is there to do it. But as people approach their thirties they start to recognise the importance of looking after their health more than their ancestors would have.

April O Neill

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

IMO they probably drank more as well.

I think we drink more as nation than we did 50, or even 20 years ago. A Celtic Tiger legacy.

Galwayguy35

April O Neill wrote: »

I think we drink more as nation than we did 50, or even 20 years ago. A Celtic Tiger legacy.

Lads in their teens and early 20s would binge drink a good bit all right, I did it myself but in most cases as men reach the 30 mark we are drinking a lot less.

Compare that to previous times when throughout their lives men went to the pub most weekends, I'm not saying they were drinking a barrell of beer every week but over a lifetime it adds up.

Also they wouldn't have been as concerned about what kind of food they were eating.

April O Neill

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

Lads in their teens and early 20s would binge drink a good bit all right, I did it myself but in most cases as men reach the 30 mark we are drinking a lot less.

Compare that to previous times when throughout their lives men went to the pub most weekends, I'm not saying they were drinking a barrell of beer every week but over a lifetime it adds up.

Also they wouldn't have been as concerned about what kind of food they were eating.

I'd be more concerned about the binge drinking of today TBH. I recall hearing in the last year or so that the amount of 20-somethings presenting with serious liver problems is rising sharply.

As for diet, I'd say we're also worse off there. Far more processed foods around today, something that kicked off in the 1970s. Something else that kicked of around then was the low-fat revolution. A lot of that crap is really bad for us.

ted1

Agree our diet is **** now, sugary drinks, sweets crisps and chocolate are every day items. Meat is pumped with steroids and other chemicals. Veg is GM and covered on pesticides etc.

Give me natural organic food any day

NIMAN

I'll know in 11yrs time if I have outlived my father.

Wibbs

I'd say we're certainly more aware of health issues alright. Are we healthier? Harder call IMHO. Individuals might be but overall? We smoke less that's for sure. Hell I remember ashtrays in hospital waiting rooms back in the 70's. We eat more though and there are significantly more overweight men(and boys) around today. I was looking at my old school annual and the "fatty" of the class was slightly tubby with a round puppy fat face. He'd barely register on the radar these days and wouldn't get the label. And this is getting steadily more prevalent as are early onset conditions like type 2 diabetes. Allergies have also increased notably. Kids get less exercise outdoors than a generation ago, never mind two. There have been a few of those in the know in the US model(that we're looking like following) that reckon this current generation may be the first to live shorter less healthy lives than the previous.

Alcohol consumption has definitely gone up. Being in my mid 40's I'm likely close enough to some of your dads generation and I can tell you we/they drank much less overall. Yea you had the lets get pissed before the disco vibe alright, but the consistent, normalised daily drinking in many cases didn't exist to near the same degree. Access to drink was less. Basically it was the pub, off licences were a lot rarer and being able to buy booze in garages and the like didn't exist. Go back a generation before that and there was even less access and more social stigma attached. Wine is another one. My dad used to drink a glass of wine with his dinner and he was considered a bit odd. Wine outlets were rare. Contrary to the popular stereotype of the Irish we actually had one of the lowest incidences of liver disease in Europe. Other than men "who liked their drink", men who went to the pub, generally went at weekends so their livers and bodies got a rest. Put it another way, growing up I never once saw any of my mates dads drunk. I'd reckon fewer say 12 year olds today could say similar.

My fathers generation? Well my dad was born before 1920 so an entirely different generation to most here. Well he was a couple of decades older than my peers dads too so an outlier. Was he fitter than me? Not in his early 20's(cos I was more into sport), but in middle age? Yea I'd say he was. Though he was much older than my peers dads he won more medals than I did in the school sports day in the dads races. :eek::) Then again men in my family are long lived(90's and in full health not rare), and that seems to hold true regardless of the environmental damage etc, so a hard call in my personal case. Still I would defo say I've pushed my genetic luck.

ecoli

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

These days while young lads still drink a good bit, most men by the time they reach their 30s are spending less time in the pub, taking regular exercise and looking after their health.

Less time in pubs probably but drinking more I wouldnt think so given the binge drinking culture coupled with the accessibility of drink via off licences, super markets and event petrol stations.

Taking away this the "pub measure" is no existent with spirits in the home

Also the fact that now we perceive regular exercise as supplementary to a our lifestyles compared to an unconcious part of life means we probably aren'y as active as we might think. I train 2-3 hours a day and that would be construed as excessive by general public compared to 10+ hours of heavy manual labour for the majority of mid 20s men in the past

Our diets are more convoluted also so while there are healthier options available to us these days very few are actively choosing these as a way of life but rather diet fads so on average the healthy diets are probably on average being outweighed by the take aways, processed foods and "energy" drinks

Blisterman

It's hard to say, but if you look at pictures from the 1950's or 60's of men aged around 50 and they look closer to 70.

reprazant

Blisterman wrote: »

It's hard to say, but if you look at pictures from the 1950's or 60's of men aged around 50 and they look closer to 70.

That's more because they had a tougher life. It does not mean that they are less healthy.

Personally, I think we are more unhealthy now than before, mainly due to eating worse food and taking less exercise. While more people might be consciously exercising now, when my parents were young, they would think nothing of cycling into the city from the suburbs.

As for food, it is easy to see what that is doing to us. The BBC has a great program on before about the food we eat today. Can't remember the name of it but the guy that made it said that he was shocked when he sat down to watch Charlie and The Chocolate Factory for the first time is years with his child and was shocked that the child in the film who played the fat kid (Agustus Gloop was it?) would not have looked out of place now.

Wibbs

Blisterman wrote: »

It's hard to say, but if you look at pictures from the 1950's or 60's of men aged around 50 and they look closer to 70.

It depends on the individuals, but today men are more likely to take care of their appearance. They're less likely to be outdoors getting sun damaged skin(and not getting enough Vit D), plus male fashions of then tend to look "old" to us nowadays.

seamus

Wibbs wrote: »

It depends on the individuals

There is a general trend though. By and large people nowadays are spending less time out in the elements and more time grooming themselves. The effects of aging have been time-delayed by about ten years over the last 40.

The acting business has been well aware of this and there's a general rule of thumb that when casting for period shows you cast ten years older for things before 1980.

i.e. you cast a 40 year old to play a 30 year old in the 1970s, a 30 year old to play a 20 year old, etc.

This difference can still be seen in some demographics - if you take a wander around Moore st or Parnell st you see women in their 30s who could easily be mistaken for 50.

Wibbs

true enough, just look at this famous picture of Florence Thompson from the US depression.

She's only 32 in that pic. Mad. To be fair she made it to her 80's but looked very much old before her years. She could easily pass for mid 40's and a not taken care of themselves mid 40's for that matter. I remember seeing a pic of a Native American woman of 40 who had more wrinkles than face going on. Sun exposure/damage is a huge factor in the appearance of aging. Scarily a good chunk of that damage is accrued in childhood. Kids staying indoor more these days are going to look like toddlers down the line. I also remember a photo of an elderly Tibetan(IIRC) Buddhist monk who had entered the monastery when a child and rarely went outdoors and he hadn't a line on his face. You see kinda similar with many (un retouched)) photos of wealthier types from the Victorian era when tans and the like were seen as common and they are less wrinkled too. Black folks having buit in sunblock don't age nearly as fast as paler peoples. Black don't crack and all that. Look at Denzil Washington. I once met an Ethiopian woman who was in her 50's and you'd never guess. If she'd said 30 you'd reckon that was about right.

With Hollywood types you're dealing with more outliers in the first place though. EG vanishingly few men of Johnny Depps age in the general populace could play someone in their 20's and get away with it like he did in The Rum Diary(and he smokes like a chimney and likes a drink). Plus the oul surgeons knife and/or needle is often involved so that's gonna skew things.

Lollipops23

Wibbs wrote: »

true enough, just look at this famous picture of Florence Thompson from the US depression.
[

In fairness a lot was at play here- apart from sun exposure, poor diet/lack of decent hydration and lack of general skincare wouldn't have helped her, not to mention stress and probable lack of sleep. Also, the total lack of make up would age her in the pic.

keane2097

Think life expectancy trends pretty clearly show that we're healthier by a large margin.

seamus

keane2097 wrote: »

Think life expectancy trends pretty clearly show that we're healthier by a large margin.

Define "healthier".

Most of the difference in life expectancy is actually because so few children die now compared to even fifty years ago.

At the other end of the scale, advances in medicine mean that serious issues like cancer and heart disease are detected and attacked earlier, so people die later.

That doesn't mean we're inherently "healthier".

keane2097

seamus wrote: »

Define "healthier".

Most of the difference in life expectancy is actually because so few children die now compared to even fifty years ago.

At the other end of the scale, advances in medicine mean that serious issues like cancer and heart disease are detected and attacked earlier, so people die later.

That doesn't mean we're inherently "healthier".

Well health is a pretty nebulous thing to define, but we can all agree that the ultimate truth is that a living person is healthier than a dead one, hence the ultimate measure of health across generations is average life expectancy. Far fewer children dying is obviously an indication that this generation is far healthier.

Trying to approach this question from an individual's POV is pretty meaningless, the average lifespan, how common preventable diseases or deaths are, and availability of health services aggregated for the entire population are pretty much the only statistics that are really properly quantifiable, and it's big wins for this generation in all of them.

In any really meaningful sense of the word "healthier" that can be applied to large populations we are healthier, I'm not sure why it being inherent or not really matters.

Wibbs

Lollipops23 wrote: »

In fairness a lot was at play here- apart from sun exposure, poor diet/lack of decent hydration and lack of general skincare wouldn't have helped her, not to mention stress and probable lack of sleep. Also, the total lack of make up would age her in the pic.

Sure it's multifactoral in nature and diet etc make a huge difference, but make up or no, she is very old looking for a 30 year old woman in today's terms.

seamus wrote: »

Define "healthier".

Most of the difference in life expectancy is actually because so few children die now compared to even fifty years ago.

At the other end of the scale, advances in medicine mean that serious issues like cancer and heart disease are detected and attacked earlier, so people die later.

That doesn't mean we're inherently "healthier".

+1

keane2097 wrote:

Far fewer children dying is obviously an indication that this generation is far healthier.

Healthier isn't much about being alive or dead. A person with motor neuron disease or congestive heart failure may live for many years because of medical science, but they're hardly healthy by any measure. I'd personally rather be felled by a massive coronary at 80, than live on another decade with failing abilities, an echo of myself peeing into a nappy. Sure I'd be alive, but that ain't what I'd call life.

An overweight kid with many allergies may be alive when they might not have been a hundred years ago(and thank the gods for that), but they ain't healthier than a kid with none of those problems. What fewer children dying means is that we can cure or prevent or treat illnesses and ill health that might otherwise have condemned them to an early grave. It doesn't mean they're healthier or stronger.

How would one define health? Like you say hard enough one. Physical fitness would be a clear indicator and the ability to fully function physically and mentally with a strong immune system others. On those levels many of us today aren't as healthy as our father and grandfathers generation.

P_1

It depends on how you were to define 'healthy' I suppose?

Nowadays we would tend to have more 'free time' and choice than say the previous generation. Is that a good thing? On one level yes, on another, no. I suppose on balance, mentally we would be healthier than previous generations.

Also there has been a move away from 'hard physical labour'. Is that a good thing? Probably, I would imagine that we have less work related injuries today. Similarly, our diets and knowledge of healthcare have improved compared to previous generations. On balance I guess we are probably physically healthier than we were in previous generations.

Bertie Woot

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

I think the average guy these days in his 30s and 40s is in a lot better shape than previous generations.

The majority of men in the past might have been doing more physical labour but IMO they probably drank more as well. These days while young lads still drink a good bit, most men by the time they reach their 30s are spending less time in the pub, taking regular exercise and looking after their health.

I have to push myself very hard to take regular exercise. I'm not the athletic type, much prefer eating to exercising, and on those rare occasions when I do push myself to put on the trainers and go out making a fool of myself by panting and sweating in public, I don't go very far. It's not that I don't want to go far, I do, I want to be fit and healthy, I'm just not capable.

I've battled with my weight since my early twenties; binge eating, then going on diets, then after I've lost weight, binge eating again ...then dieting, and on it goes. Since I've got into my forties I have put on the pounds again, and I run (very occasionally) because although I don't particularly enjoy it that much, I came to the conclusion that it was either run or die.

I try to sustain a healthy diet, and did successfully throughout my thirties, gave up smoking ten years ago, and drink very little, but in recent years I've been at the crisps and chocolate again, as comfort food. Sitting at a computer for most of the day doesn't help things either.

Wibbs

P_1 wrote: »

I suppose on balance, mentally we would be healthier than previous generations.

I dunno about that. While there was a helluva lot of undiagnosed people with mental illness(suffers with his nerves you know) in the past and that's most certainly a factor, there does seem to be a serious rise in mental illness in the last generation and figures reflect that.

P_1

Wibbs wrote: »

I dunno about that. While there was a helluva lot of undiagnosed people with mental illness(suffers with his nerves you know) in the past and that's most certainly a factor, there does seem to be a serious rise in mental illness in the last generation and figures reflect that.

I wonder if advances in medical technology, in particular to the area of mental health has simply caused more problems that we previously didn't know that even existed,

keane2097

P_1 wrote: »

I wonder if advances in medical technology, in particular to the area of mental health has simply caused more problems that we previously didn't know that even existed,

Diagnosed, yes. Caused, no!

I doubt mental health is worse in this generation but it would be very hard to quantify. So many people these days are lucky enough to be diagnosed with a raft of problems that in the past would have gone untreated with the person simply being described as having "a want" or being "innocent".

keane2097

Wibbs wrote: »

Healthier isn't much about being alive or dead. A person with motor neuron disease or congestive heart failure may live for many years because of medical science, but they're hardly healthy by any measure. I'd personally rather be felled by a massive coronary at 80, than live on another decade with failing abilities, an echo of myself peeing into a nappy. Sure I'd be alive, but that ain't what I'd call life.

An overweight kid with many allergies may be alive when they might not have been a hundred years ago(and thank the gods for that), but they ain't healthier than a kid with none of those problems. What fewer children dying means is that we can cure or prevent or treat illnesses and ill health that might otherwise have condemned them to an early grave. It doesn't mean they're healthier or stronger.

How would one define health? Like you say hard enough one. Physical fitness would be a clear indicator and the ability to fully function physically and mentally with a strong immune system others. On those levels many of us today aren't as healthy as our father and grandfathers generation.

If you're talking about a large sample - i.e. the question in the OP - then yeah, along with the other two metrics I mentioned that's pretty much all it is about.

Talking about an individual with motor neuron disease or an overweight person with allergies is pretty meaningless if you're talking about the average health of a population.

In any case, a person with pretty much any illness you care to mention will be healthier today than an identical person 30 years ago.

Wibbs

Then clearly we diverge on what we both define as "healthy". And that's cool too.

keane2097 wrote:

Diagnosed, yes. Caused, no!

I would say the two can sometimes be conflated. If one is looking for a problem, one can often find one where none may exist, or if it does exist it's acutely, but diagnosis can label and make it chronic. The defining and oft medicalisation of the range of normal human emotional states I think is quite the problem in some quarters. Plus our species need to fit in can plug into that too. The diagnosis by Dr Google and our social media peers has quite the effect IMH. "I'm [insert personal problem here] and here are my symptoms". Followed by "really?? no way! I'm the same. We're brothers/sisters in kind". I call it the horoscope effect. People who believe in that will seek to fit a square peg into a round hole to back up that belief. It is my humble that if a cast iron test for many borderline mental illnesses was discovered tomorrow, it would come back with a result of around a third of people being actually afflicted, with the other two thirds afflicted by a new condition tentatively labeled "Me Too" syndrome.

EdenHazard

wibbs you are 40, wtf, unless im mistaken i honestly thought you were like 32.