Do you think we have become more sickly these days?

The number of incidents isn’t all that greater as much as we know about it. People have had small strokes before but they weren’t discovered when they were young. Same with heart issues.

And, we have a lot more pollutants and a sedentary life style. So we have people living less active lives than people lived a hundred years ago, with a life expectancy much longer than it used to be, and very aware of little things that need attention.

Far lower resistance than ever, sedentary life and processed food lead to sickly generations,sicker than ever before!

If I had to form some hypothesis, I would say a combination of diet and lifestyle. When I was young, way back in ancient times, there were no fat kids in school. The kids considered fat would just be “chunky” today. We played outside at least 50%, often more, and not just organized sports like soccer, pee wee football, etc. We also went exploring near by hills, rivers, etc without our mothers worrying the moment we were out of sight, we would be snatched from the street. Jr. high school on up had mandatory gym. You would never find a soda vending machine, at least not that I can remember. There was no flavored milk choice. If there was a desert, it was made in the cafeteria at the school. Processed foods, from what I remember, had less dyes and color enhancers in them, also less preservatives and artificial sugars. Hardly any of them had high fructose corn syrup in them that I recall. Add more preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, before-the-game-console sedimentary, non-physical lifestyle, you have a less healthy populace. Add in the fact that being overweight is often dismissed as ”still healthy”, you have a recipe for disaster.

I think we live longer and so we suffer more illnesses. We are kept alive and in chronically sick conditions, when years ago the conditions would have killed us.

I do think there are more allergies and things like asthma, but again, some people would have died from those things who are kept alive with modern medicine.

I really believe we’ve completely fucked our immune system over with all this germaphobia bullshit anymore. Dirt on your hands? QUICK HAND SAN!!! Slightly sick with something that will go away on its own in a day or two? ANTIBIOTICS!!!

Carlin had it right

The weak and unlucky ones used to die young. Now they survive to contract more diseases later.

No, overall and on average our health improves every decade. Life expectancy keeps rising. But every decade we are also getting better at naming health problems and reporting about them. As an example, after the American Civil War no one was talking about posttraumatic stress disorder. Still, on average means that great improvements can cancel out new problems that were less common in the past such as obesity and type 2 diabetes and allergies.