Do you think people are developing strange medical problems at a faster rate?

I’m no scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but I would assume that as we grow more knowledgeable about ourselves and how we are affected by not only what we consume but by what environmental factors do to us physically and psychologically, we find that death by natural causes (as was a common occurence in the generations before) becomes used less often on the coroner’s report. Rather than guess what killed someone, we can use our technology and intellect to decipher the exact cause of death.

The term ‘death by natural causes’ always struck me as weird, for what else could there be? Death by supernatural causes?

To answer your main question, I would say No, not directly. It all has to do with the level of our technological sophistication.

Cyberchondria..now that is strange, but so true..got to use that in my next newsletter. Thanks.

I think its a combination of science knowing more about what is actually wrong with people, and people learning more about what could be wrong with them.

That is to say, a combination of increased science and increased lay-person access to that science.

It’s very possible that we could be getting sicker at more advanced rate than pre-industrial days, at least in different ways. Modern medicine has eliminated formerly common and fatal diseases like smallpox and measles in industrialized countries, but it seems like these are being replaced by all sorts of new, different afflictions. Because of the relative newness of modern medicine, it’s hard to tell how many of these diseases and disorders are new or just newly given a name.

At the same time though, I think most of this mass hypochondria is indeed due to the increased availability of medical information. These days, anyone who has so much as an itchy nose can go online and find a cornucopia of rare, serious illnesses that could be causing their symptoms. At the same time, as the scope of what we consider a “disorder” such as ADD, OCD and autism widens, people with less severe symptoms get their very own diagnosis that they can use as an excuse for their actions. I can’t help but feel a bit irked whenever anyone says something like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so OCD about my hair!”

It’s part of human nature to want to understand the workings of life and the human body. I’m certainly not saying I want to live in the old days where people often died of now easily curable sicknesses. It’s just that, as more and more things are labeled as “medical problems,” we start to lose perspective of what is just… normal.

It’s pollution (check the stats of people who live near paper-mills), mixed with increased life span. We aren’t dying at 35 anymore, so more things are creeping in.

D. All of the above

I really do think it’s an amalgam of what everyone has mentioned so far

Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food points to some intersting studies that show that many things like Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, ADD, etc, aren’t present in populations that still eat traditional diets. Only with the introduction of western industrial agriculture and western diet did such diseases skyrocket.

Maybe when we stopped being able to really specifically tell where our food was coming from (or if it really even is “food”) did we start to have some of these problems.

@aphilotus I think you hit the nail on the head there.

Pesticides in our water

Yes, I do. Many people cite the increase in Diabetes, Autism, Bipolar, ADHD and Asthsma as better detection methods, but I believe it is the pollution in our air, food, and homes that is causing it. The US also has an alarmingly high (second highest in the developed words) newborn death rate.

@YARNLADY Here in Wis we have an alarming birth defect rate

@SpatzieLover I’m sorry to hear that. I am very pessimistic about out ability to solve this type of issue in time to ward off a severe world catastrophe.

@YARNLADY Yes, we’ve had huge March of Dimes fundraiser to combat this through UW Madison/Medical College of Wisc studies, but we still lead the Nation in birth defects. As a mom,it gives me the chills just thinking about it.

No. New medical problems replace old ones. For example in the past malnutrition led to many medical problems. Today obesity and lack of exercise lead to adult onset diabetes.

The CDC publishes a detailed examination of these issues weekly which you can subscribe to on the web. It is called the Morbidity and Mortality report. There’s really nothing much anomalous in there, but check for yourself.

I do think that these problems may have existed before but most people don’t like to complain about something seemingly insignificant like restless leg syndrome!

Did you guys hear about the Washington Redskins cheerleader who got the H1N1 shot and then ten days later she developed some weird nerological disease. She talks all slow and choppy when she’s not running, but then when she runs she can speak clearly and normally. When she walks, she walks all over the place with her limbs going wild. Then when she walks backwards, she walks fine. When I saw this I couldn’t believe it. I still do not know if it is true, but I’ve seen it all over the news.

I think that, in the general sense, as we outrun older foes (and trip and curbstomp things like smallpox), we catch up to new ones. Some, like AIDS and Mad Cow, we actually unwittingly inflict on ourselves, which does not fit into the footrace metaphor.

@Psychedelic_Zebra “Death by natural causes” is most aptly applied to organ failure; no outside influences (microbes, cars, etc.).