That isn't the critical part of the sentence, which is why you didn't spend any time mentioning it.
Yes they were less obese, the issue was the more likely to be the opposite, malnutrition. I dispute they spent less time battling disease, but if they did, it's because they died quicker.
Alzheimers is a disease of the old, and cancer tends to be also.
So all you're left with is obesity and the closely correlated diabetes.
Indeed, but I am talking about the sum of all disease.
Polio is a good example of the opposite, because polio today is effectively zero. Most other types of disease trend the other way with much more significant margins.
Polio lead to some level of paralysis in somewhere between 0.5-0.2% percent of people, many of whom died and needed no further healthcare.
Today, a far larger percent of Americans have lost the ability to walk due to obesity and diabetes.
Polio is just one success story among many. Sanitation, vaccination, and antibiotics don’t just cut down on Cholera but a huge range of diseases.
Tuberculosis, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Cholera, Polio, Smallpox, Tetanus, Varicella(Chickenpox> shingles), etc didn’t individually leave large segments of the population with serious lifelong issues, but collectively they added up. Add in a little cut or malnutrition and even diseases we don’t normally consider serious would more frequently have huge long term health impacts.
Very few young people lose the ability to walk from obesity, that’s generally something that impacts older people who were able bodied up to that point. Infectious diseases however generally hit the young harder more than people with fully developed immune systems.
Health and fitness are different things. Elite athletes are generally doing great harm to their long term health.
Pick 10,000 random people from each time period. 2023 would probably win a tug of war. Increased heigh and obesity not being as detrimental as being under weight.
Cardio would presumably go to 1923. However what percentage of people could walk 1 mile could go either way. Someone that’s paralyzed can’t do it but someone that’s fat need to be motivated.
I think the 1923 group would out perform at the a mile walk completion, simply from age effects alone.
I agree the strongest would be 2023.
I agree that health can have complex and variable definitions. It is also very different than life expectancy.
One measure of health may be baseline fitness and ability to care for ones self. Alternatively, health could be freedom from disability, pain, and health related suffering.
Another definition of health, which I was originally getting at, is how many people rely on continuous medical services to remain alive. That is to say, how many people would drop dead if they stopped receiving medication and medical services.
This baseline, pre-intervention health is relevant if you want to compare health costs.
I agree that it is different that post-intervention health, which might be the most relevant of you want to consider something like quality of life.
It is a shame we dont have better data from the earlier 20th century.
>They also didn't have to worry about the same healthcare costs, as they were healthier in general, and the options were far fewer when sick.
People were less obese, spent less time battling disease, and died younger.
It's somewhat similar to survivorship bias, but it is a real effect.
You can look up population incidence and prevelance rates for diabetes, obesity, alzheimer's, and cancer yourself.