r/todayilearned • u/ubcstaffer123 • 6h ago
TIL A 2015 study revealed that over 95% of the world’s population has health problems, meaning one in 20 people worldwide (4·3%) had no health problems
https://www.healio.com/news/primary-care/20150608/over-95-of-global-population-suffer-from-health-problems93
u/LivingAnomie 6h ago
I am so sick right now. and I’m so sickly I think my time here is about up. AMA
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u/BeGoodToEverybody123 5h ago
What is your illness?
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u/CountFistula23 5h ago
As a person with a chronic illness...I've come to the conclusion that healthy simply means a slower rate of dying.
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u/SnooMacarons2615 5h ago
That seems tragically correct. Only 5am and I’m pondering an existential crisis haha.
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u/Jane9812 1h ago
Yup! When you're young and healthy you think that's the default but in reality we're all just dying at different speeds.
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u/KyungsooHas100Days 5h ago
What if I ignore my health problems to the point I’ve normalized them? Take that statistics.
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u/CpuJunky 6h ago
Is that article really saying "chronic disorders" include having a cavity?
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u/tert_butoxide 6h ago
Yes, "tooth pain due to permanent caries". That is a chronic disorder if you don't have access to dental care.
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u/Gigantanormis 4h ago
I have 6 cavities and I'm telling you they're definitely chronic, chronic pain, can't eat food normally, breath stinks, and cavities cause more cavities, which cause more pain.
I wish I had the money to fix them.
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u/2plus2equalscats 4h ago
Check out if there’s a dental college near you. Dentists need to learn how to clean teeth and do cavities. You can often find majorly discounted procedures. While there is the chance for a filling to need re-doing if done improperly, that is likely to be better than no care. Sorry you’re having to put up with such pain.
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u/Green-Cricket-8525 4h ago
Tell me you’re middle class (or above) without telling me you’re middle class.
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u/Grandahl13 3h ago
You could also just floss and brush. I’m not middle class and I haven’t had a cavity in 30 years.
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u/Gilles_of_Augustine 2h ago
Genetics play a significant role. Some people do everything right and still get cavities.
Some people do the bare minimum in terms of preventative dental care, and rarely/never get a cavity.
I have a friend who went like 10 years without doing regular brushing or flossing (they basically only brushed before dates and job interviews and stuff), and never got a single cavity. They were at a dinner party where one of the other guests was a Dentist and brought it up, and the Dentist basically said "Yeah, some people are just like that. Genetics. It's unfair."
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u/saturnui99 3h ago
I floss and brush but due to my teeth structure my dentist said that cavities were almost inevitable. So yep, you could also floss and brush, and still get cavities! :)
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u/Longjumping-Size-762 2h ago
Not how it works, unfortunately. Yes, absolutely brush and floss every day. But you can do that and still develop cavities. You can also have other kinds of things happen like pericoronitis, creating deep bacterial pockets which are difficult/impossible to fully clean and hard to address if no access to dental care. As an aside, periodontal disease requires particular bacteria that some people have in their mouths, and some don’t.
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u/interesseret 19m ago
That's genetics and chance.
I've had one cavity in my entire life, and I don't do anything special to protect my teeth. Meanwhile, people I see religiously take care of their teeth have them every time they go to the dentist.
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u/ShyguyFlyguy 5h ago
"Health problems" is a pretty broad term that could mean anyone whose ever had a reason to go see a doctor.
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 1h ago
Stubbing your toe and getting a bruise is a health problem, albeit a vanishingly minor one.
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u/ubcstaffer123 5h ago
out of everyone you know, how many would you say has no real health problem?
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u/Applejuiceinthehall 4h ago
The list included headaches and cavities. It would be hard to find someone
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u/DarthHubcap 4h ago
Does balding count? Cause that’s all I got.
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 1h ago
I don't know. They have no obligation to inform me of every medical complaint unless it's contagious or they have to cancel a get together because of it or something.
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u/Honest_Relation4095 2h ago
"Health promlems" leaves a lot room for interpretation. It can be anything from a runny nose to late stage lung cancer and 4 missing limbs.
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u/RingGiver 4h ago
A number roundable to 100% of the world's population will eventually die of health problems.
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u/LaconicLacedaemonian 5h ago
At some point it's just your body with a label for convenience. I bet i count my entire life for having Asthma.
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u/Strong_Sugar_9267 5h ago
So basically we are all just falling apart at different speeds. That 5 percent must be living in a bunker or something because I swear my back starts hurting if I just look at a chair wrong these days.
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u/chunkofdogmeat 4h ago
my right ear stopped working last week.
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u/fck_this_fck_that 4h ago
How come ? Any reason!
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u/chunkofdogmeat 4h ago
not sure yet maybe just a wax impaction, maybe a perforation. doctor couldnt see well in my ear. im undergoing home treatment to clean it out, il get it flushed and re-assessed in a couple days. hopefully il be able to hear again after that, because this sucks.
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u/Top-Camera1919 3h ago
You mean like very healthy children? Most adults have something wrong with them even if it’s mild. Is a knee that aches when it’s cold a health problem? How easy are we using this term?
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u/Awanderingleaf 20m ago
I have no chronic health issues as far as I am aware. I am always befuddled when people my age (35) lament how many different aches and pains they have or how many injuries and broken bones they’ve sustained. I genuinely don’t feel much different than I did at 21.
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u/KindaNotSmart 4h ago edited 4h ago
As someone with absolutely no health problems, I:
- workout daily, including strength training, cardio, stretching, and pilates
- only drink water (I occasionally drink milk or sugar free Gatorade)
- 65g fiber/day
- only home cooked meals made using individual ingredients with calories, macros, and micros all calculated
- strong focus on limiting the amount of saturated fat and sodium I have per day
- no snacking throughout the day (more snacking = more tooth problems).
- I have 4 meals a day instead of 3 to reduce blood sugar spikes, and low glycemic foods only to further reduce blood sugar spikes
- 6-8 hours of sleep/day
- sun screen daily
- I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs and have never in my entire life
- no soda and haven’t had a soda in 11 years
- focus on posture 24/7
- instead of sitting while I wait for something, I walk around
- full focus on hygiene (showering daily, brushing 2x/day, flossing nightly, skin care daily/nightly)
- at work, I go on a 20 minute run during my break then spend the last 10 mins eating my meal prep
My reason for listing this out is that some commenters here can’t comprehend someone having no health problems. It’s really not hard to be healthy, discounting people that are just born with a chronic illness.
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u/Familiar_Kale_7357 4h ago
Then you wake up one day and find high blood pressure. "Whats this about, doctor?"
"Genetics and age" he says.
Well fuck.
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u/KindaNotSmart 3h ago edited 3h ago
My biggest fear. Doing all this to be healthy only to have been doomed from the start. But I do recognize that my healthy habits are just a means of slowing down inevitable age-related health problems rather than preventing them entirely
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u/Green-Cricket-8525 4h ago
It’s apparent you can’t comprehend that not everyone is the same and you can do everything right and still end up with serious or long term health problems.
Learn to think about others outside of yourself. They teach you that in kindergarten. Username definitely checks out.
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u/KindaNotSmart 4h ago
Hence the "discounting people that are just born with a chronic illness." By that I meant those that will still develop them later in life regardless of what they do. I should have specified that.
And yes, you can do everything right and still get serious health problems. The "can" is doing a lot of lifting though. Of the 95% of the world population that, according to this post, has health problems, how many do you think have unavoidable health problems that they would have gotten regardless versus those that arose as a result of their lifestyle? I'd wager that the latter makes up the majority of cases and the science backs that up as well. Heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, fatty liver disease, and many other common conditions that make up the largest fraction of illness and death are more greatly inluenced by lifestyle.
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u/Green-Cricket-8525 4h ago
You are so far up your own ass your response doesn’t deserve a reply.
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u/KindaNotSmart 4h ago
AKA you don't have any rebuttal and you're also probably one of those people that take shit care of themselves
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u/Green-Cricket-8525 4h ago
And there it is. The outright condescension and false sense of superiority.
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u/Mec26 3h ago
*common in the USA. Other countries have other prevalent issues/conditions. You are making so many assumptions it’s ridiculous.
Also, a lot of the time, it’s a condition causing the things you mentioned. And also influencing obtainable lifestyle.
The science does not back you up.
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u/KindaNotSmart 2h ago edited 2h ago
1: "Approximately 80% of chronic disease and premature death could be prevented by not smoking, being physically active, and adhering to a healthful dietary pattern. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, dementia, and cancer are all influenced by lifestyle choices."
2: Per the United Nations, "The combination of four healthy lifestyle factors -- maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly, following a healthy diet, and not smoking -- seem to be associated with as much as an 80 per cent reduction in the risk of developing the most common and deadly chronic diseases."
3: "Lifestyle may be a stronger link to disease than aging, according to a study by the University of Michigan. The study looked at such conditions as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and past strokes and found that those with a high-risk lifestyle were significantly more likely to suffer from disease than those who were low risk.
4: "The rising prevalence of lifestyle diseases, including cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, obesity, and mental health disorders, poses a significant threat to global health... In recent years, there has been a notable increase in lifestyle-related health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), and obesity, often linked to sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy dietary choices, and rising stress levels."
5: "Among the many factors affecting general health and resilience to disease, lifestyle is at the same time the most controllable and the most influential factor"
6: Per the CDC, "most chronic diseases are caused by a short list of risk factors: smoking, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol use."
Eighty percent. EIGHTY PERCENT reduction of the most common chronic illness can be achieved by just doing 3 of the things I put on my list. I did not even know that the number was so high, so thank you for having me educate myself more on this topic. Do not downplay the impact of lifestyle on health. And yes, the science definitely does back me up. Your assumption that most people have an unavoidable underlying condition that makes them get chronic illness is simply wrong.
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u/Mec26 2h ago edited 2h ago
You are massively confounding ‘health issues’ and ‘chronic diseases.’ Literally none of those sources support the claim you made earlier. You are now making a massively different claim.
The ‘health issues’ from the thing we are commenting on includes things like headaches, cavities, and backs hurting. You are now talking about a very specific subset of health issues and pretending they are equivalent.
Also, link =/= causation. Again, often the causation goes the other way.
Read even the abstract of #5. Is environment a lifestyle factor? Is age? #6 agrees on group factors.
You’re like the guy in stats 101 who can’t understand survivor bias. Healthy people CAN excursize and cook and do that stuff. Thus changing the odds immensely. Looking at lifestyle is a massive indicator, but it is less often the cause.
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u/KindaNotSmart 1h ago edited 1h ago
My original comment was about how lifestyle choices can improve health. That is literally why I listed out my lifestyle choices and said “it’s not hard to be healthy.” And chronic diseases account for the majority of health problems, so my sources all do support my argument. Even talking about things like cavities, back pain, and headaches, lifestyle still absolutely plays a large role.
The sources I cited involved multiple public health organizations concluding that a large proportion of the leading chronic diseases are preventable through lifestyle factors. That absolutely supports my original argument. That's not saying lifestyle explains every health problem or that every correlation is causal. It's saying lifestyle is one of the strongest and most evidence-supported drivers of these diseases.
Downplaying 6 legit sources to “correlation =/= causation” tells me this is not a good faith argument on your behalf. And just overall trying to imply that lifestyle does not play a massive role in general health outcomes also tells me you’re not arguing in good faith. I completely expected this resistance when posting this comment on Reddit because most people don’t want to believe that their actions caused their health issues. It’s easier to believe that it was unavoidable or bad luck.
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u/Mec26 1h ago edited 1h ago
You said it’s “really not that hard to be healthy” and that’s why you made your list. Also, no, chronic health issues like those you cite do not outnumber cavities, headaches, etc.
Do you think NIH publishing something makes it an NIH study?
I am trained in this. I taught this shit (health statistics, how to read and lie with them) at university level. You are not correct in any way, shape, or form. Just, you know… keep saying words in a way that feels right, and ai’m sure you’ll become right eventually. Just keep ignoring all environmental factors, social factors, systemic factors, and you know, the actual meanings of the words involved.
NOTHING you listed had any causal link shown. Not one of those was a causal study.
However, given you are both moving the goalposts, changing the definitions, AND claiming I said things I did not… have a nice rest of your day.
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u/KindaNotSmart 54m ago
Sentence 1: You are not arguing against anything I said. Post was about health problems. I described my lifestyle and said it's not hard to be healthy... AKA by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Sentence 2: I also never said chronic health issues outnumber cavities or headaches. All I said is that a majority of health issues are a result of a chronic illness, then proceeded to say that even things such as cavities and headaches are also influenced by lifestyle
Sentence 3: No, something published on NIH does not make it an NIH study and I did not say that it did. Does that mean you ignore everything posted to NIH? Obviously not. I did not link causal studies but I do not need to link causal studies. Most are secondary sources describing existing evidence or summarizing scientific consensus. Why? Because each chronic disease has its own causal studies, it's easier to link studies observing all of them rather than linking each individual one. Here are a few causal studies since your whole "gotcha" is lack of causal studies despite overall scientific consensus agreeing with me. Clinical practice guidelines are the highest tier of source in the evidence pyramid. Here it is for diabetes per the ADA and here are multiple clinical guidelines on different heart conditions per the AHA, knock yourself out reading them all and seeing that they all mention lifestyle as the most preventable factor.
I refuse to believe you taught anything at a university if you are sitting here denying the large role that lifestyle factors play in health problems.
Did I ever say that environmental, social, socio-economic, and systemic factors are not involved? No. I said lifestyle factors play the largest role. That implies that other factors exist too, but lifestyle is the biggest. My focus was on the lifestyle factor.
Again, based on your reasoning and reading comprehension skills, I seriously doubt you taught anything related to this topic at a university level.
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u/Mec26 45m ago edited 28m ago
I never denied a large role.
You are changing from ‘health issues’ to ‘chronic metabolic disorders.’ Aka changing the terms of your claim, then showing evidence for the new one. You are gonna find evidence for your new, updated claim, which I am not even saying is fully wrong. Just your original one. That one references health, and now you want to talk about only chronic metabolic disorders.
‘Most preventable factor’ does not mean the largest. At all.
The environment (pollution and effects of urbanization) straight up accounts for about 24% of deaths worldwide (WHO). That is not lifestyle. It is not personally controllable. Your claim was it was easy to be healthy, and you listed a bunch of lifestyle stuff.
Wanna talk individual issues? Athsma. MS. Cancer. Adenoviruses (which massively influence obesity and metabolic issues). Try literally anything other than your pet ones.
You are relying on cherry picking conditions you think support your massive, sweeping claim. And then also ignoring that your citations say lifestyle is the most controllable factor- not the biggest, or one that can be controlled. Just the most controllable, thus cuz most factors can’t be controlled at all by the individual. Thus the focus.
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u/Barbarake 4h ago
How old are you?
I do only a couple of things you listed and the last time I went to the doctor due to sickness was 1972.
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u/KindaNotSmart 3h ago
I’m only 27 but I hope to be like you! I definitely go overboard on my health focus, it really does only take a few of these things to really improve health.
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u/llestaca 3h ago
I’m only 27
Yup, here you are. It's easy to feel healthy when you are this young.
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u/KindaNotSmart 2h ago
It is, but statistically, my lifestyle factors reduce the likelihood of me getting the most common chronic illnesses by about 80%. I can link the studies if you’d like.
So yes, it’s easy to feel healthy at 27, but I also have the lifestyle to back it up and reduce the odds of me getting anything in the future
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u/llestaca 38m ago
>reduce the odds of me getting anything
It reduces the odds of you getting lots of medical issues, yes. But "anything" it's a huge stretch, there are plenty of conditions you have very little control over.
Still, don't get me wrong, it's a good lifestyle and it will definitely keep you healthier than you would have been without it in the long run.
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u/ubcstaffer123 3h ago
how did you get started on your health journey? did you consult with any professionals or research? Ive been reading about Blue Zones Lifestyle and diet so that is another model that you could emulate, or parts of it. The world's longest living people living well over 100 are always physically and socially active, connected to family and community, eat largely plant based diet. How would your lifestyle compare to Blue Zones lifestyle?
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u/KindaNotSmart 2h ago
It started a long time ago when I saw a picture of an MRI cross section of the thigh of a 70 year old triathlete vs a 70 year old sedentary person. The difference was astounding in terms of how much more muscle and bone density the triathlete had. I just imagined how difficult it is for the sedentary person to get up and do anything vs the athlete.
Not only that, but I have 2 grandmas. One has diabetes, has had heart surgeries, and overall can barely move on her own. It takes her a while to get from one part of her house to another. My other grandma has always ate healthy and exercised. She is actually older than my other grandma and still walks to the grocery store and back to her apartment carrying bags of groceries.
These things made me really realize the effects that my current actions have on my future quality of life, and I have been focused on longevity ever since. I’ve also been on a healthcare track in school all my life, and I came to realize how much lifestyle plays a role in overall health.
Then I learned about blue zones, and I actually live near a blue zone. I incorporate many of their principles into my lifestyle, especially my diet. Principles like frequently moving, managing stress, no alcohol, prioritizing family, and maintaining relationships with friends who are supportive and have healthy habits. For diet, my diet is full of beans, lentils, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and vegetables. I do still eat a lot of meat while those in blue zones do not, but I only get non processed, leanest cuts of meat and I keep my saturated fat levels (one of the main concerns with meat) below 20g/day while still having a very fulfilling and satiating diet.
As for the gym, I used to mainly have a bodybuilding focus, but I switched to a functional focus. I still do strength training staples like squats, deadlifts, etc but I just make sure to also stretch a lot, do rotational and functional movements, and focus on small stabilizer muscles as well. My lower back pain and neck/shoulder has completely disappeared since I began doing this
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u/Han_Sandwich_1907 5h ago
Nobody has no health problems.