07.26.07
Modern Illnesses
Along my travels learning about health stuffs, I find that there seems to be a recurring theme that illnesses are on the rise. More particularly, we are developing “new” illnesses and more resistant illnesses. For instance, when reading about the history of aplastic anemia, I found that it was first recorded formally only around the early 1900s. Leukemia was similarly only formally recorded around the later part of the 1800s. Osteoporosis was also unusual until after WWI according to Alan Gaby, M.D. author of Preventing and Reversing Osteoporosis. Now osteoporosis is commonplace and even “expected” as we age.
Along these lines, I have come across yet another claim of a “modern” disease. I picked up a book called, Thrombosis, Everything You Need to Know by Jack Hirsh, M.D. Chapter two of his book is titled, “Blood Clots: A Modern Risk for Modern Times.” In this chapter he wrote in that, “Scientific studies suggest that prior to the twentieth century, venous clotting was very rare. Today, this condition affects one in 20 people in the Western world during the course of their lifetime. Consequently, there are millions of people throughout the Western world who have suffered or will suffer from blood clots in their leg veins. . . ”
Hirsh goes on to say that venous clots are less common in developing countries than from the Western world and that in Western countries about 1 in 1,000 people develop venous clots every year. Some of the risk factors for clots I found interesting, so I listed them below:
~Major surgery
~severe accidental trauma
~prolonged bed rest due to illness
~chronic debilitating illnesses
~leg paralysis
~cancer
~old age (this one I find questionable because I believe that people in the past lived to what we consider today “old age” yet didn’t seem to have lots of incidences of blood clots that are recorded. I currently know several people whose parents and aunts and uncles have lived to over 100 years old. These people who I have spoken about this are now either in their 80s or almost there. This means that it was their parents who lived this old and that would translate to at least two generations back from my age. So that means we’re talking about people in the 1800s already living into their 100s. Yet, I know a lot of people today who have died at much younger ages. I don’t see that our live spans are extending much at all if any).
~estrogens
~previous venous thrombosis
Hmm, so what about that list is so modern? Estrogen therapy perhaps? I’m inclined to think there is much more involved with the increase in the incidences of veinous clots.
Marlakins
