I think the scary thing is , it won't be long before there's no one with living memory of what 'normal' ageing looks like. I knew my great grandfather. He lived well into his 90s and lived well. From my very small sample size, it seems to me that my parents' generation are doing worse than their parents. But it's attributed simply to age. Cognitive decline?, cancer?, taking a box full of pills every day?, oh that's just part of being in your 70s apparently (and not even your late 70s!).
It's shocking how normalised it is for older people to be half-crippled and taking handfuls of pills every day. I find it's particularly bad in the rural area where I now live. People who are younger than my husband (70, but looks younger), think and speak of themselves as 'old and f#*ked'. So naturally, they behave that way too.
I live in what I think is called a "middle ring" suburb of city. If I head towards the city, people get skinnier. If I head the other way, they get fatter. It really is quite confronting at times. People this fat simply did not exist when I was a kid!
Absolutely. In rich countries, the wealthier and better-educated people are thinner, and the poorer and less-educated people are fatter. We just returned from a long weekend in Noosa, where the gyms are crowded, and the streets and beaches are packed with young, slim, attractive people. As we drove north, into the rural areas, the people got progressively older, fatter and poorer (and, sad to say, uglier). And the habits that produce these disparate outcomes are transmitted intergenerationally, so the class divide keeps getting wider and wider. It's a wicked problem.
Yes, several decades ago I made the mistake of complimenting someone in a developing country for her slim figure, only to be admonished that it wasn't a compliment there!
And back to rich countries, class differences have presumably always been obvious (at least to those in that society), but when your counterpart in age/sex is two or three times your size/bodyweight, there really is no hiding or denying it.
That's a very astute observation, and an extremely important limitation of this type of research. Owing to the comparatively low muscle mass of Asian people, BMI is a good proxy for fat mass in these populations. BMI doesn't perform as well in blacks because their muscle and bone mass is generally higher. In caucasians it can be complicated by muscle mass, although that doesn't apply to the vast majority of the population because they're quivering mounds of blubber rather than muscle, sadly. There's some evidence from NFL players that even high BMI attributable to muscle mass may still be a hazard for premature death and dementia, but they're quite a special case due to the high frequency of traumatic brain injury.
Next week's article will hopefully provide some answers as I'm covering the effect of muscle mass on brain atrophy.
I think the scary thing is , it won't be long before there's no one with living memory of what 'normal' ageing looks like. I knew my great grandfather. He lived well into his 90s and lived well. From my very small sample size, it seems to me that my parents' generation are doing worse than their parents. But it's attributed simply to age. Cognitive decline?, cancer?, taking a box full of pills every day?, oh that's just part of being in your 70s apparently (and not even your late 70s!).
It's shocking how normalised it is for older people to be half-crippled and taking handfuls of pills every day. I find it's particularly bad in the rural area where I now live. People who are younger than my husband (70, but looks younger), think and speak of themselves as 'old and f#*ked'. So naturally, they behave that way too.
I live in what I think is called a "middle ring" suburb of city. If I head towards the city, people get skinnier. If I head the other way, they get fatter. It really is quite confronting at times. People this fat simply did not exist when I was a kid!
Absolutely. In rich countries, the wealthier and better-educated people are thinner, and the poorer and less-educated people are fatter. We just returned from a long weekend in Noosa, where the gyms are crowded, and the streets and beaches are packed with young, slim, attractive people. As we drove north, into the rural areas, the people got progressively older, fatter and poorer (and, sad to say, uglier). And the habits that produce these disparate outcomes are transmitted intergenerationally, so the class divide keeps getting wider and wider. It's a wicked problem.
Yes, several decades ago I made the mistake of complimenting someone in a developing country for her slim figure, only to be admonished that it wasn't a compliment there!
And back to rich countries, class differences have presumably always been obvious (at least to those in that society), but when your counterpart in age/sex is two or three times your size/bodyweight, there really is no hiding or denying it.
Ah, but we mustn't body-shame others, don't you know ;-).
What about those of us with a high BMI due to muscle mass? The research paper did not indicate that factor.
Pretty scary that linear correlation.
That's a very astute observation, and an extremely important limitation of this type of research. Owing to the comparatively low muscle mass of Asian people, BMI is a good proxy for fat mass in these populations. BMI doesn't perform as well in blacks because their muscle and bone mass is generally higher. In caucasians it can be complicated by muscle mass, although that doesn't apply to the vast majority of the population because they're quivering mounds of blubber rather than muscle, sadly. There's some evidence from NFL players that even high BMI attributable to muscle mass may still be a hazard for premature death and dementia, but they're quite a special case due to the high frequency of traumatic brain injury.
Next week's article will hopefully provide some answers as I'm covering the effect of muscle mass on brain atrophy.