I recently started reading Dr. Atkins' Age-Defying Diet Revolution, and just the first chapter has got my brain a-churning. (uhoh!)

In 1928 the average life expectancy was 57.1, in 1998 it was 76.7.

In most low carb circles and increasingly with others - it is becoming widely accepted that a decrease in dietary fat seems to be in direct correlation to an increase in heart disease. Before the 1920's, heart disease/attacks were reported very infrequently. Is it possible that in 1920's the diagnosis of heart disease was much more of guesswork than it is now?

What I don't fully comprehend, is that if in the last 30-40 years of low-fat has dramatically increased heart disease, but at the same time our life expectancy has gone up.

Could it be because our medical advances in all areas are so much that health treatments in general are the main contributing factor in our increase in life expectancy? And is the life expectancy of 76.7 based upon a low-fat eating regime?

Actually, as a health professional, I can tell you that the increased life expectancy in the western world is a direct result of:

• safe drinking water everywhere
• improved public health standards, sewage treatment
• the development of vaccines against fatal viral illnesses, especially polio
• development of anitibiotics against fatal bacterial and fungal illnesses, especially tuberculosis
• improved prenatal care for women during pregnancies, ensuring healthier newborns, safer deliveries. Thus, fewer infant and early childhood deaths, and fewer maternal deaths due to obstetric complications

People lived to be 80 and 90 years old back then .. it's just that the death rate of young people under the age of 20 was way, way higher than it is today. The "average life expectancy" is just that .. an average. So, the more young people there were dying brought the over-all average down.

I remember my grandmother saying it was an expected thing for women in the early part of the 20th century to have numerous pregnancies, one after another ... and only half the children would survive. She herself had 8 children, 2 died as infants .. one to Scarlet Fever, the other due to a birth defect of the heart "Blue Baby".

We take for granted a lot of freedom from disease now, but polio, scarlet fever, TB .. these claimed many young lives before effective treatments were developed. A vaccine against measles wasn't developed until the 1960's. Until then, measles epidemics were common .. and while measles itself isn't deadly, the complications can be .. chiefly encephalitis and pneumonia. Although insulin was discovered in 1921, it wasn't produced and distributed to doctors and hospitals until later that decade. Until insulin was widely available, the diagnosis of juvenile diabetes (Type 1) was basically a death sentence.

So .. it isn't so much a case that modern medicine is treating diseases after they happen, thus helping us live longer. It's more that modern medicine has contributed to improved Public Health, and the PREVENTION of childhood and communicable diseases.

Someday, modern medicine will clue in to the fact that it's much more efficient to prevent heart disease and other lifestyle diseases, than it is to treat the disease after it happens. Of course, there's not as much profit to be made

Doreen

Thanks Doreen,

What you say makes very good sense. While having clean drinking water and proper sewage treatment is something we take for granted, it is not something we lay people immediately think of.

It made me think - the older generation of my family (those born in the 1890's-1910's lived to be well into their 90's, but that the younger folks in the family only made it to their 70's. And most of those died from complications of diabetes and heart disease. I can remember my very forth rite great-great-aunt saying "That's stuff is not realy food!" As a youngster I would always cringe at her butter, fatty meats etc. The lady did live to 97... she was definately on to something!

It just goes to prove that things aren't always black and white, that there are many shades of grey. (ie. many contributing factors) to every situation.