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We do not know all about all prehistoric societies, obviously. But many primitive tribes have been studied by anthropologists, and they did not find a lot of poverty. Before civilization, human populations were sparse and competition for resources was much less intense than in civilized times.
And when Europeans first came to America, they did not find starving unhealthy natives.
We really have no reason to assume conditions were as bad in prehistoric times, overall and in general, as they were in the European middle ages, or in the early industrial era.
There have been many different societies, of all types, long before our own. We have been taught that our society is superior in all ways, but there is no scientific reason for believing that.
Yes, they certainly did.
Nomadic hunters were in general in better health (think the Sioux hunting Buffalo) but agrarian societies seemed to have all the problems European and Asian societies did.
I am just learning about this but apparently DRS have known forever; you must drink water that has the highest alkaline possible it will completely clean out and reverse years of harmful effects!
What "DRS have known forever" is that drinking alkaline water is nonsense. Your lungs and kidneys maintain the body's acid base balance in a very narrow range. You cannot influence that by drinking alkaline water and doing so will not "clean out and reverse years of harmful effects".
Nomadic hunters were in general in better health (think the Sioux hunting Buffalo) but agrarian societies seemed to have all the problems European and Asian societies did.
Yes, I have read that agriculture resulted in inferior nutrition. Lots of grains, instead of wild plants and game animals.
You have the cart before the horse. The reason (some) cancers are more common in old age is because the genetic errors that produce them have more time to happen.
Coronary heart disease starts in childhood. It takes time for it to progress to the point where it can cause heart attacks.
WHAT??? When did I ever say anything that disagrees with that? Obviously cancer and heart disease are more common in older people, because they take time to develop. What can that possibly have to do with what I said? I said the high rates of cancer cannot be explained by better medical interventions. Saying cancer is more common now because people are healthier and get older is a completely evidence-free statement, and is repeated because you want to believe it.
Meanwhile, it is well known that cancer rates are different in different kinds of societies.
WHAT??? When did I ever say anything that disagrees with that? Obviously cancer and heart disease are more common in older people, because they take time to develop. What can that possibly have to do with what I said? I said the high rates of cancer cannot be explained by better medical interventions. Saying cancer is more common now because people are healthier and get older is a completely evidence-free statement, and is repeated because you want to believe it.
Meanwhile, it is well known that cancer rates are different in different kinds of societies.
Rates of many cancers are actually decreasing, due to preventive efforts such as doctors getting patients to quit smoking and have colonoscopies. That is directly attributable to medical care.
If a cancer takes time to develop, it will be more common in older people, and those people had to live long enough for it to happen. That means they did not die of something else when they were younger. Ergo, they were healthier. If you die of pneumonia at the age of 47 you do not live long enough to develop cancers that are more common in people older than that. It really is not a difficult concept to understand. A medical intervention (antibiotics for pneumonia) makes it possible for the person who would have died at age 47 from pneumonia (without antibiotics) to live long enough to develop cancer.
What do you mean by "societies"? Are you taking into account access to medical care? Certainly some cancers are more common in certain ethnicities, and that probably reflects genetic susceptibility, such as breast (female and male), ovarian, and prostate cancer in Ashkenazi Jews. Burkitt lymphoma is common in children in Africa who are co-infected with Epstein Barr virus (which is the cause of the lymphoma) and malaria (which apparently impairs the immune response to the EB virus). None of that has anything to do with the effect of medical advances in extending lifespan in the US (apart from monitoring high risk groups like Ashkenazi Jews closely).
The absolute numbers of some cancers are increasing because the population at risk (people living to older ages because they did not die younger from something else - due to medical advances) is increasing. When you adjust for that increased population, rates (usually expressed per 100,000) are decreasing for some cancers.
I don't understand your essay. You have multiple questions and I don't understand if you want an answer to why do we live longer or just talk about life in general.
To me it's statistics: yes, we do live longer compared with people in the '50s. They smoked. We eat crap, but smoking kills more people that crap eating induced diseases or that's what I'm gathering from what I read.
What to live longer? Don't smoke and don't eat crap. And exercise.
Let's say 80% of all people over 80 suffer from Disease A.
Let's say only 20% of people 50-79 suffer from Disease A.
And let's say only 4% of people 49 or under suffer from Disease A.
You can conclude that there's something people over 80 have in common, that people under 80 don't have in common. What might that one thing be?
I KNOW!
THEY ARE ALL OVER 80!
That is the answer. The fact that they CAN live past 80, makes it MUCH easier for them to develop Disease A.
This also is good news, because it means more people are living past 80 than previously.
WHAT??? When did I ever say anything that disagrees with that? Obviously cancer and heart disease are more common in older people, because they take time to develop. What can that possibly have to do with what I said? I said the high rates of cancer cannot be explained by better medical interventions. Saying cancer is more common now because people are healthier and get older is a completely evidence-free statement, and is repeated because you want to believe it.
Meanwhile, it is well known that cancer rates are different in different kinds of societies.
No, not really...My Grandfather is the first one in his family to get cancer...But he was also the first male not to die of heart disease before 70. And I will tell you, the only positive thing that can be said about his health is that he didn't smoke. He was somewhat active in that he golfed a lot (but rode a cart,) but was obese at least 40 years of his adult life, ate what he wanted, probably drank more than the experts advise and put salt in his dang beer...He was never able to exercise extensively since getting wounded in WW2 left shrapnel in his leg that would act up after a walk of more than fifteen or twenty minutes.
You cannot convince me that his extended lifespan wasn't a product of modern hypertension and possibly cholesterol medications. You also won't convince me that he would have lived to receive a cancer diagnosis at 89 or 90 to without said medicine. And, after radiation he lived to die of "old age" (basically heart/organ failure) a year or two later. The radiation didn't really damage his QOL. He passed at 91. To be honest, he would have been "happier" passing at 88 or 89...After Grandma died he didn't have as much interest in this world. His shoulders didn't allow him to golf, he couldn't hear, his friends were gone, etc...
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