Incidence of Dementia Over Three Decades in the Framingham Heart Study (2016)

nejm.org

27 points·surlyadopter··10 comments

This article points in the opposite direction but it’s worth keeping in mind that we will see other age related diseases on the rise, just because we get better are curing other diseases. We will all die of something and if we get better at treating cancer, then some other disease will mechanically increase. That’s why I would also take with a pinch of salt studies that show a modest increase in a particular disease and try to pin that on a particular technology or food.

life expectancy in the us is droppping

This is due to suicide and drug overdose, nothing that would be relevant to this discussion directly.

Suicide could account for a lower prevalence of dementia.

If it is biased to those who are suffering already or would suffer from it.

Theoretically if depression earlier in life protected against dementia (not likely at all but bear with me) it would actually raise the rates.

I wonder what the actual correlation is however even keeping in mind spuriousness.

https://www.theonion.com/world-death-rate-holding-steady-at-...

The frozen people might not be dead. They are just sleeping, right?

If I've read it correctly the article is saying the percentage of instances per age group have decreased over time, but to your point if there are more people reaching those age groups the total number of cases may increase.

Could this be related to phasing out lead in gasoline in the 80s?

Interestingly each epoch they look at would have had less exposure than the previous and dementia is going down in each epoch.

Title edit: 2016

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