your grandparents were more physically active - brain and body are connected
your grandparents didn't eat ultra processed food because it hadn't been invented yet...once again, brain and body are connected
It's not trivial to say that our grandparents read more than us. Paper books, newspapers and magazines are less common but we have ebooks, substacks and online newspapers now.
> your grandparents were more physically active
Perhaps at work, but my access to exercise during leisure time is much greater.
> your grandparents didn't eat ultra processed food because it hadn't been invented yet
I don't have hard data on this, but I think it's fair to say their generation's overall exposure to toxins was much greater. DEET, smoking, leaded petrol, asbestos and coal power stations seem much worse than the occasional McFlurry.
Just another day my parents were annoyed remembering that the "big, bad government" banned a popular medicine from my grandfather's time. One that people used on cuts all the time.
Turns out the medicine was lead acetate.
It was prepared from mercuric acetate and sodium dibromofluorescein.
Goulard's extract, containing lead subacetate, was used on cuts too, but from what I can tell it wasn't nearly as widespread/famous as Mercurochrome.
It was lead acetate, dissolved on water and a small bit of ethanol.
Don't forget petro wast such as plastic. It is amazing that we are still a live.
This is a reach... Have you met old people? They vegetate in front of the TV channel surfing- their version of TikTok- never questioning the content or researching topics further on their own. And after 40 years of this activity still don't know how to operate the remote.
We still do? Tiktok/shorts are that on the toilet/in bed activity. I still spend I'd guess on average at least 8 hours a day reading. Not necessarily books but diverse articles, game guides, work stuff..
> your grandparents were more physically active - brain and body are connected
More physically active but not more active in skillful tasks. I've seen correlation between less/later dementia and things like playing musical instruments but I've not heard of construction workers being dementia resistant.
> your grandparents didn't eat ultra processed food because it hadn't been invented yet...once again, brain and body are connected
Mine ate whatever was available. Many unleavened flour+water flatbreads baked on the woodfire oven used for heating, rice and lots of lye in winter. Lots of fruits and veggies when available.
Now we mostly eat much better. You have every single fruit/vegetable/meat available 365 days a week, very clean food.. Only gotta stop yourself from overindulging.
We also have better medicine, better cleaning products, better understanding of what's toxic and bans based on that..
I strongly disagree. Reading books as activity, maybe. It depends on the person too. But reading itself? In this time and age, we are constantly reading, either in your phone ( even most tiktok videos these days have subs for everything ), browsing the web is a constant reading activity, work/email/essays/whatsapp/telegram, completely outweights the amount of text we read/write now comparing it with our older generation.
I'm not actually sure my grandparents were able to read, let alone for entertainment. Not in the US fwiw.