I'm curious and I read a lot.
I curate / condense it here if I care/have time.
Use this to get inspired instead of seeing it as advice.
When..
- Night workers die up to 15 years earlier when they work at night [1] [2]
- Poor people (Socio-economic status) die 2 years earlier [3] [4]
- People under social isolation are 32% more likely to die earlier (14% when reporting feeling lonely) [5]
- Mental health doesn’t help either [6] [7]
.. are we, as a society handling our most fragile well?
For instance, is it even ethical for unemployment consultants to push people into night jobs when that decreases life expectancy by up to 13 years?
Are night to workers getting paid 17% more to match their lost lifespan?
I believe that we – as a society – need to get serious and act faster to adjust laws and practices to the most recent and exciting knowledge being produced by science.
We live in a unique age for knowledge, specially with regards to how interesting science is shared online.
My feeling is that there’s room to outright improve average mortality rates with what we know today.
I’m often curious about the very interesting findings around..
- Mental health
- Microbial biology’s impact on health
- The metabolic theories, specially on cancer
- Industrial vs regenerative vs sustainable food
- Microplastics
<iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure?country=~DNK&tab=chart" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>The graphic above show Denmark 4 years below the best life expectancies and the the impact seems substantially bigger than the potential still available.
Because our diets and day-to-day lives are so detached of Nature, I personally feel that we should act faster under first principles thinking, since we do not need – and can’t afford – long validation timeframes.
It would be a shame to look back and realize that we missed this amazing opportunity.
NOTES
[1] Åkerstedt T, Narusyte J, Svedberg P. Night work, mortality, and the link to occupational group and sex. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2020 Sep 1;46(5):508-515. doi: 10.5271/sjweh.3892. Epub 2020 Apr 9. PMID: 32270204; PMCID: PMC7737802. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28159391/
[2] Fortune, 2024, Shift work can kill you 15 years sooner, warns Whoop’s chief scientist, while dramatically raising your risk for depression and suicide https://fortune.com/2024/01/04/shift-workers-sleep-mental-health-depression-suicide-whoop
[3] Stringhini S, Carmeli C, Jokela M, Avendaño M, Muennig P, Guida F, Ricceri F, d’Errico A, Barros H, Bochud M, Chadeau-Hyam M, Clavel-Chapelon F, Costa G, Delpierre C, Fraga S, Goldberg M, Giles GG, Krogh V, Kelly-Irving M, Layte R, Lasserre AM, Marmot MG, Preisig M, Shipley MJ, Vollenweider P, Zins M, Kawachi I, Steptoe A, Mackenbach JP, Vineis P, Kivimäki M; LIFEPATH consortium. Socioeconomic status and the 25 × 25 risk factors as determinants of premature mortality: a multicohort study and meta-analysis of 1·7 million men and women. Lancet. 2017 Mar 25;389(10075):1229-1237. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32380-7. Epub 2017 Feb 1. Erratum in: Lancet. 2017 Mar 25;389(10075):1194. Erratum in: Lancet. 2017 Mar 25;389(10075):1194. PMID: 28159391; PMCID: PMC5368415. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28159391/
[4] Ugeskrift fo læger, 2017, https://ugeskriftet.dk/videnskab/lav-sociookonomisk-status-reducerer-levelaengden-med-ca-ar
[5] Naito R, McKee M, Leong D, Bangdiwala S, Rangarajan S, Islam S, Yusuf S. Social isolation as a risk factor for all-cause mortality: Systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. PLoS One. 2023 Jan 12;18(1):e0280308. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280308. PMID: 36634152; PMCID: PMC9836313. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9836313/
[6] Time Magazine, Mental Illness May Speed Up the Aging Process, Study Finds https://time.com/6266565/mental-illness-aging-speed-up/
[7] A comprehensive analysis of mortality-related health metrics associated with mental disorders: a nationwide, register-based cohort study
Oleguer Plana-Ripoll, PhD, Prof Carsten Bøcker Pedersen, DrMed, Prof Esben Agerbo, DrMed, Yan Holtz, MSc,Annette Erlangsen, PhD,Vladimir Canudas-Romo, PhD,Prof Per Kragh Andersen, PhD,Fiona J Charlson, PhD,Maria K Christensen, MSc, Holly E Erskine, PhD, Alize J Ferrari, PhD, Kim Moesgaard Iburg, PhD, Natalie Momen, PhD, Prof Preben Bo Mortensen, DrMed, Prof Merete Nordentoft, DrMed, Damian F Santomauro, PhD, James G Scott, PhD, Prof Harvey A Whiteford, PhD, Nanna Weye, MSc, Prof John J McGrath, MD †, Prof Thomas M Laursen, PhD † October 24, 2019 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)32316-5/abstract#section-7c530872-6235-4433-899c-b3f276970189