Working to Death by Bytemite

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Working to Death

POSTED BY: BYTEMITE
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 17:36
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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 10:25 AM

Last night, someone in a different department at my work died of a heart attack. Even though he was 54 and that isn't outside the normal range of heart disease, his coworkers are saying it was the stress that killed him.

It got me thinking. It was only a couple of years ago that average life expectancy in America actually went down as opposed to up. In general there's more stress which leads to more sickness.

Don't hit me for asking this, but: Historically women have had a longer life expectancy than men. Is the average life expectancy going down because there are more women in the work force?

NotSAYINGweshouldgobacktothekitchen OW! I didn't even manage to finish before the flames hit!

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 11:15 AM

FIVVER

Byte - don't wanna go anywhere near the women in the workplace thing. Wouldn't be prudent.

I would like to address the high blood pressure / heart disease thing. Several years ago I had my January physical and my bp was around 125/85. Normal but needs to be watched. In February I had a TIA (think stroke that leaves no permanent damage) caused by my bp starting to elevate. In March, just before my doctor found the right drug for my condition I was flying along at 180/130. Basically I was wandering around looking for a place to die. Now, a decade later I'm nicely stabalized on my meds and doing just fine.

I do have a family history of high blood pressure - all of my uncles on my mother's side died in their 40s so I was keeping track of it. But not that often. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. If you're in a high risk group or have a family history you need to start checking your bp at least monthly when you start nudging into your 40s. When the gene turns on it's on all the way. I've heard statistics that for as many as 30% of the people with the problem, the first symptom they have is suddenly dropping dead. I got lucky.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 11:20 AM

BYTEMITE

Fair enough, and it's a good point. But aren't there some causes where blood pressure is mostly stress related?

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 12:08 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

Stress can impact hormones, which can raise blood pressure, yes. Women are particularly vulnerable to changes in cortisol levels, which contribute to belly fat as well as blood pressure. Visceral fat is a much more dangerous condition than high blood pressure, though the two often happen at the same time because more weight means more blood vessels. Men are also prone to visceral fat for their own reasons; where women are built to store fat everywhere, particularly the hip region, men are less so. Women also have an advantage when it comes to avoiding iron toxicity over time, which has nothing to do with stress but is a theory on why women tend to live longer. There are many theories and hypotheses around that.
I have my own hypotheses on why the life expectancy has gone down in recent years, but I won't beat on that particular horse at this moment.

What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 12:18 PM

BYTEMITE

Huh. Interesting.

Well hey, if you have a theory, I want to hear it. I made this thread to discuss possible causes of lowered life expectancy. The one explanation I could think of is woman stress on the rise, but I wasn't about to say that it IS the deciding factor.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 12:48 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

Well, alright. I think a big factor is the rising consumption of sweeteners. All sorts of sweeteners, but I'm definitely on the bandwagaon of high-fructose crap being the very worst. Talk about messing with hormones and contributing to belly fat, fructose is the worst.
Cancer cells have also been observed to thrive on sugars, particularly fructose. They have up to 100 times as many insulin receptors on them as normal cells, and pancreatic cancer cells have been seen literally gobbling fructose. Cancer is a complicated problem, but the levels of sweeteners in everything is certainly not helping anything.
Sweeteners also contribute to the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, and hence to heart attacks and stroke, which contrary to popular belief are not caused simply by cholesterol, but that oxidation. On that note, the obsession with lowering cholesterol levels has contributed to below-optimal levels of HDL cholesterol, which is a protective element in blood vessels.
At the same time as all this, available probiotics have declined. As sanitation techniques have gotten better, they've killed off more than just salmonella. Pickles and other traditionally fermented foods, foods that tend to have many friendly bacteria crowding out the unfriendly ones and acting as a preservative, tend to be pasturized now, killing those cultures off. Having the friendlies in your intestinal tract doesn't just help with digestion, it helps immune function, and there's evidence that it could be an important factor in serotonin balance. I've been making my own sour cream and kiefer recently, and my health has improved dramatically. (Of course, I also gave up sugar last year.) Raw honey is an excellent source of such beneficial critters, as well as being a perfectly delicious sweetener.
As people stay more and more out of the sun, vitamin D levels have gone down. There are dozens of studies indicating that sufficient vitamin D is essential to fighting off diseases. Especially cancer, but even things like the flu. I've supplemented it half my life and my levels still aren't optimal, so I can only imagine where the average person might stand. Other vitamin or mineral deficiencies can also be a problem for the population at large. The one exception might be iron, which is found in almost as many things as 'corn sugar' what with all the fortified breads and cereals. Toxicity in general is more rare than some people might think, but with iron it's easy to achieve. As people get older, they need less and less iron, and it builds up more easily in their systems. Children need a lot of iron, but adults need to limit their intake or it can become toxic. Women, because we bleed regularly, shed some iron and don't tend to have a problem until late in life. My family's doctor has told my mom she might want to start giving blood every year to help control iron levels.
So, there you go. And that's a short list of some of the things I've pieced together. I could probably go on, but I won't because I have homework to do.

What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 12:52 PM

BYTEMITE

...In retrospect, your post makes much more sense than mine, and my initial question was kinda dumb.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 1:04 PM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

One thing to consider: teh internet has helped spread fear much more quickly and more completely. It used to be Sex Sells, and that is probably still true, but now I would bet that if you polled major media outlets they would say FEAR! does it better. That it drives more clicks and shapes buying habits as well if not better than sex does.
I made a change just the other day - on my web browsers I used to have news.google or the nytimes as my home pages, because I wanted to "know." Silly idea really, but I know I wasn't alone. Now I have boingboing and aint it cool news and gizmodo as my start screens and I'm a hella lot more at peace. What a joy observing what man does well instead of that other endless stupid junk.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 1:09 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Quote:
giving blood every year to help control iron levels.

That's a really good idea.

I've not done so much research here, but I've heard that we've evolved long ago to liking things like sugar because they were useful to our bodies and rare. Now we can get it often and easily we are getting too much which is making it a problem.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 2:52 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

There's no such thing as a dumb question Byte, any question is fair, and I laughed at your last line, it was really funny, how you ran the words together and then OW! :))))

I think Phoenix Rose is on to something, I think a lot of the things she sights are good examples of things gone wrong with our food system, we have all these artificial things that we eat, weird hormones put into our meat, weird pesticides/genetic altering of our fruits and vegitables and all kinds of extra crud added to our food in general. That's an interesting point about bacteria too, of course sanitation is good, we don't get cholera anymore, but if we aren't exposed to any bacteria or germs then our bodies don't develop immunities to them and we aren't as tough. I'm not saying we should have open suers or anything like that, yuck, talk about going backwords, but I think we should let our kids play in the dirt etc.

I don't think its true that we are under more stress than we were in the past, it just looks different and comes at us in more complex ways. I think struggling to farm the land and feed a family of nine kids would be very stressful, especially if locusts eat your harvest, talk about stressful. Or working 14 hour shifts in the coal mines in harsh working conditions and not ever having time to spend with your wife and kids, meaning that she gets mad at you and starts rutting with the milkman, now that's stressful too.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 4:53 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Ah but now we have 14 hour shifts in the cubicle, without even decent physical exercise, busting ass 60-80 hours a week on a 40 hour "salary" to avoid paying overtime, and massive collusion about that between corps - debt serfdom, or at the least indentured servitude to a bank in order to pay the eternal debt for the house/car/college which enabled you to obtain the job, so forth, so on, run run run on the little hamster wheel, faster, faster or we outsource you - oh look, three weeks to pension, guess what, you're fired, haahahahaha!

WHY anyone works for them fuckers...

Again, Robespierre - he didn't do it alone, and the people had serious cause to despise the nobility the way they did - just cause we dress it up and PRETEND were a democracy, PRETEND we've done away with social classism, doesn't change the essential facts of the matter.

Healthwise - yea verily, High Fructose Corn Syrup is some nasty shit, but I defy you to find ANY BLOODY THING these days without some in it, hell, you can't even make a goddamn bologna and cheese sandwich without having to double and triple check cause it's often laced into both the bologna AND the cheese, grrrr

At least I have a decent source for PB&J curse it.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 5:22 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

We've had three men in to 50-ish age range die in the last three years (heart attack, dissected aorta, brain hemorrhage). It's not the women keeling over...

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 5:34 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I defy you to find ANY BLOODY THING these days without some in it.

Word. I shop at Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers. Not a thing in that store with the high fructose crap in it, they're very picky. It's certainly a bit out of the way, though. And, granted, it's a tiny store. To fill up a Safeway with such things would be quite difficult, I'd say. Worth it to get away from, though. Sooo worth it.

What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 5:36 PM

DREAMTROVE

Everything PR said, plus this stuff:

Stress is a big killer, so is inactivity. In addition, people who work eat terrible diets because they have like 15 min for lunch.

Next point: Your life expectancy is dependent on your metabolic rate, that's why mice don't live very long. Some species of mice have very slow metabolic rates, the naked mole rat has a metabolic rate more comparable to ours, and they live about 27 years or so.

Body mass is going to determine how much you burn and take in in terms of carbs, so, big muscles, heavy body mass is going to mean higher overall metabolic burn. This is a disadvantage to most men.

It's also a slight disadvantage for blacks, and slight advantage for asians, and this bears out on life expectancy as well.

The next determinant is illness, disease and injury. Work often provides hazards, such as my sister's work. If you don't work, it probably matters a lot what you do.

Next, healthcare. If you work you probably have health insurance, but that might not be as good of a benefit as free time. If you never have time to look into your health problems, they creep up on you, and also, it really pays to be able to sleep in, take a day off or just rest when you're sick without having to worry about schedules and sick days.

Unemployment is definitely up, so that's not pulling back the life expectancy right now, so I'm going to go with PR, it's the garbage diet.

ETA: Frem has a point. My health deteriorated considerably working IT.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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