Is Our Sloth Killing Us?

Figures from Cancer Research <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />UK paint a disturbing picture of western lifestyles: Our sloth may be killing us. 
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The problem stems from too much food, alcohol and exposure to the sun, according to figures from the Cancer Research UK. 
Cases of melanoma, the most virulent form of skin cancer, have risen by 40 percent in the past decade.  Mouth cancer, linked with smoking and excessive drinking, has risen almost a quarter. Rates of kidney and womb cancer, associated with obesity, have also spiked in the last decade. Many nutrition and health experts, including the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Robert Keith, have seen it coming.  But the whole issue also is laced with irony.  The irony is that despite these statistics, we’re doing a few things right — right in ways that our ancestors from only a century ago would have scarcely imagined.  And it’s reflected in a 21st century generation that is healthier and more robust than any previous generation in human history. Keith attributes this progress to the following factors:

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  Comparatively recent advances in modern science, which have equipped us to avoid much of the chronic suffering routinely associated with preindustrial life. Much of this stems from better sanitation and medication — most notably, antibiotics and vaccines. Likewise, surgical techniques even have been developed to repair damage that already has occurred, such as the damaged heart valves that often accompany rheumatic fever — a common health problem in earlier centuries.


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  Science’s deeper insight into the role that diet and exercise play in safeguarding against human disease, certain forms of cancer, and other chronic disease. In fact, science and the social reform that followed also have gone a long way toward eliminating the toxic industrial practices that contributed to premature death among countless industrial workers.


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  The growing emphasis on prenatal health — fetal programming, as it’s commonly called, which is based on the premise that what happens in the womb is going to affect an infant’s health and growth for the rest of his or her life.

Yet, Keith is the first to concede that all is not well.  As human history has proven time and again, technology often turns out to be a double-edged sword and the conveniences associated with modern living are no exception. Scientific advances associated with food-processing and mechanical conveniences — plus the incredibly large chunks of leisure time that economic and scientific progress also have afforded us within the last few decades — have been linked with obesity and sedentary lifestyles.Keith and other experts have debated for years whether these poor lifestyle factors will eventually pull humanity in the opposite direction by lowering life expectancies saddling us with higher incidences chronic diseases comparatively early in life.Whether this ultimately translates into a greater incidence of premature chronic diseases and reduced life expectancies remains an open question, he says.It’s the reason why he finds the British statistics so disturbing.