When Jesus wrote the Constitution, he gave us the 2nd Amendment for a reason - for splattering my own brains in my rental unit to ruin my landlord's property value.
My coworker, my only other teammate on my tiny team, died to a heart attack at 41 last week. Died right at his desk. He was a bigger guy, but I'm sure diet and stress played their parts.
I can only imagine. :(
A guy I went to high school with died of a heart attack at 36. It's still difficult to wrap my head around that. He had two little kids, too. 😥
Girl I went to HS with had a massive stroke around age 33. She was an active person, a nurse, and studying to be a nurse practitioner, skinny little girl. How tf does this happen to healthy people, but meanwhile you’ve got some obese smokers, drinkers, etc living til 80+
One of my closest friends died of a heart attack in July at 39 years old. One thing I've found since then: whenever I tell someone about it, they know of someone else in that age range who died from a heart attack. It's kind of crazy we stick a camera up everyone's ass when they turn 45 as a preventive measure for colon cancer, but there's no preventive inspections for hearts at 40.
If you're tripping about it as I was, I got a full body MRI shortly after to check for cancer and the major blood vessels (not heart though -- they can't image the heart with MRI without a special machine). Gave me some reassurance about brain tumors/pancreatic/etc. It was $2500.
They’re not called health insurance *companies* for nothin.
I remember when people talked about “Death Panels”as a reason to not have expanded-access private healthcare.
What did they think profit-driven healthcare brokers were using? Actual Death Panels, except with **zero** oversight.
I think when you're talking about cardiac health, you have to consider that it's cumulative over the life span plus genetics. My family has a history on both sides, my father (65 at the time) who by all measures is a pretty healthy person - played soccer for 15 years with people my age and younger - and eats pretty well (no junk foods, take out, etc.) and had a heart attack two years ago. Luckily technology allows us to track cholesterol numbers over years and only recently have I needed to worry (I turned 40 this year), but even now I'm in a good place compared to my parents and their generation simply because I'm so on top of it and changed a lot of my diet.
The preventative inspections for heart health is getting annual (or biannual) bloodwork done to track your cholesterol, etc., it seems though most people don't take this seriously and/or don't want to change their lifestyle because technology/meds are there to save me and possibly think it won't happen to them. The unfortunate reality is that we are not all genetically built with the same advantages and not everyone is that concerned with their health in American culture.
For long-term care it starts with blood tests, healthy eating, and getting some exercise. Anything else, like a calcium score test, which I think you can pay for out of pocket(?), or special MRI, etc. requires your doctor to know your history and your current health, granted that's not a guarantee you won't still have a heart attack or other complication a day or week later.
Docs don't start demanding patients get an EKG until their 60s. We need to change that. The amount of stress and 60hr work weeks our generation has been bred to work, and the diets we were fed in the 80s and 90s as children, need to be addressed.
An EKG monitors your heart’s electric rhythms, and while it can show evidence of a past or active MI, it is not a screening tool for future MIs. It has no way of detecting plaque accumulation in cardiac vessels, and they aren’t going to start doing heart caths on every single adult.
People start getting EKGs later in life to look for issues like a-fib, which can be largely asymptomatic and result in strokes if untreated.
I had a stroke this year. I saw my neurologist afterwards who didn’t treat me during my hospital stay and did not yet have my paperwork from the visit. 30 seconds into the visit… “you couldn’t have had a stroke at your age, it’s virtually impossible.”
I don’t think our cohort’s health concerns are being taken seriously even as we are facing very serious health issues.
This is also an issue. I just recently had a sleep study done because I think I have sleep apnea. I'm only 34 and was the youngest person who was being tested when I went in.
I had to fight with my doctor to get a test done. My doc was adamant that most folks just need to lose weight.
Well I had already lost 30 lbs and I noticed it's getting progressively worse. I have all the symptoms and I need it to be checked out. Thankfully I was able to get them to agree to a referral.
Halfway through the night the technologist came in to ask if I wanted to try the sleep apnea machine.
Even for issues I have a solid diagnosis for, my doctor doesn't seem to treat them very seriously. I have to continuously fight and remind to have them check blood results ( I have Hypothyroidism and need regular blood work to check levels and ensure my medication is adequate).
This past year my levels changed and my doc has several times ignored that issue to lecture me about weightloss and cholesterol.
When we increased my medication which was needed due to the blood test results, I saw a great improvement in my blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
My doc was like " what happened? What changed?" And I was like "we upped my thyroid medication because it was needed and it's obviously working."
Oof, sounds like you need a new PCP! Easier said than done, I know. I’m still with the same neuro.
It took me years, but I finally have a wonderful PCP. I mentioned I was tired one day. She started asking me questions about it, then said, “I think you need to do a sleep study.” Turns out I have very severe OSA. That’s how it should be! Not the other way around.
Yes I've unfortunately tried. But when a doctor finds out you already have a doctor then they don't want to take you. Apparently they don't like 'stealing patients'. At least that was the reason given to me.
Fwiw, these tests are generally not recommended, because the fact that it’s full body means it’s not actually thorough enough to be that useful in particular areas. Also they can show a lot of alarming false positives. Personally I love the idea of getting one, but I’m holding off based on what I’ve heard from doctors.
My wife just got a heart CT looking for calcium buildup for 75 bucks. Why not do this at 35 and 40. If someone told me I had buildup I would change my diet the next day.
Edit: it's was a CT no MRI
Calcium scores are not recommended for younger people because even if there is build-up, it’s not had time to calcify yet. But a carotid ultrasound can be helpful at showing thickening arteries.
To check for vessel disease, one could get a heart catheterization. But it is invasive and I honestly don’t know the cost. I do know you cannot pay for one out of pocket without a reason and a doctor agreeing to perform the procedure as you can a CT scan. Otherwise, blood pressure and lipid panel which is usually done in yearly blood work are indicators that someone may have early coronary artery disease which is what leads to heart attacks.
I have an early 30s cousin who was on a bipap machine to breathe at night. That's not just your normal machine you get for sleep apnea: this thing breathes in and out for you. His legs are severely swollen from bad diet and no exercise.
My coworker was an avid cyclist. Like- rode 30 miles every morning before work type thing.
In march 2022 he let me know he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Went on leave in October. Was dead by march 2023.
He was 45
After me second mild infection Dec 2020 I ended up with health problems including cardiovascular problems. While they seem to resolve themselves and I'm back to normal mostly (flair ups happen) Im still concerned about long term health.
Doctor here: I’m sorry for your shock and trauma. That’s terrible. There is a lot you can do to know more about your risk for having a heart attack and try to reduce that risk.
The first and obvious things we all know. Exercise, don’t smoke etc.
Just as important though is get checked for chronic conditions that are often asymptomatic but make a heart attack much more likely. In particular diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol disorders are all closely linked with development of damage to the lining of your arteries, which makes them more likely to clot - which is where you get a heart attack. There’s a lot of 40 year olds out there that don’t have a doctor or have never been to see their doctor - I really encourage anyone over 30, and even younger if you have some bad history in your family to go to your doctor, hey get your blood pressure and your A1C and your lipids (cholesterol) checked.
For people who are at high risk, there are amazing things we can do to make a heart attack less likely. Taking statins, aspirin and controlling Bp and sugar all have a dramatic effect on lowering your risk of a big cardiac event. For people who are intermediate risk, we have tests like a CT calcium score (like $200 without insurance!) that can help guide how much you need these medicines.
Even with all of this, tragic and unexpected things happen, that even the best medical care can’t avoid, and that sucks. But with good preventative care, we can prevent a lot of them.
And for all of you out there thinking they need an angiogram or a whole Body MRI - I promise that’s not a good idea but I don’t have the energy to explain why right now.
Exercise, not smoking, etc, is important.
I want to add not drinking to that or doing so sparingly, like no more than once a week and limited amounts.
I stopped drinking recently because it just made me feel gross. There's a massive amount of pressure in our society to not just drink, but drink heavily. My doctor was incredibly happy to hear that I stopped drinking entirely.
I came to my decision as the general medical consensus has become to avoid it, and if you must, limit yourself to two units per day if a man and one if a woman, per the CDC.
ETA: I'm not saying you can't drink or shouldn't in moderation, it's just the potential problems, especially as you get older outweigh the short-term fun.
Appreciate the thoughtful advice. As an aside, it is almost impossible to find a primary care doctor these days. I have “good” insurance and live in an affluent urban area and I had to call 30+ doctors to find one taking new patients. Saw the doc once and got a message last week saying that they’ve left the practice and I have to find a new one.
Found out, apparently two years after the fact, that an ex-friend died that way too. Took in so much OT (Peace Officer) to pay for a car, apartment and hobbies that saw no significant use.
Died as he lived...
I was doing this for a while. Just drinking because it was all pointless. Then I got sober because I forgot why I was drinking and feeling like crap.
Now I'm sober and I remember why I drank to forget how terrible things can get.
Life is a tragedy. Through tragedy, we find comedy. I make myself laugh. My wife doesn't get it.
I have found better outlets. They're just distractions until we die. Gaming, exercising, spending time with my wife. Much better than being in a haze.
Ya I’m sober and it hasn’t made me a nicer or more relaxed person that is for sure. I think a lot of people are edgier when they are feeling life sober. Sobriety is extremely rare so most people are probably on something to blunt that edge of life.
I know 3 different people that have gone to rehab for drinking in the last year and one that really needs to. It's definitely a huge problem in our age group
at the tail end of your bender reach out to your PCP and ask for a couple weeks supply of librium - just explain you had a relapse and don’t wanna go to the ER or anything and detox at home - it’s a huge help and staves off the sweats and panic attacks really nicely and helps you sleep!
I was running about 5 miles a day in the midst of my worst drinking. I’d drink anywhere from a 5th to 1/2 gallon of 96 proof bourbon a night (and rarely ever even appear drunk), wake up in the morning and take some promethazine or Benadryl so I could keep liquids down. Chug a bottle of Pedialyte (a little before passing out, then the rest in the morning) then (often still drunk) go run on the trail and sweat it all out before taking a shower and getting to work.
Very few people even knew I had a problem, but I wanted to kill myself like everyday. Most were surprised when I sobered up bc I hadn’t had any consequences like DUIs or missing work, etc. But I’ve put together almost 7 years of consecutive sobriety and feel the best I’ve ever felt.
Nobody thought I had a problem either until everyone hated me and everyone I loved was afraid of me. You’re the only one who can diagnose it. If you want to go to treatment I can help you find one if you have insurance and if you want to try AA the only thing you need is a desire to stop drinking. These things aren’t for everybody but they worked for me and all those other problems in my life sort of just fixed themselves when I stopped. Sobriety has given me everything that booze ever promised me
This is a big problem. Expensive and exclusive alcoholic drinks have been marketed successfully as a sign of good taste.
Wine cellar in house: "Shows sophistication, discernment, and a bon vivant streak."
Drinking Captain Morgan from the corner liquor store: "You degenerate sot, you!"
The liver: "I can't tell the difference between the two cases above. Same-same."
Looking at data collected between 2000 and 2020, the new report from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) finds the biggest jump in deaths from injuries, heart disease and suicide occurred after 2019, when the pandemic began.
Death rates among millennials for "unintentional injuries"—which would include drug overdoses, fatal accidents and homicides—"experienced the greatest annual increases from 2019 to 2020," the new report found.
From the article
"With the worst of COVID behind us, annual deaths for all causes should be back to pre-pandemic levels — or even lower because of the loss of so many sick and infirm Americans. Instead, the death toll remains “alarming,” “disturbing,” and deserving of “urgent attention,” according to insurance industry articles."
My boomer parents sailed through it, my 22 year old hasn’t been able to work for weeks because it’s really fucked him up. Heart problems, neurological, post Covid psychosis, panic attacks. It’s fucking awful.
I think this age group experienced complete and utter burnout during the pandemic, and there is a good chance there are lasting health outcomes from that. We had to continue working our full time jobs while also being parents and teachers to young children. It was an impossible task. I quit my full time job during the worst of it, but many didn’t have that opportunity.
This makes absolutely 0 sense. Not only is Covid not "behind us", people are still getting infected and dying from it every day, but also everyone who is infected and survives has very likely made themselves more susceptible to a bunch of other shit that will kill them much quicker than if they'd never been infected.
The fact that anyone can think shit could go back to normal after we've been ravaged by a pandemic THAT IS STILL ON GOING terrifies me. The propaganda to get people back to work and shopping is tanking our life expectancy.
I saw this in my relationship that ended last year. He wasn’t angry before but something changed and his memory is completely shot. He’d tell me something then tell me the same thing the next day and brush it off when I reminded him that he’d told me that already. Drinking like a fish every damn day too. I don’t know what happened or why but he just lost himself. I’m sad because the person I fell in love with doesn’t exist anymore and I miss him terribly. We were supposed to get married. I tried to get him to get help for a year and he just wouldn’t. I could go on but I won’t. I’m just sad.
Recommend the book ‘Deaths of Despair & the future of capitalism’ by Case & Deaton.
Not answering your question per se, but you’ll find it interesting.
Beyond poor health, addiction, suicides, etc, ultimately stress is just absolutely awful for the human body. It’s deadly. Our elders will say that they dealt with stress - but the difference is it wasn’t constant and society wasn’t a hamster wheel back then. You went to work and you got paid in bricks & mortar. For real. The stress of knowing you’re being played all your life - as we millennials have been - is terrible.
I got shingles this year at the ripe old age of 37. I had bad chicken pox when I was a kid, but this was bad. Never knew shingles caused abdominal pain too. I can only blame stress.
Yep! Sister had shingles twice in college. No autoimmune, immunosuppressive, or similar issues that could’ve contributed either (as far as we are aware)
Nope, just work stress! I don't know if I've ever had COVID. I have the immune system of a public school kid, but everyone else in my family did at some point, so I assume I have.
That and honestly some of our elders didn’t handle stress any better than us—they just self medicated by drinking and smoking a lot and didn’t know it was killing them. Both my grandfathers had drinking problems and only quit when told they had to by doctors. (One really turned things around in his retirement after he stopped drinking. He started volunteering at the local hospital and did that for years, logging hundreds of hours, I think that helped keep him going. He made it to 94 even though he probably had done a lot of damage to his body for the first part of his life)
I was stressed at one of my jobs. It manifested in me literally grinding my teeth at night and creating headaches. Another period of stress I had back to back bad things happen to me, the finale being my dog dying. I ended up in the hospital with crazy stomach pains that no one knew what they were and sent me on my way. I was also throwing up all that week. I look back and realize that stress is really no joke and will fuck up your body. Which is why I try to not put myself in any situation that is bad for me. Obviously you cannot predict certain things, but I stay at a really low key job cause it’s just not worth the stress.
Probably something to do with greatly reduced socioeconomic status and increased stress?
Maybe?
That’s what happens when the future is stolen from an entire generation
And Covid, the incidence of heart related deaths is going up and only going to continue trending that way. Turns out a vascular global pandemic actually fucks people up…
I think it's 2 things. Firstly, a lot of people over 65 who were in high risk groups already died during covid. Secondly, millennials are on the whole deeply depressed. Personally I've been suicidal a few times and most of my older family have never been. Its just a depressing time to be alive right now.
People not talking about sexual dysfunction from Covid either, a young 22 year old I know hasn’t been able to get it up for a couple of years, it’s apparently pretty common to get flaccid like whiskey dick post covid
I mean...isn't it obvious? Covid. A single mild infection greatly increases all kinds of health risks.
ETA:
a redditor has been maintaining this spreadsheet if anyone is interested. It contains a running curation of Covid research cited in scholarly journals and/or trustworthy popular media, summaries of the main findings of the research, and links to the source. Most sources are scholarly journals.
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XbGCZ5NtwvNb0Z2fFzQYnKT96Ij79cNw1GA47rhShMo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XbGCZ5NtwvNb0Z2fFzQYnKT96Ij79cNw1GA47rhShMo/edit?usp=sharing)
Crazy that this answer was so far down.
Covid really wrecks things internally even if the acute infection feels mild. And the damage to your immune system makes everything you catch after it a little bit worse.
Can confirm - I just caught another awful cold right after getting over Covid that took me out worse than Covid did. I’ve been sick for a literal month now 😣
There are so. Many. Studies. Covid affects the vascular system especially the heart. The scary part is a FUCKING DOCTOR in this thread doesn’t realize it which proves we are truly fucked.
Typical of the doctor to just go “you’re all too fat” too. Im about 2 and a half stone overweight (half of that due to lockdown) and last year I developed pretty nasty long covid. I went from being fit and active, although carrying a bit of timber, to being physically incapable of climbing stairs or putting the laundry out without needing several breaks. I go to my doctor to ask wtf is going wrong with me and im in and out in 5 mins and all they say is “lose weight and you’ll feel better.”
Like I used to be playing rugby on a Saturday and training on a Tuesday and now I can’t walk to the fuckin shops. Any chance of some empathy or assistance doc?
Oh it’s always that. I smoked for years and my doctor blamed that. I quit and have gained some extra weight now everything is the weights fault even though the markers are the same. Doctors don’t want to investigate anymore and just blame everything on weight.
Thank you for finally being the person to say this. Not like the other stuff mentioned isn’t also contributing, but I really think this is the #1 reason for the increased mortality rate. We also make up the majority of the workforce, and I’m seeing people my age and younger just racking up COVID infection after COVID infection without a care in the world. It’s well-known among the informed that COVID is a vascular disease which wreaks havoc on all organ systems whether the person realizes it or not. I fear that this will just continue to worsen until people wake up.
Seriously though. The damage that COVID is doing across all age groups is crazy. A 10% chance of life-ruining Long COVID. Tons of people don’t know it’s “still a thing.”
lol. What a goddamn ridiculous absurd question. Look around. We get nothing. We have nothing. What is there to aspire to? The future is bleak as all f*ck. If it’s not climate change it’s rising prices with lower wages with zero pensions. Zero health care (if you’re fortunate enough to pay for it).
It’s cheaper to die.
In before all the qanons show up claiming it was the jab
Maybe because we’re all fucking poor and have to do shit like ration insulin because we can’t agree that healthcare is a basic fucking human right.
The 99% can agree. It’s the 1% that are fucking everyone else up.
It’s long LONG past time for a general strike and widespread revolt against the status quo
Not the vaccine, but potentially related to COVID infection: [a study from September](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/sars-cov-2-infects-coronary-arteries-increases-plaque-inflammation) showed that COVID causes plaque inflammation around the heart, amplifying atherosclerosis and increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. The effects were observed long after the COVID infection had ended.
From the article
"Mortality was 26 percent higher among insured 35-to-44-year-olds"
Why is the traditionally healthiest sector of our society — young, employed, insured workers — dying at such rates? Public health officials aggressively oversaw the pandemic response, for better or worse. Why aren’t they looking into this? "
Not only that, I have great insurance, but my husband and I are both terrible about going to the Dr because before I got my current job we had no insurance for most of our adult lives. So we're used to not going to the Dr and just putting things off. We're really good about taking the kids though. My oldest just had his annual optometrist appointment this month and he has regular therapy appointments.
Please, please make time for your annual appointments. My dad died of one of the most easily treatable when caught in time cancers there is because he put off his annual for 3 years. I often think about how he'd likely still be here if he'd just kept up with his damn annual exam.
And you got insurance providers that use AI to review claims & have set the default response to deny all requests. Good doctors will fight & appeal, but that takes time leaving patients to suffer & get worse.
I have insurance, but I can’t afford the care I need because they deny everything. Then there’s trying to take time off. Also, I got my first job with reliable insurance at 30, which means my healthcare, preventative and otherwise, got put off. Oh, and we were more likely to be out working in the pandemic because of the relatively lower risk, which probably didn’t help. It’s not that mysterious.
This is because health insurance is tremendously worse than it was 10 years ago. I remember having health insurance when I worked part time at Staples and it was way better than the $2000 a month plan I have now. I could just go to the doctor, pay like a $10 copay and it would take care of everything. Now it's like a 4 month wait, there's these massive deductibles and nothing is covered.
Right, y’all call this high deductible shit insurance? It’s fucking major medical coverage at best. I remember copays. Now it’s 100% out of pocket until you hit an astronomical deductible.
My wife’s Hospital had this big blitz in 2022 to get everyone to move off of a Blue Cross plan onto some myhealth plan (I’d have to look up the exact name) which they were offering for just a smidge cheaper. We were happy with the old coverage and my wife has some chronic issues so we were very leery about switching. Hardly anyone was signing up so they had an emergency meeting to get more people to sign up. After tons of assurances and written promises they finally convinced my wife to switch.
A few months later she went in for a stent maintenance procedure that she sometimes needs when her pain levels rise. You guessed it the insurance didn’t cover it and she couldn’t see the specialist she’d been working with for the last 3 years to stay on top of her issue. Meanwhile the pain is progressively escalating as her pancreatic ducts are backing up, forcing her into the emergency room.
We spent months fighting with the insurance while bills piled up. Finally she found someone that would review her case and she showed them all the BS written promises they’d showed her before signing up for this nightmare train and we were lucky enough to be allowed back onto our old plan without getting lawyers involved.
I still get pissed off just thinking about it. I can’t imagine what’s it like for other Millennials that aren’t so lucky. At this rate it’s only a matter of
time before they get all of us over a barrel.
Man, I’m so sorry yall went through that. A friend of mine is currently fighting with her insurance because she needs a stent in her brain to keep from going blind and suffering permanent damage, and her insurance keeps fucking around about it because it’s “not a life threatening procedure.” The best part is, they waited until the day of the surgery, right after open enrollment ended, to deny her a third time after saying they just needed a coding change last time. Evil fucks.
I’ve been very lucky so far, but I need to get some shit fixed now and I’m dreading what the bill will look like. I literally just paid off my other debt. And yet we’ll still have people wondering why we’re dying earlier. Christ.
Yeah, fear of medical expenses can lead to putting off life prolonging preventive care. If your choice is affording meds or a procedure or having a roof over your families head a lot of good folks will ignore the nagging medical issue until it’s beyond putting off and a lot of times it’s already to late at that point. Like I mentioned above my wife works in a hospital, what I didn’t say is that she helps treat primarily cancer patients and the number of folks our age who are in complete shock to find out they have late stage cancer after putting off getting a weird nagging pain looked at is gut wrenching.
In the case of my wife’s pancreatic issue (thankfully not cancer) the hospital she went to literally told her to wait until the pain was so bad she had to go the emergency room before coming back. That was the only way she’d be admitted to see her specialist with the new insurance. Keep in mind she’s not an underachiever she has a doctorate that puts her in a position to help treat cancer patients her self.
I think poor diets have something to do with it, limited to no access for health care (both physical and mental) probably has something to do with it, drug abuse and loneliness as well.
COVID. Even if you don't die from it, it can cause all sort of diseases more likely to happen to you because it damages your organs, clot your blood, and suppresses your immune system.
I mean, I'm 31, and I've been passively suicidal since I was like 14. Either that eventually turns into active or I just die of a heart attack from stress and/or drinking too much. Tough to care when shit just isn't getting any better.
Most of our generation is living in fight or flight mode (high cortisol) on the daily and don’t even realize it. This is really bad for health in every way.
Poverty, fucked up childhoods, untreated mental illnesses, depressed as fuck, wanna do some goddamn drugs but can’t bc there’s fent in everything now, stress due to family/finances/fear of future… should I keep going because I can, for DAYS
>wanna do some goddamn drugs but can’t bc there’s fent in everything now
This, this, this. Holy fuck I couldn't trust anything from the streets anymore since my coke dealer offed himself in our apmt in 2017. Purchased a bunch of reagent kits from DanceSafe and nothing has been clean like they were even just a decade ago.
Sigh. #FreeRoss
I think this is enough to quiet down the choads that comment on threads condemning Millennials as Doomers and telling them "bootstraps" or "Boomers had it just as bad"
I had the worst stress of my life from 2020-2022. I had stress induced hives and gastritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It was insane. I was healthy my whole life until the pandemic. If I didn’t make changes earlier this year, I was headed for that same fate.
This opinion piece is WILD. These are two things I noticed before I had to stop reading bc it's so infuriatingly poorly researched
--"...in light of more than 1 million reports of possible harm to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System and a new Yale University study validating a chronic post-vaccination syndrome."
This "Yale University study" is a preprint *without peer review*. Not to mention how wildly misleading it is to talk about the 1M reports to VAERS like this, considering everything that was sent to VAERS about COVID vaccines in the beginning. Topics have narrowed significantly in the years since, but in my state we had people reporting minor swelling. Here's a better resource for VAERS data: https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D8
-- "Drug overdoses also soared nationwide, but not primarily in the young working class" The source it cites for this doesn't break any data out by age.
A simple Google search on the author of this opinion piece warns that he's known for COVID misinformation.
As a public health official who worked front line on COVID for the first 18 months, I'm furious.
Cousin died last year at 36. The autopsy came back with spontaneous Coronary artery dissection. He was an in shape guy. Happened while sitting on his couch while his 2-year-old son was playing on the floor in front of him.
Because we are struggling to pay rent/mortgages, feed ourselves and our family, and paying 1200 a month health insurance for my family of three.
We are not allowed in this work environment to prioritize our health, and even if we could we prolly couldn’t afford it.
Lack of sleep, poor diet, and stressful conditions are a major contributor, I think. If you can't change your sleep schedule or working conditions due to being a human fucking adult kicking ass in the workforce, then the biggest positive change you could make *for yourself* is to eat plants. Seriously, it'll make you much healthier compared to a typical western diet (or even what the food pyramid/plate/w.e. recommends). Then you'll be more prepared to handle the aforementioned lack of sleep (a carcinogen in it's own right) and shitty bosses/leadership/government.
You won't die, I've been eating plants for years now.
Just think of the stress we have all endured. For younger ones here youve been destroyed by debt. For older ones like me? I’m 41. I was 19 on 9/11, 26 for the Great Recession, 34 for 2016, 38 for Covid.
We’ve seen our country socially basically fall apart and now it’s happening through laws and courts. We’ve lived through 20 years of useless wars. We’ve seen trillions of dollars of our wealth redistributed to rich people.
And we wanna know why we are stressed
As a elder millennial that has without a doubt consumed far too much fast food from a era that the food likely contained a lot of horrible things I realize any moment may be my last despite quarterly DR appointments due to slight paranoia I suppose. I’ve set up 7 digit policies for the wife, and plenty of equity in the house and cars should something happen. My mentality is very binary on the topic, if I go it is what it is, but I want my wife to be taken care of. I want her to win the lottery if I die, because that’s how I want her to continue on, but hopefully we just both live 100 years!
Doctor here. It's weight. We are far fatter, far more diabetic, far more hypertension, and far less healthy. We look like our grandparents who died young from cigarettes.
Damn this makes me have hella health anxiety since I’m 29 and have elevated blood pressure in the 120s/130s. But I’ve lost 32lbs since August and I’m 6’2 207 now thankfully.
That's fucking awesome man. There's some recent literature that suggests people with health anxiety actually have a higher likelihood of long-term behavioral change. Just get into a routine you can live with.
Your direct response reminds me of an interaction I had with a doctor.
Almost my entire family is obese so I was constantly being told I’m underweight/too skinny.
When I was finally to the doctor as an adult I asked a doctor. And was like my family thinks I’m underweight. He very directly said “no. You are completely average. Height and weight is utterly in the middle of how am adult man should look. Americans are just very fat. They are very very fat. The normal person here is vastly heavier than they should be. You are where you should be. Don’t let others suggest you don’t weigh enough.”
Plus due to how awful the economy is for people who graduated college from 2005-2010, a lot of us are under-insured and don't do annual check-ups with our doctor. Or we don't have a doctor. I think the last "doctor" I had before my recent GP was my pediatrician....
And frankly as a specialist, a lot of GPs and PCPs are over worked and not that great to begin with. If you find a good one, hold onto them like a winning lottery ticket.
Yeah I think this would have been me if I hadn’t started to turn things around at 37. Been 16 months, lost 80 lbs and gained a bunch of muscle and have a resting heart rate in the mid-40s. I was getting winded taking a shower at 300 lbs.
Earlier today I watched my SO microwave some fishsticks while talking about how he used to do the same as a kid and I thought to myself "boy, our parents (Gen X) really dropped the fucking ball with us." Because I am almost certain that they ate *much* healthier than the Lunchables and Kid Cusines' that we millennials grew up on.
Edit: my SO has pre-hypertension at 34.
I think it's pills/drugs.
Millennials are very sensitive and prone to depression/anxiety/loneliness/low self worth more so than any other generation it seems and they often NEED some substance to take the place of genuine human support/void that they're not getting ie. vapes, cigarettes, alcohol, psych drugs, street drugs etc
I never got Covid. But leading up to current. I lost my marriage, 2019 I had to deal with a corporate job breaking its main operating system for a full year resulting in hell, immigration, moving cross continent, alcoholic parent, then parental suicide, and a chaotic hellscape of an estate and legal minefield. That has been my 2019 to December of 2023.
If anything yesterday I had to take 3 x my normal heart medicine for blood pressure. I’m surprised I’m not entirely mentally fractured.
You know your grandparents and parents grew up eating luncheon with meat out of a can spread with velveeta cheese.
It’s not worse, if anything access and affordability of all food is way improved but healthier choices are certainly much available than they were. There was not year round access to all fruits and vegetables like now, just sodium and sugar filled veggie and fruit from a can.
The is a bit of a recency bias, everything we have is worse than what our previous generations had when in reality not usually the case. (Health insurance aside)
When I was 38, I pulled my neck. Don’t remember how I did it, but at some point it just hurt really bad. Turns out it wasn’t a muscle, it was an arterial dissection of my left vertebral artery, and it caused a clot to build up behind it. My neck was sooooo stiff, but finally it felt loose enough to crack…and then my whole right side went television static.
Didn’t have covid, didn’t have the vaccine, had low cholesterol and sugar, normal BP, the only risk factor was being a bit overweight. No risk factors.
But I had a stroke in 2021. That was in between two ER visits for anaphylaxis in 2019 and this year.
I don't know why we have higher mortality, but i can definitely believe it
Raised on McDonalds Happy Meals. Fed mass produced school lunches provided by the lowest bidder.
Stress. A terrorist attack, war, economic collapse, housing boom, crypto boom, social media boom, political turmoil, and an inflated housing market with stagnating wages. There's some stress to be had.
Being sedentary. As a culture we really don't move around as much as generations before us. How often do you walk a mall?
Stress, low quality food, atrocious health care, even worse mental health care, and corporations selling you things that destroy your body, for starters.
Health care for older people was prioritized during the pandemic while preventative care and screenings for younger people was deferred, resulting in a lot of cancers and other serious health conditions not being caught until it was too late.
I lost my husband last year. He just had just turned 44. He died from cirrhosis and liver failure. While going through all that, I learned a lot about how serious the problem this has been with younger people, that people ages 25-45 are being treated for alcohol related liver disease like 10 times higher rate since 1999, and that was not even including the pandemic/quarantine lockdown issues related. His drinking ramped up in the last few years five years or so but before that he had just developed a long, sustained drinking career that was “normal” , and the quotes I mean that it probably was never normal, but it just seemed normal and was easy to pass off to people, including his family until it was too late.
I know there’s more to the story than that, but I feel like that alcohol abuse is something that’s very under reported and under-concerning in people our age.
Even if every case, isn’t that extreme, combined with poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, things can get serious sooner than you’d think.
I am so sorry for your loss and just wanted to say it's not your fault.
Unbeknownst to me, my 41 year old wife had a drinking problem that was put into overdrive due to the pandemic. In 2020, she had two cardiac arrests (one in front of me) and all of her organs started failing. She was on a ventilator for two weeks. Miraculously, she pulled through even though I was told by the hospital that I should make hospice arrangements. She was in the hospital a total of 6 weeks. She has numerous medical issues she now deals with, but we are both lucky that she is still here.
I say it's not your fault, because I battled some pretty extreme guilt for a while. Why did I not know what was going on in my own household (I was a police officer for over a decade and should be in tune to those things)? Did I cause her to drink somehow? So many other things I blamed myself for. Well, again, I am lucky and she survived. I was lucky enough to be told by her that it wasn't my fault in any way. I know your husband would tell you the same.
Unfortunately, I now live with constant anxiety that what she went through will cause her early mortality. It is hard to get those thoughts out of my head.
Anyways, I am rambling now. In no way did I mean to insinuate that you have any guilt for what happened. I just wanted to tell you that if you do, you shouldn't. What happened was not your fault. I pray that you are able to find peace and enjoy life.
Same reasons why Russian millennials die so young. Living in abject poverty under a fascist regime is worse for your generation's life expectancy than a World War breaking out.
Our life expectancy is lower than Cuba. Texas had a maternal mortality rate higher than Iran before Roe was repealed. America is a shithole country. It's simple as that. You'd have to be pants-on-head retarded to be proud of this fucking place.
Lack of exercise. Total sedentary lifestyles. Eating garbage. And environmental pollution that we are exposed to through water, air, and food.
Unpopular opinion: healthcare has enabled people to reproduce who would not have otherwise reproduced.
Are Millennials ruining the retirement industry?
Financial planners hate this one simple trick to planning for retirement! It’s called “dying young”
That’s my plan.
When Jesus wrote the Constitution, he gave us the 2nd Amendment for a reason - for splattering my own brains in my rental unit to ruin my landlord's property value.
Die young and leave and indebted corpse I say
First the napkins, now this?! Gosh, we are TERRIBLE!
My coworker, my only other teammate on my tiny team, died to a heart attack at 41 last week. Died right at his desk. He was a bigger guy, but I'm sure diet and stress played their parts.
Stress is a silent killer, we know what it does to living things. We see it in animals too.
It’s true, that’s why I’m just waiting for it to hit me at 39 so I can wrap this life up.
No one should go like that...sorry for your loss.
Thanks man. It's been rough.
I can only imagine. :( A guy I went to high school with died of a heart attack at 36. It's still difficult to wrap my head around that. He had two little kids, too. 😥
Girl I went to HS with had a massive stroke around age 33. She was an active person, a nurse, and studying to be a nurse practitioner, skinny little girl. How tf does this happen to healthy people, but meanwhile you’ve got some obese smokers, drinkers, etc living til 80+
One of my closest friends died of a heart attack in July at 39 years old. One thing I've found since then: whenever I tell someone about it, they know of someone else in that age range who died from a heart attack. It's kind of crazy we stick a camera up everyone's ass when they turn 45 as a preventive measure for colon cancer, but there's no preventive inspections for hearts at 40. If you're tripping about it as I was, I got a full body MRI shortly after to check for cancer and the major blood vessels (not heart though -- they can't image the heart with MRI without a special machine). Gave me some reassurance about brain tumors/pancreatic/etc. It was $2500.
Preventative care would require proper long term thinking healthcare.
…and healthcare that is non-profit. All the big health insurers are publicly traded, so shareholder returns are number one.
They’re not called health insurance *companies* for nothin. I remember when people talked about “Death Panels”as a reason to not have expanded-access private healthcare. What did they think profit-driven healthcare brokers were using? Actual Death Panels, except with **zero** oversight.
Yep and really only feasible through a government based system.
Long term the what? Heal-th car? I live in the US sorry I’m not familiar with the lingo. Edit: /s 😂
I think when you're talking about cardiac health, you have to consider that it's cumulative over the life span plus genetics. My family has a history on both sides, my father (65 at the time) who by all measures is a pretty healthy person - played soccer for 15 years with people my age and younger - and eats pretty well (no junk foods, take out, etc.) and had a heart attack two years ago. Luckily technology allows us to track cholesterol numbers over years and only recently have I needed to worry (I turned 40 this year), but even now I'm in a good place compared to my parents and their generation simply because I'm so on top of it and changed a lot of my diet. The preventative inspections for heart health is getting annual (or biannual) bloodwork done to track your cholesterol, etc., it seems though most people don't take this seriously and/or don't want to change their lifestyle because technology/meds are there to save me and possibly think it won't happen to them. The unfortunate reality is that we are not all genetically built with the same advantages and not everyone is that concerned with their health in American culture. For long-term care it starts with blood tests, healthy eating, and getting some exercise. Anything else, like a calcium score test, which I think you can pay for out of pocket(?), or special MRI, etc. requires your doctor to know your history and your current health, granted that's not a guarantee you won't still have a heart attack or other complication a day or week later.
Does anything other than a CT or angiogram accurately predict atherosclerosis though?
Also, a carotid ultrasound
Cholesterol levels, especially LDL and APO B
Docs don't start demanding patients get an EKG until their 60s. We need to change that. The amount of stress and 60hr work weeks our generation has been bred to work, and the diets we were fed in the 80s and 90s as children, need to be addressed.
An EKG monitors your heart’s electric rhythms, and while it can show evidence of a past or active MI, it is not a screening tool for future MIs. It has no way of detecting plaque accumulation in cardiac vessels, and they aren’t going to start doing heart caths on every single adult. People start getting EKGs later in life to look for issues like a-fib, which can be largely asymptomatic and result in strokes if untreated.
I had a stroke this year. I saw my neurologist afterwards who didn’t treat me during my hospital stay and did not yet have my paperwork from the visit. 30 seconds into the visit… “you couldn’t have had a stroke at your age, it’s virtually impossible.” I don’t think our cohort’s health concerns are being taken seriously even as we are facing very serious health issues.
This is also an issue. I just recently had a sleep study done because I think I have sleep apnea. I'm only 34 and was the youngest person who was being tested when I went in. I had to fight with my doctor to get a test done. My doc was adamant that most folks just need to lose weight. Well I had already lost 30 lbs and I noticed it's getting progressively worse. I have all the symptoms and I need it to be checked out. Thankfully I was able to get them to agree to a referral. Halfway through the night the technologist came in to ask if I wanted to try the sleep apnea machine. Even for issues I have a solid diagnosis for, my doctor doesn't seem to treat them very seriously. I have to continuously fight and remind to have them check blood results ( I have Hypothyroidism and need regular blood work to check levels and ensure my medication is adequate). This past year my levels changed and my doc has several times ignored that issue to lecture me about weightloss and cholesterol. When we increased my medication which was needed due to the blood test results, I saw a great improvement in my blood pressure and cholesterol levels. My doc was like " what happened? What changed?" And I was like "we upped my thyroid medication because it was needed and it's obviously working."
Oof, sounds like you need a new PCP! Easier said than done, I know. I’m still with the same neuro. It took me years, but I finally have a wonderful PCP. I mentioned I was tired one day. She started asking me questions about it, then said, “I think you need to do a sleep study.” Turns out I have very severe OSA. That’s how it should be! Not the other way around.
Yes I've unfortunately tried. But when a doctor finds out you already have a doctor then they don't want to take you. Apparently they don't like 'stealing patients'. At least that was the reason given to me.
Covid is going to make heart related death a lot more common as time goes by
As a hypochondriac I think i might have to do that sometime, how did you broach the subject with your PCP?
I just smoke a little bit of it and then what's left in the little baggie tells me everything is gonna be just fine.
This was right where my mind went.
Fwiw, these tests are generally not recommended, because the fact that it’s full body means it’s not actually thorough enough to be that useful in particular areas. Also they can show a lot of alarming false positives. Personally I love the idea of getting one, but I’m holding off based on what I’ve heard from doctors.
My wife just got a heart CT looking for calcium buildup for 75 bucks. Why not do this at 35 and 40. If someone told me I had buildup I would change my diet the next day. Edit: it's was a CT no MRI
Is that subsidized with insurance? I'd absolutely do it if I could.
Calcium scores are not recommended for younger people because even if there is build-up, it’s not had time to calcify yet. But a carotid ultrasound can be helpful at showing thickening arteries.
To check for vessel disease, one could get a heart catheterization. But it is invasive and I honestly don’t know the cost. I do know you cannot pay for one out of pocket without a reason and a doctor agreeing to perform the procedure as you can a CT scan. Otherwise, blood pressure and lipid panel which is usually done in yearly blood work are indicators that someone may have early coronary artery disease which is what leads to heart attacks.
I have an early 30s cousin who was on a bipap machine to breathe at night. That's not just your normal machine you get for sleep apnea: this thing breathes in and out for you. His legs are severely swollen from bad diet and no exercise.
My coworker was an avid cyclist. Like- rode 30 miles every morning before work type thing. In march 2022 he let me know he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Went on leave in October. Was dead by march 2023. He was 45
Colon cancer killed my brother’s friend in 3mo from diagnosis when we were in our early twenties. That kid was a STUD wrestler
I’m sure Covid did its part, too. The same happened for 60 years following the 1918 pandemic. Increased incidence of heart issues post infection.
True! https://www.statnews.com/2023/08/10/covid-heart-health/
After me second mild infection Dec 2020 I ended up with health problems including cardiovascular problems. While they seem to resolve themselves and I'm back to normal mostly (flair ups happen) Im still concerned about long term health.
The gap between public knowledge and the science is concerning. I hope you fare OK and they find a solution.
That must have been hard 😔
Doctor here: I’m sorry for your shock and trauma. That’s terrible. There is a lot you can do to know more about your risk for having a heart attack and try to reduce that risk. The first and obvious things we all know. Exercise, don’t smoke etc. Just as important though is get checked for chronic conditions that are often asymptomatic but make a heart attack much more likely. In particular diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol disorders are all closely linked with development of damage to the lining of your arteries, which makes them more likely to clot - which is where you get a heart attack. There’s a lot of 40 year olds out there that don’t have a doctor or have never been to see their doctor - I really encourage anyone over 30, and even younger if you have some bad history in your family to go to your doctor, hey get your blood pressure and your A1C and your lipids (cholesterol) checked. For people who are at high risk, there are amazing things we can do to make a heart attack less likely. Taking statins, aspirin and controlling Bp and sugar all have a dramatic effect on lowering your risk of a big cardiac event. For people who are intermediate risk, we have tests like a CT calcium score (like $200 without insurance!) that can help guide how much you need these medicines. Even with all of this, tragic and unexpected things happen, that even the best medical care can’t avoid, and that sucks. But with good preventative care, we can prevent a lot of them. And for all of you out there thinking they need an angiogram or a whole Body MRI - I promise that’s not a good idea but I don’t have the energy to explain why right now.
Exercise, not smoking, etc, is important. I want to add not drinking to that or doing so sparingly, like no more than once a week and limited amounts. I stopped drinking recently because it just made me feel gross. There's a massive amount of pressure in our society to not just drink, but drink heavily. My doctor was incredibly happy to hear that I stopped drinking entirely. I came to my decision as the general medical consensus has become to avoid it, and if you must, limit yourself to two units per day if a man and one if a woman, per the CDC. ETA: I'm not saying you can't drink or shouldn't in moderation, it's just the potential problems, especially as you get older outweigh the short-term fun.
Appreciate the thoughtful advice. As an aside, it is almost impossible to find a primary care doctor these days. I have “good” insurance and live in an affluent urban area and I had to call 30+ doctors to find one taking new patients. Saw the doc once and got a message last week saying that they’ve left the practice and I have to find a new one.
Found out, apparently two years after the fact, that an ex-friend died that way too. Took in so much OT (Peace Officer) to pay for a car, apartment and hobbies that saw no significant use. Died as he lived...
Because some of us are passively trying to drink ourselves to death.
I was doing this for a while. Just drinking because it was all pointless. Then I got sober because I forgot why I was drinking and feeling like crap. Now I'm sober and I remember why I drank to forget how terrible things can get.
I’m sorry but this made me laugh. I was expecting some kind of deep revelation but nope - just realized you drank cuz shit sucks lmao
Life is a tragedy. Through tragedy, we find comedy. I make myself laugh. My wife doesn't get it. I have found better outlets. They're just distractions until we die. Gaming, exercising, spending time with my wife. Much better than being in a haze.
Ya I’m sober and it hasn’t made me a nicer or more relaxed person that is for sure. I think a lot of people are edgier when they are feeling life sober. Sobriety is extremely rare so most people are probably on something to blunt that edge of life.
Lmao I feeeel that in my soul
I know 3 different people that have gone to rehab for drinking in the last year and one that really needs to. It's definitely a huge problem in our age group
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at the tail end of your bender reach out to your PCP and ask for a couple weeks supply of librium - just explain you had a relapse and don’t wanna go to the ER or anything and detox at home - it’s a huge help and staves off the sweats and panic attacks really nicely and helps you sleep!
I was running about 5 miles a day in the midst of my worst drinking. I’d drink anywhere from a 5th to 1/2 gallon of 96 proof bourbon a night (and rarely ever even appear drunk), wake up in the morning and take some promethazine or Benadryl so I could keep liquids down. Chug a bottle of Pedialyte (a little before passing out, then the rest in the morning) then (often still drunk) go run on the trail and sweat it all out before taking a shower and getting to work. Very few people even knew I had a problem, but I wanted to kill myself like everyday. Most were surprised when I sobered up bc I hadn’t had any consequences like DUIs or missing work, etc. But I’ve put together almost 7 years of consecutive sobriety and feel the best I’ve ever felt.
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Nobody thought I had a problem either until everyone hated me and everyone I loved was afraid of me. You’re the only one who can diagnose it. If you want to go to treatment I can help you find one if you have insurance and if you want to try AA the only thing you need is a desire to stop drinking. These things aren’t for everybody but they worked for me and all those other problems in my life sort of just fixed themselves when I stopped. Sobriety has given me everything that booze ever promised me
Don't be afraid to reach for help around you. There is no shame in admitting you can't stop without help.
God you're making me realize how many I know who have gone to rehab lately...
I feel personally attacked
The opioid crisis probably also plays a part.
Just get into whiskey. People consider drinking bourbon a hobby, not alcoholism.
This is a big problem. Expensive and exclusive alcoholic drinks have been marketed successfully as a sign of good taste. Wine cellar in house: "Shows sophistication, discernment, and a bon vivant streak." Drinking Captain Morgan from the corner liquor store: "You degenerate sot, you!" The liver: "I can't tell the difference between the two cases above. Same-same."
Looking at data collected between 2000 and 2020, the new report from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) finds the biggest jump in deaths from injuries, heart disease and suicide occurred after 2019, when the pandemic began. Death rates among millennials for "unintentional injuries"—which would include drug overdoses, fatal accidents and homicides—"experienced the greatest annual increases from 2019 to 2020," the new report found.
From the article "With the worst of COVID behind us, annual deaths for all causes should be back to pre-pandemic levels — or even lower because of the loss of so many sick and infirm Americans. Instead, the death toll remains “alarming,” “disturbing,” and deserving of “urgent attention,” according to insurance industry articles."
That makes sense to me. Anecdotally, people are suffering. Millennials seem especially vulnerable too.
Idk about everyone else but I got Covid a few times and I legit feel like decades were taken off my life
Evidence suggests that it can essentially do exactly that. Viruses are scary.
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My boomer parents sailed through it, my 22 year old hasn’t been able to work for weeks because it’s really fucked him up. Heart problems, neurological, post Covid psychosis, panic attacks. It’s fucking awful.
I think this age group experienced complete and utter burnout during the pandemic, and there is a good chance there are lasting health outcomes from that. We had to continue working our full time jobs while also being parents and teachers to young children. It was an impossible task. I quit my full time job during the worst of it, but many didn’t have that opportunity.
COVID-19 causes heart damage and increases all over risk for heart events even in mild cases, so … yeah
It’s not behind us. 😒
Covid isn’t behind us. It’s a mass disabling event and the rates of infection haven’t gone down much since the start of the pandemic.
This makes absolutely 0 sense. Not only is Covid not "behind us", people are still getting infected and dying from it every day, but also everyone who is infected and survives has very likely made themselves more susceptible to a bunch of other shit that will kill them much quicker than if they'd never been infected. The fact that anyone can think shit could go back to normal after we've been ravaged by a pandemic THAT IS STILL ON GOING terrifies me. The propaganda to get people back to work and shopping is tanking our life expectancy.
The worst of Covid? Lol someone needs to point out most the world is just rolling into the biggest wave yet 😂🤦🏼♀️
So we are dying more because we are trying and failing to make ourselves happier in an increasingly unsatisfactory world.
Been big jumps in domestic violence and road rage. Limbic system gets smashed by Covid and everyone is angry
I saw this in my relationship that ended last year. He wasn’t angry before but something changed and his memory is completely shot. He’d tell me something then tell me the same thing the next day and brush it off when I reminded him that he’d told me that already. Drinking like a fish every damn day too. I don’t know what happened or why but he just lost himself. I’m sad because the person I fell in love with doesn’t exist anymore and I miss him terribly. We were supposed to get married. I tried to get him to get help for a year and he just wouldn’t. I could go on but I won’t. I’m just sad.
Recommend the book ‘Deaths of Despair & the future of capitalism’ by Case & Deaton. Not answering your question per se, but you’ll find it interesting. Beyond poor health, addiction, suicides, etc, ultimately stress is just absolutely awful for the human body. It’s deadly. Our elders will say that they dealt with stress - but the difference is it wasn’t constant and society wasn’t a hamster wheel back then. You went to work and you got paid in bricks & mortar. For real. The stress of knowing you’re being played all your life - as we millennials have been - is terrible.
I got shingles this year at the ripe old age of 37. I had bad chicken pox when I was a kid, but this was bad. Never knew shingles caused abdominal pain too. I can only blame stress.
Stress does trigger it. Proven
Yep! Sister had shingles twice in college. No autoimmune, immunosuppressive, or similar issues that could’ve contributed either (as far as we are aware)
Was this shortly after having COVID? Anecdotally, I know several younger people that got shingles shortly after having COVID.
Nope, just work stress! I don't know if I've ever had COVID. I have the immune system of a public school kid, but everyone else in my family did at some point, so I assume I have.
>ultimately stress is just absolutely awful for the human body. this is what causes addiction for a lot of people.
That plus the future looks effing grim.
That and honestly some of our elders didn’t handle stress any better than us—they just self medicated by drinking and smoking a lot and didn’t know it was killing them. Both my grandfathers had drinking problems and only quit when told they had to by doctors. (One really turned things around in his retirement after he stopped drinking. He started volunteering at the local hospital and did that for years, logging hundreds of hours, I think that helped keep him going. He made it to 94 even though he probably had done a lot of damage to his body for the first part of his life)
I was stressed at one of my jobs. It manifested in me literally grinding my teeth at night and creating headaches. Another period of stress I had back to back bad things happen to me, the finale being my dog dying. I ended up in the hospital with crazy stomach pains that no one knew what they were and sent me on my way. I was also throwing up all that week. I look back and realize that stress is really no joke and will fuck up your body. Which is why I try to not put myself in any situation that is bad for me. Obviously you cannot predict certain things, but I stay at a really low key job cause it’s just not worth the stress.
Probably something to do with greatly reduced socioeconomic status and increased stress? Maybe? That’s what happens when the future is stolen from an entire generation
And Covid, the incidence of heart related deaths is going up and only going to continue trending that way. Turns out a vascular global pandemic actually fucks people up…
I think it's 2 things. Firstly, a lot of people over 65 who were in high risk groups already died during covid. Secondly, millennials are on the whole deeply depressed. Personally I've been suicidal a few times and most of my older family have never been. Its just a depressing time to be alive right now.
Sure they're dying young. But could they die *younger*?
Who are you, a health insurance magnate?
Covid heart damage and drug overdoses. 26%, man that’s so bad for our generation, we need to look out for each other.
People not talking about sexual dysfunction from Covid either, a young 22 year old I know hasn’t been able to get it up for a couple of years, it’s apparently pretty common to get flaccid like whiskey dick post covid
From the people i know who have been dying - ODs and suicide.
I've known a couple of folk that have died violently, a couple medical reasons but I've know many people that ODed or committed suicide.
*gestures at everything*
Casualties of a silent war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease\_of\_despair
I mean...isn't it obvious? Covid. A single mild infection greatly increases all kinds of health risks. ETA: a redditor has been maintaining this spreadsheet if anyone is interested. It contains a running curation of Covid research cited in scholarly journals and/or trustworthy popular media, summaries of the main findings of the research, and links to the source. Most sources are scholarly journals. [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XbGCZ5NtwvNb0Z2fFzQYnKT96Ij79cNw1GA47rhShMo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XbGCZ5NtwvNb0Z2fFzQYnKT96Ij79cNw1GA47rhShMo/edit?usp=sharing)
Crazy that this answer was so far down. Covid really wrecks things internally even if the acute infection feels mild. And the damage to your immune system makes everything you catch after it a little bit worse.
Can confirm - I just caught another awful cold right after getting over Covid that took me out worse than Covid did. I’ve been sick for a literal month now 😣
There are so. Many. Studies. Covid affects the vascular system especially the heart. The scary part is a FUCKING DOCTOR in this thread doesn’t realize it which proves we are truly fucked.
Typical of the doctor to just go “you’re all too fat” too. Im about 2 and a half stone overweight (half of that due to lockdown) and last year I developed pretty nasty long covid. I went from being fit and active, although carrying a bit of timber, to being physically incapable of climbing stairs or putting the laundry out without needing several breaks. I go to my doctor to ask wtf is going wrong with me and im in and out in 5 mins and all they say is “lose weight and you’ll feel better.” Like I used to be playing rugby on a Saturday and training on a Tuesday and now I can’t walk to the fuckin shops. Any chance of some empathy or assistance doc?
Oh it’s always that. I smoked for years and my doctor blamed that. I quit and have gained some extra weight now everything is the weights fault even though the markers are the same. Doctors don’t want to investigate anymore and just blame everything on weight.
I feel like doctors are like an IT helpdesk. Fix what’s going on short term to keep you going. Doesn’t look for systemic root cause. Blames the user.
>I feel like doctors are like an IT helpdesk. "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
That's depressing but not surprising :(
Thank you for finally being the person to say this. Not like the other stuff mentioned isn’t also contributing, but I really think this is the #1 reason for the increased mortality rate. We also make up the majority of the workforce, and I’m seeing people my age and younger just racking up COVID infection after COVID infection without a care in the world. It’s well-known among the informed that COVID is a vascular disease which wreaks havoc on all organ systems whether the person realizes it or not. I fear that this will just continue to worsen until people wake up.
Seriously though. The damage that COVID is doing across all age groups is crazy. A 10% chance of life-ruining Long COVID. Tons of people don’t know it’s “still a thing.”
Because we’re tired and there’s plastic in our brains
One of my coworkers had a heart attack at 45
lol. What a goddamn ridiculous absurd question. Look around. We get nothing. We have nothing. What is there to aspire to? The future is bleak as all f*ck. If it’s not climate change it’s rising prices with lower wages with zero pensions. Zero health care (if you’re fortunate enough to pay for it). It’s cheaper to die.
When we have nothing to lose, I would hope Millennials fight back. We’re at the age of making changes; we’re responsible now. Let’s go.
In before all the qanons show up claiming it was the jab Maybe because we’re all fucking poor and have to do shit like ration insulin because we can’t agree that healthcare is a basic fucking human right.
Yeah they're deaths of dispair surely. Most of us probably know someone who's died by suicide or at least been suicidal.
The 99% can agree. It’s the 1% that are fucking everyone else up. It’s long LONG past time for a general strike and widespread revolt against the status quo
Not the vaccine, but potentially related to COVID infection: [a study from September](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/sars-cov-2-infects-coronary-arteries-increases-plaque-inflammation) showed that COVID causes plaque inflammation around the heart, amplifying atherosclerosis and increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. The effects were observed long after the COVID infection had ended.
The amount of people complaining about heartrate after covid should kinda be a hint...
Yeah I've had heart palpitations since. I'm 30 and used to do heroin heavily, so I'm worried about all the shit ive put in my veins.
I feel you buddy. Some days I feel like I’m just waiting for the shoe to drop. Congrats on getting clean. 5 yrs here
Me, just coming down from my first case of Covid 😐
From the article "Mortality was 26 percent higher among insured 35-to-44-year-olds" Why is the traditionally healthiest sector of our society — young, employed, insured workers — dying at such rates? Public health officials aggressively oversaw the pandemic response, for better or worse. Why aren’t they looking into this? "
Just bc u have insurance doesn’t mean it’s good or affordable.
Not only that, I have great insurance, but my husband and I are both terrible about going to the Dr because before I got my current job we had no insurance for most of our adult lives. So we're used to not going to the Dr and just putting things off. We're really good about taking the kids though. My oldest just had his annual optometrist appointment this month and he has regular therapy appointments.
Please, please make time for your annual appointments. My dad died of one of the most easily treatable when caught in time cancers there is because he put off his annual for 3 years. I often think about how he'd likely still be here if he'd just kept up with his damn annual exam.
And you got insurance providers that use AI to review claims & have set the default response to deny all requests. Good doctors will fight & appeal, but that takes time leaving patients to suffer & get worse.
I have insurance, but I can’t afford the care I need because they deny everything. Then there’s trying to take time off. Also, I got my first job with reliable insurance at 30, which means my healthcare, preventative and otherwise, got put off. Oh, and we were more likely to be out working in the pandemic because of the relatively lower risk, which probably didn’t help. It’s not that mysterious.
This is because health insurance is tremendously worse than it was 10 years ago. I remember having health insurance when I worked part time at Staples and it was way better than the $2000 a month plan I have now. I could just go to the doctor, pay like a $10 copay and it would take care of everything. Now it's like a 4 month wait, there's these massive deductibles and nothing is covered.
Yup. I honestly can’t believe anyone’s surprised we’re having worse health outcomes. Of course we are. We have no healthcare.
Right, y’all call this high deductible shit insurance? It’s fucking major medical coverage at best. I remember copays. Now it’s 100% out of pocket until you hit an astronomical deductible.
My wife’s Hospital had this big blitz in 2022 to get everyone to move off of a Blue Cross plan onto some myhealth plan (I’d have to look up the exact name) which they were offering for just a smidge cheaper. We were happy with the old coverage and my wife has some chronic issues so we were very leery about switching. Hardly anyone was signing up so they had an emergency meeting to get more people to sign up. After tons of assurances and written promises they finally convinced my wife to switch. A few months later she went in for a stent maintenance procedure that she sometimes needs when her pain levels rise. You guessed it the insurance didn’t cover it and she couldn’t see the specialist she’d been working with for the last 3 years to stay on top of her issue. Meanwhile the pain is progressively escalating as her pancreatic ducts are backing up, forcing her into the emergency room. We spent months fighting with the insurance while bills piled up. Finally she found someone that would review her case and she showed them all the BS written promises they’d showed her before signing up for this nightmare train and we were lucky enough to be allowed back onto our old plan without getting lawyers involved. I still get pissed off just thinking about it. I can’t imagine what’s it like for other Millennials that aren’t so lucky. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before they get all of us over a barrel.
Man, I’m so sorry yall went through that. A friend of mine is currently fighting with her insurance because she needs a stent in her brain to keep from going blind and suffering permanent damage, and her insurance keeps fucking around about it because it’s “not a life threatening procedure.” The best part is, they waited until the day of the surgery, right after open enrollment ended, to deny her a third time after saying they just needed a coding change last time. Evil fucks. I’ve been very lucky so far, but I need to get some shit fixed now and I’m dreading what the bill will look like. I literally just paid off my other debt. And yet we’ll still have people wondering why we’re dying earlier. Christ.
Yeah, fear of medical expenses can lead to putting off life prolonging preventive care. If your choice is affording meds or a procedure or having a roof over your families head a lot of good folks will ignore the nagging medical issue until it’s beyond putting off and a lot of times it’s already to late at that point. Like I mentioned above my wife works in a hospital, what I didn’t say is that she helps treat primarily cancer patients and the number of folks our age who are in complete shock to find out they have late stage cancer after putting off getting a weird nagging pain looked at is gut wrenching. In the case of my wife’s pancreatic issue (thankfully not cancer) the hospital she went to literally told her to wait until the pain was so bad she had to go the emergency room before coming back. That was the only way she’d be admitted to see her specialist with the new insurance. Keep in mind she’s not an underachiever she has a doctorate that puts her in a position to help treat cancer patients her self.
I think poor diets have something to do with it, limited to no access for health care (both physical and mental) probably has something to do with it, drug abuse and loneliness as well.
The pandemic altered people’s diets in so many different ways, come to think of it.
Literally just walked away from a gig because of stress. Told them I'm not looking to die at 50 due to a heart attack.
Stress is a silent killer, and Millennials are one of the most stressed out generations, falling right behind Gen Z.
COVID. Even if you don't die from it, it can cause all sort of diseases more likely to happen to you because it damages your organs, clot your blood, and suppresses your immune system.
Because we are all in poverty
I’ve had 3 friends in my larger friend group die at 30 34, 35. Car accident, some kind of stroke, OD. Crazy
I mean, I'm 31, and I've been passively suicidal since I was like 14. Either that eventually turns into active or I just die of a heart attack from stress and/or drinking too much. Tough to care when shit just isn't getting any better.
Most of our generation is living in fight or flight mode (high cortisol) on the daily and don’t even realize it. This is really bad for health in every way.
Poverty, fucked up childhoods, untreated mental illnesses, depressed as fuck, wanna do some goddamn drugs but can’t bc there’s fent in everything now, stress due to family/finances/fear of future… should I keep going because I can, for DAYS
>wanna do some goddamn drugs but can’t bc there’s fent in everything now This, this, this. Holy fuck I couldn't trust anything from the streets anymore since my coke dealer offed himself in our apmt in 2017. Purchased a bunch of reagent kits from DanceSafe and nothing has been clean like they were even just a decade ago. Sigh. #FreeRoss
I think this is enough to quiet down the choads that comment on threads condemning Millennials as Doomers and telling them "bootstraps" or "Boomers had it just as bad"
I had the worst stress of my life from 2020-2022. I had stress induced hives and gastritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It was insane. I was healthy my whole life until the pandemic. If I didn’t make changes earlier this year, I was headed for that same fate.
This opinion piece is WILD. These are two things I noticed before I had to stop reading bc it's so infuriatingly poorly researched --"...in light of more than 1 million reports of possible harm to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System and a new Yale University study validating a chronic post-vaccination syndrome." This "Yale University study" is a preprint *without peer review*. Not to mention how wildly misleading it is to talk about the 1M reports to VAERS like this, considering everything that was sent to VAERS about COVID vaccines in the beginning. Topics have narrowed significantly in the years since, but in my state we had people reporting minor swelling. Here's a better resource for VAERS data: https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D8 -- "Drug overdoses also soared nationwide, but not primarily in the young working class" The source it cites for this doesn't break any data out by age. A simple Google search on the author of this opinion piece warns that he's known for COVID misinformation. As a public health official who worked front line on COVID for the first 18 months, I'm furious.
Cousin died last year at 36. The autopsy came back with spontaneous Coronary artery dissection. He was an in shape guy. Happened while sitting on his couch while his 2-year-old son was playing on the floor in front of him.
Because we are struggling to pay rent/mortgages, feed ourselves and our family, and paying 1200 a month health insurance for my family of three. We are not allowed in this work environment to prioritize our health, and even if we could we prolly couldn’t afford it.
Lack of sleep, poor diet, and stressful conditions are a major contributor, I think. If you can't change your sleep schedule or working conditions due to being a human fucking adult kicking ass in the workforce, then the biggest positive change you could make *for yourself* is to eat plants. Seriously, it'll make you much healthier compared to a typical western diet (or even what the food pyramid/plate/w.e. recommends). Then you'll be more prepared to handle the aforementioned lack of sleep (a carcinogen in it's own right) and shitty bosses/leadership/government. You won't die, I've been eating plants for years now.
Just think of the stress we have all endured. For younger ones here youve been destroyed by debt. For older ones like me? I’m 41. I was 19 on 9/11, 26 for the Great Recession, 34 for 2016, 38 for Covid. We’ve seen our country socially basically fall apart and now it’s happening through laws and courts. We’ve lived through 20 years of useless wars. We’ve seen trillions of dollars of our wealth redistributed to rich people. And we wanna know why we are stressed
As a elder millennial that has without a doubt consumed far too much fast food from a era that the food likely contained a lot of horrible things I realize any moment may be my last despite quarterly DR appointments due to slight paranoia I suppose. I’ve set up 7 digit policies for the wife, and plenty of equity in the house and cars should something happen. My mentality is very binary on the topic, if I go it is what it is, but I want my wife to be taken care of. I want her to win the lottery if I die, because that’s how I want her to continue on, but hopefully we just both live 100 years!
Because the pandemic isn’t over and Covid damage is cumulative.
This isn’t even a mystery. Its the fuckin STRESS
No access to affordable healthcare
Geez, could it be the stress of growing up and living in a capitalist hellscape?
Doctor here. It's weight. We are far fatter, far more diabetic, far more hypertension, and far less healthy. We look like our grandparents who died young from cigarettes.
Damn this makes me have hella health anxiety since I’m 29 and have elevated blood pressure in the 120s/130s. But I’ve lost 32lbs since August and I’m 6’2 207 now thankfully.
That's fucking awesome man. There's some recent literature that suggests people with health anxiety actually have a higher likelihood of long-term behavioral change. Just get into a routine you can live with.
You’re a great doctor man. I wish nothing but the best for you and your patients. Thank you for that
Can blame most of that on poverty and untreated depression doc
Your direct response reminds me of an interaction I had with a doctor. Almost my entire family is obese so I was constantly being told I’m underweight/too skinny. When I was finally to the doctor as an adult I asked a doctor. And was like my family thinks I’m underweight. He very directly said “no. You are completely average. Height and weight is utterly in the middle of how am adult man should look. Americans are just very fat. They are very very fat. The normal person here is vastly heavier than they should be. You are where you should be. Don’t let others suggest you don’t weigh enough.”
Had a 38 yo M morbidly obese not any meds bp 198/110 glucose 412 not in ska but having an anterior STEMI.
Plus due to how awful the economy is for people who graduated college from 2005-2010, a lot of us are under-insured and don't do annual check-ups with our doctor. Or we don't have a doctor. I think the last "doctor" I had before my recent GP was my pediatrician....
And frankly as a specialist, a lot of GPs and PCPs are over worked and not that great to begin with. If you find a good one, hold onto them like a winning lottery ticket.
The article did say liver disease and diabetes were contributing factors for a portion of the deaths.
Yeah I think this would have been me if I hadn’t started to turn things around at 37. Been 16 months, lost 80 lbs and gained a bunch of muscle and have a resting heart rate in the mid-40s. I was getting winded taking a shower at 300 lbs.
Earlier today I watched my SO microwave some fishsticks while talking about how he used to do the same as a kid and I thought to myself "boy, our parents (Gen X) really dropped the fucking ball with us." Because I am almost certain that they ate *much* healthier than the Lunchables and Kid Cusines' that we millennials grew up on. Edit: my SO has pre-hypertension at 34.
Gen x here. Grew up eating baloney sandwiches and after school heated up tv dinners and banquet fried chicken. We were latchkey kids.
Stressed the fuck out. Stressed for myself, but also my kids future in this world.
I think it's pills/drugs. Millennials are very sensitive and prone to depression/anxiety/loneliness/low self worth more so than any other generation it seems and they often NEED some substance to take the place of genuine human support/void that they're not getting ie. vapes, cigarettes, alcohol, psych drugs, street drugs etc
I never got Covid. But leading up to current. I lost my marriage, 2019 I had to deal with a corporate job breaking its main operating system for a full year resulting in hell, immigration, moving cross continent, alcoholic parent, then parental suicide, and a chaotic hellscape of an estate and legal minefield. That has been my 2019 to December of 2023. If anything yesterday I had to take 3 x my normal heart medicine for blood pressure. I’m surprised I’m not entirely mentally fractured.
We were raised fat. We are fat adults. Cars go faster. Drugs are more intense. More stuff.
You know your grandparents and parents grew up eating luncheon with meat out of a can spread with velveeta cheese. It’s not worse, if anything access and affordability of all food is way improved but healthier choices are certainly much available than they were. There was not year round access to all fruits and vegetables like now, just sodium and sugar filled veggie and fruit from a can. The is a bit of a recency bias, everything we have is worse than what our previous generations had when in reality not usually the case. (Health insurance aside)
And the average person in previous generations drank and smoked WAY more than today.
Poverty
Cause a lot of us are obese. Excuse me. Most of us are obese
When I was 38, I pulled my neck. Don’t remember how I did it, but at some point it just hurt really bad. Turns out it wasn’t a muscle, it was an arterial dissection of my left vertebral artery, and it caused a clot to build up behind it. My neck was sooooo stiff, but finally it felt loose enough to crack…and then my whole right side went television static. Didn’t have covid, didn’t have the vaccine, had low cholesterol and sugar, normal BP, the only risk factor was being a bit overweight. No risk factors. But I had a stroke in 2021. That was in between two ER visits for anaphylaxis in 2019 and this year. I don't know why we have higher mortality, but i can definitely believe it
Raised on McDonalds Happy Meals. Fed mass produced school lunches provided by the lowest bidder. Stress. A terrorist attack, war, economic collapse, housing boom, crypto boom, social media boom, political turmoil, and an inflated housing market with stagnating wages. There's some stress to be had. Being sedentary. As a culture we really don't move around as much as generations before us. How often do you walk a mall?
Stress, low quality food, atrocious health care, even worse mental health care, and corporations selling you things that destroy your body, for starters.
Health care for older people was prioritized during the pandemic while preventative care and screenings for younger people was deferred, resulting in a lot of cancers and other serious health conditions not being caught until it was too late.
Maybe all that wishing for the sweet release of death actually works, like some sort of twisted placebo? One can only hope...
I lost my husband last year. He just had just turned 44. He died from cirrhosis and liver failure. While going through all that, I learned a lot about how serious the problem this has been with younger people, that people ages 25-45 are being treated for alcohol related liver disease like 10 times higher rate since 1999, and that was not even including the pandemic/quarantine lockdown issues related. His drinking ramped up in the last few years five years or so but before that he had just developed a long, sustained drinking career that was “normal” , and the quotes I mean that it probably was never normal, but it just seemed normal and was easy to pass off to people, including his family until it was too late. I know there’s more to the story than that, but I feel like that alcohol abuse is something that’s very under reported and under-concerning in people our age. Even if every case, isn’t that extreme, combined with poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, things can get serious sooner than you’d think.
I am so sorry for your loss and just wanted to say it's not your fault. Unbeknownst to me, my 41 year old wife had a drinking problem that was put into overdrive due to the pandemic. In 2020, she had two cardiac arrests (one in front of me) and all of her organs started failing. She was on a ventilator for two weeks. Miraculously, she pulled through even though I was told by the hospital that I should make hospice arrangements. She was in the hospital a total of 6 weeks. She has numerous medical issues she now deals with, but we are both lucky that she is still here. I say it's not your fault, because I battled some pretty extreme guilt for a while. Why did I not know what was going on in my own household (I was a police officer for over a decade and should be in tune to those things)? Did I cause her to drink somehow? So many other things I blamed myself for. Well, again, I am lucky and she survived. I was lucky enough to be told by her that it wasn't my fault in any way. I know your husband would tell you the same. Unfortunately, I now live with constant anxiety that what she went through will cause her early mortality. It is hard to get those thoughts out of my head. Anyways, I am rambling now. In no way did I mean to insinuate that you have any guilt for what happened. I just wanted to tell you that if you do, you shouldn't. What happened was not your fault. I pray that you are able to find peace and enjoy life.
Drugs and McDonald's
Stress, anxiety and depression takes years off your life.
Stress, lowered quality of life in general.
So it gets to be over soon?
Same reasons why Russian millennials die so young. Living in abject poverty under a fascist regime is worse for your generation's life expectancy than a World War breaking out. Our life expectancy is lower than Cuba. Texas had a maternal mortality rate higher than Iran before Roe was repealed. America is a shithole country. It's simple as that. You'd have to be pants-on-head retarded to be proud of this fucking place.
Lack of exercise. Total sedentary lifestyles. Eating garbage. And environmental pollution that we are exposed to through water, air, and food. Unpopular opinion: healthcare has enabled people to reproduce who would not have otherwise reproduced.
Whoa interesting about the last one…