I was recently on Facebook when a friend of a friend posted the above chart. He paired it with a query: Is this due to something we ate? Or something injected in us. Presumably he was referring to food additives and vaccinations. Many of the comments that followed opined that it’s probably a combination of both factors. I only read one comment suggesting it may be result of greater awareness leading to higher diagnosis rates.
Very few major chances in disease burden are the result of only one or two variables. For one thing, the population in 1990 was about 250 million people, compared to 330 million in 2020. That is a 32% increase over 30 years. One would expect disease cases to go up by one-third due to population growth. Then there is the 70 million Baby Boomer age cohort. In 1990, the youngest Baby Boomers were 26, while the oldest were 44. Add 30 years to those ages and you get into the years when chronic disease begins to manifest. Many chronic diseases are rising merely because Baby Boomers are aging. I began to do some checking, and I quickly found more answers about why rates in the chart had risen so much. Basically, the list of disease burden is bogus, it’s totally wrong, made up, fabricated.
For example, ADHD did not increase 8.2 times since 1990. It did, however, rise from 6.1% of children to 10.2 between 1997 and 2016. That represents a 67% increase in 20 years. In 2022 it was 11.4%. The increase in diagnosis is largely due to greater awareness.
The probability of developing Alzheimer’s disease (annual incidence) is about the same as it was 30 years ago, although dementia risk actually decreased over the past several decades. What has happened is the population is getting older, and Alzheimer’s is a function of age. The number of Alzheimer’s cases are expected to rise rapidly over the next few decades as the population of people over 65 skyrockets. About 7.7% of people aged 65 to 84 will develop Alzheimer’s, while about one-third of people over 85 will.
Neither has autism increased 21-fold since 1990. However, couples are waiting longer before having children. The median age of the father at last birth is about 35 years of age. Men over 40 now account for nearly 10% of U.S. births. The prevalence of autism rises with father’s age. Some other reasons according to Scientific American:
The rise in the rate has sparked fears of an autism ‘epidemic.’ But experts say the bulk of the increase stems from a growing awareness of autism and changes to the condition’s diagnostic criteria.
Bipolar disorder in youth has skyrocketed, but I find no definitive evidence it’s risen 108-fold since 1990. Diagnosis went up about 40 times between 1994 and 2003. Covid and social media didn’t help. There are a variety of opinions about what caused the rise but it’s not something we ate or a bad vaccine.
Autoimmune disorders are on the rise, but probably not 1600% in 30 years. Allergies have increased as humans have moved indoors and stopped sleeping next to farm animals.
…including alterations in diet and upsurges in obesity, sleep deprivation, stress, air pollution, exposure to toxic chemicals, and infections. We do not know yet if these factors cause autoimmunity, but often, where you find autoimmune diseases, you find these changes as well.
What about food allergies in children? Have they risen 377%? No, according to an article in Nutrition Today (2022), food allergies in children have risen 1% to 2% per decade, or about 3% to 6% between 1990 and 2020. Trump’s FDA Commissioner appointee, Marty Makary, claimed in a recent Wall Street Journal commentary that pediatricians are to blame for the rise in peanut allergies. Around 2000 pediatricians began advising mothers to limit their children’s exposure to certain foods like peanuts until age for, which led to the increased prevalence of peanut allergies.
What about chronic health conditions, such as sleep apnea and diabetes? Rising obesity undoubtedly plays a role. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (claimed increase of 110 times) and Fibromyalgia (73-fold increase) are somewhat controversial. For the longest time medical experts were not sure the diseases existed, or if they were a combination of other diseases and conditions. As the literature develops and more is known about them, the diseases will be diagnosed more often.
Don’t believe everything you read on social media. When someone on social media posts a chart of strange medical maladies that sounds implausible and attributes it to bad food and bad vaccines, make sure the chart is accurate for forwarding it to others. The same is true for claims about great new products that have little science behind them.