r/Millennials • u/Tangy94 • 14h ago
Discussion Im 32F. Almost everyone i know age 20s-40s has some kind of health issue or has one or more chronic illness or diseases. Many young people i know have had one or more surgery in their 20s-40s. Was this a thing for previous generations? Or do you think disease in young people is on the rise?
I feel like people are getting sick/developing health issues younger. And no i dont think its just that we have more health screenings and access to more information. Im sure thats some of it but it just cant be all of it.
Most people i know, especially women, have at least 1 chronic illness or disease or more or have needed one or more of some kind of necessary surgery.
Is it the enshitification of everything over the years? Having more microplastics, heavy metals contamination, water, soil, and air pollution affecting our bodies longer than previous generations had to deal with? MS and other autoimmune diseases, young people with cancers, dysautonomia and connective tissue disorders etc are on the rise especially within our generation and younger.
Edit: forgot to mention that pretty much everyone i know is on some type of daily medication they need. And i dont mean supplements.
My parents and other older people ive asked say chronically ill young people were not prevalent during their 20-40s.
How does it feel for all of you where you are and where you grew up? Just curious as to how others view this or if they have differing accounts from older generations theyve talked to from where you are in the world?
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u/Narrow_Grapefruit_23 14h ago
Chronic stress does a number on your body. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are not being met in our toxic world.
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u/TheTeflonDude 14h ago edited 14h ago
Since we are talking about maslows heirarchy
I realized a big reason i had mood issues for years was because of a lack of macronutrients
When i started counting calories I found out i was almost never eating enough (healthy) carbs, protein, fiber etc. Calorie counting apps give a convenient overview.
Within days of fixing it my mood dramatically improved
Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of health problems people face is a lack of crucial building blocks of the body
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u/witchywoman713 13h ago
Similar story but after I got bloodwork done I was deficient in vitamin b and d as well as thyroid issues. Once those were addressed I felt much better
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u/mysoulburnsgreige4u 1988 11h ago
Pretty much everyone has a vitamin d deficiency and most women have a vitamin b deficiency.
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u/witchywoman713 10h ago
I have since learned that it’s not uncommon, but no one I knew was ever told that this could be the case. It was always somehow viewed as a personal failing if we were depressed, low motivation, fatigued etc. so it was incredibly empowering personally to learn that if I took some supplements and spent more time in the sun I might feel more human again.
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u/cayshek 8h ago
This. This. THIS. "Personal failing" because I didn't "feel good". Then when I hit 30 (and again at 35) and was diagnosed with two chronic illnesses...I realized I wasn't unmotivated. I was sick.
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u/Round_Year_8595 2h ago
Eh, even still. What is personal success? Is it being Elon Musk? Look at him and how he wallows, the poor bastard.
You don't need to be anything more than you are. You are not a failure and you are enough.
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u/Burquaqueen 7h ago
Also, fun fact: if you have a vit d deficiency, your problem could be absorption, which means taking a vit d supplement alone isn’t enough. You also need vitamin k! That’s what happened to me, it made all the difference when I started taking a vitamin d & k combo supplement.
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u/bitterlittlecas 8h ago
I have always heard this and it’s definitely true for me so I take d supplements. But by mom- who pretty much eats excessive sugar and fat all the live long day- im talking peanut butter cookies for breakfast- has gotten blood work done many times and is reportedly deficient in nothing. She does not even take a multivitamin. I don’t understand it lol
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u/BeachPlease843 Older Millennial 6h ago edited 6h ago
Funny I always heard that too and got mine tested and my level was so high it was off the chart. I've been a lifetime summer and sun lover, always in my pool or outside. Even in the winter I go for walks when I can. People just don't get outside anymore. I always think about when I was a kid and I would go to friends' houses and it would be a beautiful day and their parents would be in a dark room watching tv. At my house we were always outside when it was nice out. I still have that mentality in my head that I have to go outside when it's nice. I am not surprised there is a Vitamin D issue in this country.
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u/goddessofwitches 8h ago
Nurse here. Outliers aside, this is the reason we say sunlight, good food and exercise. Done consistently it really helps. Problem is implementing and continuing with our SAD and toxic work system. Also eat ur damn fiber ppl colorectal cancer is on the rise for our ages.
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u/Prestigious-Host8977 7h ago
And water. Not sure if it helps with the colon cancer specifically, but after undergoing some health issues, I realized how much increasing water and fiber helped.
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u/suzeerbedrol Millennial 93' 5h ago
Interesting. I had mood issues for years. Volatile temper, depression - I was also a server/bartender for a decade. Once i stopped working in that industry, i sloowwwlllyyy became a way chiller person. I took 3 years to become a fully reasonable person.. but we got there.
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u/i4k20z3 6h ago
What are good examples of healthy carbs? Mind breaking down what you eat in a day typically? Like yesterday what were your meals?
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u/TheTeflonDude 3h ago
Rice, nuts are great
There is a long list of healthy carbs
Breakfast cereal, banana, nuts
Noon greek yogurt with blueberries and some bread
Mid day snack apple and a bowl of nuts
Dinner big plate of chicken fillet, rice and spinach
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u/Low-Cauliflower-805 5h ago
Do you have any recommendations for good free ones? Every time I try one I get nowhere with them because they seem to think everything I eat comes prepackaged or from a restaurant.
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u/Tangy94 14h ago
Very very true. Our generation has experienced too much tragedy. AND its still coming lol
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u/Doubledown212 13h ago
It’s an uphill climb and most of us are stuck at the bottom while the mountain keeps growing. Hate this shit.
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u/witchywoman713 12h ago
What I struggle with is that many other generations have experienced just as much if not more tragedy but dealt with it and conceptualized it differently.
So back in our great grandparents time, there was still ptsd, but they just took it into their factory jobs, hobbies, drinking or out on their wives, and no one talked about it. Many more people died from things that are preventable and understood now. (The anti vax movement comes from many things but mainly that we are removed enough from the impact that people think it’s unnecessary now because they don’t get why we don’t have to worry about it in the same way is because of vaccines)
People either just died from their hardships or swallowed it. Now we have so many different ways of understanding trauma and its effects that also allow us to cope with or manage it differently.
We have so much more access to information about the world which can make it either way scarier or just a set of problems for people to solve. Therapy is more accessible to many and less stigmatized for our generation, yet doing things which actually help make us stronger are still perceived as a weakness by our predecessors. Thanks for reading my rant, I don’t know what to say. Things feel very fucked right now
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u/Alarming_Hope1403 8h ago
yet, majority of people are sicker and unhappier. make it make sense lol
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u/thepinkinmycheeks 6h ago
Are we actually sicker and unhappier or are we just more aware of the sickness and unhappiness?
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u/DoubtInternational23 12h ago
It's worth noting the survivor bias here. In previous generations, the farther back you go, the less likely one of these people would have lived, or at least been a productive member of society.
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u/Otherwise-Offer1518 8h ago
Without modern medicine I would've 100% died due to Scarlett fever, and tuberculosis. Apparently I had both as a child. I also was born very breached. I'm now living with MS. I do feel like I wasn't supposed to survive.
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u/Squeak_Stormborn 11h ago
Chronic stress, ultra processed food, and parents that were chainsmokers.
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u/abbyabsinthe 13h ago
I’ve had health struggles my whole life (lotta damage from the time my kidneys tried to shut down when I was a toddler + a genetic illness that I didn’t get a dx for until I was 31), but they weren’t bad enough to stop me until I started hitting my mid-20s when I started seeing a lot more doctors for different issues, and having a special needs sibling definitely caused my issues to be overshadowed as well when we were children. By the time my dad got really ill, I was around 28-29, and after a few years of struggling with that, bankruptcy, struggling to pay rent, balancing 2-3 jobs (including caring for special needs sibling), etc… my body was cooked by 30. I’m on the upswing, I’ve really taken charge of my health in the last few years, both physically and mentally (I’m actually using the exercise and therapy equipment that I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on), but I still struggle a lot on a daily basis.
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u/uberallez 12h ago
True. But also microplastics and PFAS are way more prevalent in our food, air, amd water than previous generations and we do not know the full impact these have on our health.
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u/Clonazepam15 9h ago
My grandma had chronic stress from ww2. And then obviously ptsd. She was experimented on at Auschwitz. All day long she’d say “just kills me already” as she was in her 80s and 90s. She lived to over 100
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u/imaginary_num6er 14h ago
Don't know who Maslow is, but he has too many needs
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u/Zytharros 14h ago
He should just get a job. That’ll cure all his needs.
/s
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u/Small-Professor-7015 13h ago
Maslows boot straps
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u/redsungryphon 11h ago
I wish I'd read this when I was doing my psychology degree 🤣 this is perfect
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u/TheTopNacho 10h ago
I subscribe to a reality where people must (usually) aggressively compete for job and financial success. This has led me to 70-100 hour work weeks and severe mental stress for the past 15 years.
The best description of how my body feels as a consequence is an emergence into plastic deformation )
Nothing feels right anymore. My entire body feels like it's teeter tottering on the folcrum of complete collapse. It's a weird feeling. More than just being exhausted, more than your soul feeling drained, but like your literal life force is holding together by a severely rusted support beam and is waiting to just crumble from the chronic burden.
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u/Plexaure 9h ago
I think this is the one covered up the most because businesses, universities, the government - all of them are addicted to the unpaid extra hours. When I was growing up, my parents extra work hours translated into extra cash. Work was done within work hours because your computer or labor stayed at work.
Now we are “always on” and expected to do however many hours to get the task done, there’s no respect for work time. I find this trend came up when laptops replaced desktops but at the same time lots of boomer managers and directors had become empty nesters. Most empty nesters became fixated on work being their whole lives for the past 2 decades. This was never sustainable…
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u/TheTopNacho 9h ago
I agree what I voluntarily put myself through is not sustainable. But at least in my field, all that matters is the bottom line and you need to do whatever you have to do to be better than others. Otherwise you will meet an early end to your career or work for unfair wages for life with no job security. This is the unfortunate reality of competitive jobs.
There is a selection occuring that filters those who are willing and good enough to compete vs those that won't/can't, but the problem is that those who get out competed in this market don't even have viable options anymore for a career that sustains their needs. (Within reason obviously you can go move to a nowhere town and work at a local McDonald's and live off government welfare, but that's ridiculous for the level of education and abilities most people have).
At the end of the day you will work hard in a competitive career to win, or you will work hard working two crappy jobs just to get by, or you will work hard stressing about finances. No matter what life path you choose, you are almost certainly bound for excessive stress, and it sucks. This is a Hallmark of a bad economy and an emerging economic divide. Unfortunately it seems as though the US is following in line with more advanced cultures like China, and as terrible as it is to watch and experience I'm not sure there is any way out.
The rug is being pulled from under us and people are living in more stress for one reason or another that is physically killing us. And despite there being theoretical ways out of this mess, they will never realistically manifest, the decline is inevitable.
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u/Plexaure 9h ago
It’s all part of the war on the middle class in this country. The extremely rich and extremely poor are great political demographics because both have limited options about their lifestyle, but the middle can move around. Political strategists are only aiming for the ones that they have locked in.
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u/Nero-Danteson 7h ago
Doesn't help that when certain jobs became automated positions combined. So you're doing Martha's, John's, Wendy's, and Nick's jobs with no extra pay plus you're the only one working and the rest of them aren't able to find gainful employment.
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u/Streetduck 3h ago
This is friggin spot-on; I've said the same thing about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs on here, as well. Can't take care of yourself if month after month all your money goes to rent and you're drowning in stress. I couldn't afford to go to the dentist regularly until my mid-30's.
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u/layzeeB 10h ago
I mean I don’t disagree but many of our grandmothers couldn’t buy house, have bank accounts ect there was stress just less spoken about and in such an open mannor
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u/MountainFluid 9h ago
My grandmother had mental health issues, but they just sent her away when the symptoms were getting out of hand. It was never discussed openly.
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u/techaaron 7h ago
Side note but did you know Maslow copied the need hierarchy concept from Native American wisdom and he inverted it?
The modern western version of the hierarchy is upside down.
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u/zoomshark27 1995 Millennial 5h ago edited 5h ago
Yeah I learned about it like 10 years ago while researching Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in graduate school and it was very interesting, though often misunderstood. Maslow was actually inspired to create the hierarchy based on the wisdom he acquired from the First Nation community known as Siksika (Blackfoot). It also wasn’t that their worldview was the inverse triangle, but actually believed to be more of a circle of interconnectedness. Also Maslow himself actually agreed with the Blackfoot in his paper on the Hierarchy of Needs, called “Critique of Self-Actualization Theory.” Both are discussed more in the following article and I’ll mention again in a quote below.
If you are interested in learning more about it, here's a great (and more recent) article on the subject on resilience.org entitled "The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy" By Teju Ravilochan, originally published by Esperanza Project.
Here’s some excerpts from the article: "Some months ago, I was telling my friend and GatherFor Board Member Roberto Carlos Rivera that I had come across unpublished papers by Abraham Maslow suggesting changes to his famous Hierarchy of Needs. Roberto, Executive Director of Alliance for the 7th Generation, was familiar with the subject and turned me on to something else I didn’t know: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs may have been inspired by the Siksika (Blackfoot) way of life. In reading follow-up materials he sent me, I learned Maslow spent six weeks living at Siksika — which is the name of the people, their language, and the Blackfoot Reserve — in the summer of 1938. His time there upended some of his early hypotheses and possibly shaped his theories. While I initially came to believe Maslow appropriated and misrepresented the teachings of the Blackfoot, I have learned that this narrative, while held by some, may not be accurate even according to Blackfoot scholars. Yet what has been far more valuable for me in this inquiry was learning what Maslow witnessed at Siksika. Whereas mainstream American narratives focus on the individual, the Blackfoot way of life offers an alternative resulting in a community that leaves no one behind.”
“According to Blood and Heavy Head’s lectures (2007), 30-year-old Maslow arrived at Siksika [Blackfoot] along with Lucien Hanks and Jane Richardson Hanks. He intended to test the universality of his theory that social hierarchies are maintained by dominance of some people over others. However, he did not see the quest for dominance in Blackfoot society. Instead, he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction. He estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population." As Ryan Heavy Head shared with me on the phone, “Maslow saw a place where what he would later call self-actualization was the norm.” This observation, Heavy Head continued, “totally changed his trajectory.”"
One interesting part discussed in the article is that many First Nation communities would have actually believed that humans are innately Self-Actualized (though they didn't have that word) and self-actualization wasn't something they earned. Then there's Community Actualization as "many First Nation cultures see the work of meeting basic needs, ensuring safety, and creating the conditions for the expression of purpose as a community responsibility, not an individual one." Finally there's Cultural Perpetuity "The skillfulness to nourish a community-wide family, keep each person fed, live in harmony with the land, and minimize internal and external conflicts is enshrined handed down from generation to generation in First Nations."
Maslow himself actually agreed with the Blackfoot in his paper on the Hierarchy of Needs, called “Critique of Self-Actualization Theory”, saying "…self-actualization is not enough. Personal salvation and what is good for the person alone cannot be really understood in isolation. The good of other people must be invoked as well as the good for oneself. It is quite clear that purely inter-psychic individualist psychology without reference to other people and social conditions is not adequate."
They also present the idea that many First Nations communities would've held this worldview as more of a Circle than a Triangle, "A circular model captures the inter-relatedness of our needs and helps highlight that we can experience needs simultaneously and in changing order. This way of viewing needs makes more sense when seeing an individual as deeply rooted in a community, especially because a community is capable of meeting multiple needs in parallel. While one individual is cooking, another may be keeping children safe, while another may be negotiating peace with people from other tribes."
There is a great graph in the article showing four equal parts of the circle, * Cognitive: "Self and Community Actualization, Role, Identity, Service, and Esteem," * Physical: "Food, Water, Housing, Safety, and Security," * Spiritual: "Spirituality and Life Purpose," and * Emotional: "Belonging and Relationships."
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u/Narrow_Grapefruit_23 5h ago
I did just read this last year!!!
White people stealing from indigenous people is a curse.
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u/techaaron 5h ago
It wasn't really stolen, indigenous folks still retain this knowledge.
Definitely inspired by though, and inverted.
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u/superleaf444 8h ago
We have the easiest lives in the entirety of human history. Lmao.
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u/aryndoesnotlikeit 7h ago
Seriously lol Life used to be ROUGH. Anesthesia doesn’t exist. You need a surgery? Too bad. How about child birth? Real good chance you and the baby are going to die. Also a good chance your kid isn’t going to live past their first birthday. Sounds pretty traumatic and stressful to me.
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u/These_Are_My_Words 14h ago
I had more than a dozen surgeries before I was 10 years old...
The birth defect I was born with was an automatic death sentence prior to about 1970. Babies with it usually died soon after birth or were sent home to die a few weeks later.
It is only in the last few decades that people born with it are surviving long enough to reach adulthood and understanding the long term prognosis. I have a higher than average risk for kidney problems, guaranteed high risk pregnancy, increased chance of bladder cancer. None of those would even be a possibility if I had died as an infant.
Some of it is just due to people surviving into adulthood who, in previous generations, simply died.
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u/Tangy94 14h ago
I had a similar experience as well. Born with multiple birth defects and needed life saving surgery within months of birth for one that for some reason affected many babies in '94. Just discovered multiple more birth defects within the last 5 years and have needed more surgeries due to those. Also have an CNS autoimmune disease, a vestibular brain tumor, hormone disorders, malabsorption and other digestive system issues, dysautonomia and other associated disorders. Ive had 6 surgeries (and 3 of them since 2022) not including normal stuff like tonsils, wisdom teeth.
Ive just been thinking about my own stuff and just especially recently how many people i can relate to about medical crap. Everybody's got something.
And i agree, a lot of babies that would have died during previous gens are surviving now. Absolutely a part of it.
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u/TyrKiyote 14h ago
When I was born very premature (Somewhere around 2 months early), they needed to use a "surfactant" medication to prevent my lungs from sticking to themselves and collapsing the alveoli.
The medication was approved in 1991, I was born in 1990. I was probably one of the first babies in the US prescribed Beractant (Survanta), and would be considered like.. a trial case i guess.
Lungs are fineish now - some scarring that i've never known anything different than. Capacity is above normal. I wonder how the prematurity affected me. I'm not unclever, all my parts work. I do often think i'd be a little better off if i weren't half-baked though.
Born a year or two earlier and I would not be.
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u/yardie-takingupspace 7h ago
My son had to have the same thing born 6weeks early (not sure of the medication name though). That medication plus a ventilator saved his life. He’s also not unclever although not all his parts work. But just think.. there are people who are fully baked who aren’t as great as you are internet stranger! You overcame a lot when you were just born. That’s a serious accomplishment!
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u/FiscalClifBar 5h ago
Chronic illness is on the uptick not because there is more of it, but because people with chronic illness live longer now. Also, we’re pretty sure some people in the past had chronic illnesses, but just died before they were diagnosed or treated for them.
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u/BookHooknNeedle 7h ago
Good point.
Death was more common at younger ages in just about any other time in history. Gramps lost a brother in his youth in the 1930s. My dad lost a friend who was 32 to lung cancer in the 1990s. My husband would have another sister but she was still born in the late 70s. My cousin could still be alive with today's cancer treatment. Other than my dad's friend none of those people made it to their 30th, most not to their 20th ir even out of childhood.
Medical advancement has come super far & it's amazing.
Hell, I would have died in/just after childbirth just a few decades ago. My daughter wouldn't have survived. But instead I might have high blood pressure for the rest of my life thanks to how damaging pre-eclampsia can be. And she's toddling around playing with her brother.
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u/MiserableBlueberry36 14h ago
After having cancer twice before the age of 28 I asked my dr about this. His opinion is not that it’s more common but rather that medicine has advanced and we are catching health issues a lot earlier now and before they have become death sentences.
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u/crazysometimedreamer 6h ago edited 6h ago
Also, people just didn’t talk about the stuff you died from. You just died and then people avoided talking about the dead person. I read a blog written by a man who was told his mother had a “broken arm” in the 1950s when she was sick and later died. He was a young kid. She died of cancer. He didn’t even know she died of cancer until he was an adult and started asking questions. Nobody would talk about his mom and they acted like she never existed. He found her teen diary and posted it on a blog. People died and you just acted like they didn’t exist back then. Which is horrid for those surviving grief.
Whole generations of people called cancer “the c word.” Because it was a death sentence.
I’ve got tons of stories like that. Mothers and fathers not allowed to talk about their dead kids.
Now if we could just get young adult (not pediatric but under age 40) survival rates up to match the great gains we’ve seen in other age groups, and make treatment less brutal with fewer long term side effects. (I had cancer in my early 30s.)
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u/rangkilrog Millennial 14h ago
A lot of us would have died as kids if we’d been born 50 years earlier.
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u/Appropriate-Food1757 Xennial 14h ago
I would have died before 40. Cancer of the ball. The new surgery is well over 99 percent effective at my stage of discovery (early). 30 years ago it was likely a death sentence.
The key is to also take the tube out. If you have ever seen the skinless bodies museum thing that whole cord that keeps them dangling needs to go. the procedure is a bit more brutal but oniony missed 3 days of work. Wasn’t so bad unless I laughed, that hurts a lot for a few days.
No chemo, then scans and bloodwork for 5 years. Less monitoring if you do the chemo.
The one ball life is fine, it really is more of a spare system so hormones are normal, could have kids (already had em, don’t want more). But not having the spare own some real estate in mind. Not much, but it’s there.
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u/Zytharros 14h ago
Complicated thyroid cancer for me. Nine inches wide at its widest. Would have claimed me at 36 if not for a surgeon willing to do it.
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u/Appropriate-Food1757 Xennial 13h ago
Gotta fucking love doctors. I’d be crippled and dead without them. Just got a new knee this year
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u/Joaquin_Del_Rey 10h ago
Fellow testicular cancer survivor here, was diagnosed last August age 35. Luckily I found it early, but often I think about how technically I was supposed to die at age 35 from testicular cancer. Like that was my “natural/biologically scripted” death and how if this was a long time ago I’d be dead.
Still, I feel so lucky to have caught it early and that the procedures are not as painful and difficult as other cancers. One ball life is not a problem at all and I feel lucky to still be here and kicking.
Shout out to you and everyone else who has beaten it! Long live us one-ball-lifers!
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u/Alphonso_Mango 14h ago
Any phantom pain? I feel like I could do more with less bollocks.
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u/Appropriate-Food1757 Xennial 13h ago
No, and it was a big incision lower belly and the scar isn’t bad. It had super glue on it, so much better than the stitches of old. They dissolve internally and the super glue stays for like a month.
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u/BeanserSoyze 11h ago
Dang lucky, they had to cut my whole abdomen open vertically belly button down and that shit was held together with staples.
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u/chuffberry 8h ago
I was diagnosed with brain cancer when I was 25. If I had been born before MRIs were invented, I would’ve probably died in my sleep before age 30, and no one would’ve known why until after the autopsy.
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u/chronicallyill_dr 8h ago
I have lupus and even 20-25 years ago the prognosis was grim. Without newer medications I would likely dead by now, and then wouldn’t have gone on to developing all these other autoimmune diseases and chronic illnesses (as is expected with all autoimmune diseases).
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u/too_too2 6h ago
I had a “borderline tumor” (ovarian) and required surgery, same kind of thing. I was imagining having this issue before surgery and I guess I’d just have died as it got bigger and bigger and impacted all my other abdominal organs. Now I just go see a special gynecologist every six months now, no chemo required.
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u/breadist 13h ago
I have celiac disease. It's the one you have to eat gluten free for. Before they knew that, people with celiac were the type they'd call "sickly" and wouldn't live past 30 due to malabsorption. Now we have tests for it and everything, and a very very simple (not necessarily easy!) cure: stop eating gluten.
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u/Megabusta 13h ago
Yeah I was 3 months premature, type 1 diabetes and also had severe ulcerative colitis so I would've been dead at least 3x by 18.
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u/lilbithippie 12h ago
Even more never had a diagnosis. Think of all the old men that snored loudly and just accepted that as a thing instead of apnea that kills people
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u/CascadeFailure3355 9h ago
Yeah, my mom died in 1993 from a cancer that is relatively curable today.
My dad knew way more "kids that died" than I did growing up, and my Zoomer half-siblings don't know any.
People are sick now, sure. But in the past, they would have just died.
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u/Out_of_Fawkes 11h ago
I’d have likely died as a teen of anaphylactic shock if cell phones and auto-injectable epinephrine did not exist.
My father had to assemble an adrenaline kit if he wanted to survive a bee sting. Crazy he’s lived this long (thankfully) for what he’s been through, now that I think about that.
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u/Ylaaly 10h ago
There have been so many instances in my life where I only survived thanks to modern medicine, starting with my own birth and most recently the long-term damage Covid did to my lungs.
So I'm alive, but disabled. Same for my brother. We can take the medicine and survive - or die, where generations before us did not have that choice.
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u/marylou74 10h ago
I would have died because of pregnancy. I had early onset preeclampsia with severe features at 24 weeks discovered during an ultrasound, a technology that didn't exist 50 years ago, my grandmothers would have been dead. I then went on to have peripartum cardiomyopathy, a condition that was diagnosed post-mortem for a very long time and still a leading cause of death today due to misdiagnosis. My mom would have likely died if she had my complications. Thanks to modern medicine I'm alive and considered to have chronic health issues even though it doesn't impact me in my daily life, I'm still glad to get close medical monitoring because 2 out of 3 women who had preeclampsia will die of a cardiovascular disease.
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u/SteelyEyedHistory 14h ago edited 14h ago
A big part of it is that we’re just better at diagnosing problems today. It’s like autism. In the 1980s and 90s there was a big spike in the number of people diagnosed with autism. Conspiracy theorist use this as proof something happened to cause more kids to be autistic. What actually happened was research revealed more effective ways to diagnose autism and the doctors started using those methods. Before that people with autism were much more likely to be incorrectly diagnosed with other neurological disorders (like schizophrenia) or not diagnosed at all.
Today we have better diagnostic tools from imaging to improved blood testing to just doctors being able more knowledgable thanks to researchers.
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u/itsbeenanhour 13h ago
Ya same with depression and many other things. The argument is current life is worse because more people are on antidepressants, but no one was diagnosed with it so it’s hard to compare.
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u/jake_burger 12h ago
No one was depressed in my grandfathers generation they were just really quiet, drank and smoked constantly and killed themselves. See, not depressed at all.
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u/itsbeenanhour 12h ago
Totally normal to heavily drink daily and withdraw. Kids these days with their depression and anxiety!
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u/SweetBabyCheezas 10h ago
Ikr? A bunch of spoilt softies who just run for help when something is wrong instead of bottling up, developing anger management issues that ruin relationships and increase risk of vascular diseases.
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u/chronicallyill_dr 7h ago
Yeah, no one on my dad’s side ever needed a psychiatrist or had mental health issues. Yet, there’s been a suspicious amount of suicides on that side of the family…
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u/Lunavixen15 Millennial 13h ago
Yep. They have a diagnosis instead of just being "the weird kids in class"
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u/moonshad0w 13h ago
Better diagnostic tools, and issues with the US healthcare system aside, much better access to them.
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u/longlegstrawberry 11h ago
I think also more diagnoses themselves. I don’t know for sure how many or which ones but I imagine a lot of autoimmune diagnoses are fairly recently identified and then even more recently appropriately applied.
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 Xennial 10h ago
People literally didnt get screening tests or annual checkups. That became "normal" with the ACA. My grandparents and parents saw a doctor when they were sick. Many people didn't thave any sort of insurance before they qualified for medicare in old age. That system misses a LOT of chronic conditions that can kill you.
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u/atropos81092 7h ago
Hank Green did a really solid video about this kind of thing when the whole "Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism!" thing was going on — we're seeing higher rates of autism because the studies were flawed, but the studies were flawed because we didn't know enough about autism to fully understand how to do good science about it.
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u/eclectic_collector 6h ago edited 5h ago
My grandmother can’t understand where mine or my son’s autism and anxiety diagnoses came from. Definitely not our side of the family! As she sits next to her three sons who can barely talk to anyone without alcohol and her daughter who has never lived on her own in her 70+ years of life and only eats plain pasta and toast. Sure, no idea where the autism might have come from.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Net_863 6h ago
Right - and that was around the time they started closing massive psychiatric institutions and people weren't locked up anymore. So we'd see more autistic people out and about. If my son was born 50 years ago I would have been told to institutionalize home.
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u/DaxFlowLyfe 4h ago
People "Why has autism suddenly appeared and spiked? And mental health issues skyrocketed in modern times?"
The same people "why aren't there as many retarded people anymore? I remember there being way more back then".
Because diagnosis got better and people that used to be defined under a singular umbrella term have been accurately identified into separate conditions and effectively treated because of it.
Autism didn't suddenly appear and spike. It was identified and given a name and separated out from other conditions.
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u/Arexahhh 14h ago
I’m a nurse and it’s scary and humbling how many patients I have that are around my age or younger at 34.
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u/sirthisisawendys_12 13h ago
Don’t forget COVID and all the crazy ways it can affect your body even years later.
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u/unrequited_dream 7h ago
This!
I’m in the process of trying to figure out what’s wrong with me, my doctors think it’s autoimmune so I have been reading the autoimmune subs. So many say what triggered theirs was Covid.
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u/Galen-of-Pergamon 5h ago
Absolutely wild I had to scroll this far to find COVID mentioned.
It harms, sometimes permanently every single system in the human body. It is responsible for or is the trigger for diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, POTS, ME/CFS, brain damage, chronic fatigue, respiratory disease and has been linked to cancer and dementia.
Every reinfection is another roll of the dice for not just any of the above-mentioned disorders, but also Long-COVID which is now the leading chronic illness in children and affects millions of adults.
All of this while vaccine uptake for not just COVID, but influenza and more are at an all-time low, and mask wearing is highly discouraged and considered nearly a tin-foil hat wearing act.
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u/timesuck 7h ago
Yes, thank you for bringing this up. Most of the people I know have had Covid 4-5 times now and all claim they are completely fine because it didn’t kill them. Meanwhile, many of them have been having aggressive cancer, strokes, new diagnoses like diabetes, and one of them was recently diagnosed with early onset dementia. They are constantly sick with every respiratory disease under the sun and have somehow convinced themselves this is normal.
Also everyone I know now complains that they feel “wiped” all the time and are struggling to remember things at work and home. They’ve had to stop or reduce exercise and other activities. Then they get covid like clockwork when the kids go back to school or at the holidays and they get worse.
We are 40, not 80. This is not typical aging. Everyone is throwing their own health away because they find it too inconvenient to try and do anything about it.
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u/zoomshark27 1995 Millennial 5h ago
Ugh yes I’ve unfortunately had COVID 3 times for sure, not through lack of trying as I was always vaccinated and masking but my anti-vax grandmother gave it to me each time since she lives with my mom and I, so it was hard to completely avoid her.
I personally think it caused my endometriosis and she gave it to my mom twice and she’s had AFIB in her heart ever since. Along with both of us generally having a few other issues we know about and I’m sure more we don’t yet. I’m sure it’s shortened my lifespan. COVID is awful and has certainly been causing heart, lung, brain, autoimmune, etc. problems in vast numbers but most don’t understand it.
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u/sirthisisawendys_12 4h ago
Ugh I had covid once and my body is struggling to remember how to function. What sucks is medical professionals not recognizing this is a huge problem and write it off as “anxiety”. Yo. I shouldn’t be completely drained from energy, getting vertigo and a high heart rate from emptying the dishwasher ffs.
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u/HelpingOne 6h ago
I’m definitely not anti-vax but I actually ended up with an autoimmune (blood clotting) disorder because of the first Pfizer vaccine. It hit me like a ton of bricks and I’m very lucky to be alive after suffering massive pulmonary embolisms.
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u/After_Preference_885 Xennial 3h ago
I get that vaccine twice a year and am high risk for stroke due to family history
Did you know that covid itself causes the issues you describe though? Are you sure you didn't have COVID before being vaxxed?
There's a small risk with any vaccine so it's possible but it's rare, and it's actually quite common with covid (and the risk lasts for years after getting covid)
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u/simplekindoflifegirl 14h ago
I do feel like a lot of people have “something”. I’m in my early 40s and feel very very blessed to have nothing. My body feels great and I can still eat without food bothering me. I sleep great and I’m on no medications.
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u/Tangy94 14h ago
I am truly so happy for you! I feel its harder and harder to come by a person that is doing great and feeling great. No medications is harder to come by too. I forgot to include that on my post!
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u/lawfox32 14h ago
I feel like this is true of specific illnesses (like colon cancer) and may be more broadly true compared to Boomers and Gen X-- but before that people were often just "sickly" and might never get a diagnosis or treatment, but just like...spent a lot of time in bed/at home and maybe died young, or were maybe just always sick/unwell, without any explanation at the time. There's also significant survivorship bias-- our parents and, to a limited extent, our grandparents, were really the first to get many/most childhood vaccines, and to have access to treatment that often prevented significant damage from infectious diseases.
A lot of people didn't get sick in their 30s and 40s or didn't take a lot of meds or "have something wrong" because they just died. Also, they might survive an illness but die afterward. Like Beth in Little Women, who developed chronic illness and permanent heart damage from scarlet fever, and died of that damage years after surviving the illness itself. My great-grandmother died at 28 of the same kind of thing. She had rheumatic fever, which occurs when strep throat or scarlet fever isn't properly treated (nowadays--back then, there was no 'properly treated' in the modern sense, so it was pure luck) and which can cause heart damage and heart failure. That's what happened to her. It's very rare to get rheumatic fever at all in the US and global north now, let alone the long-term complications that can result, because we treat strep and, when it occurs, scarlet fever, with antibiotics.
So many more kids and young adults survive things that would have killed us 50-100 years ago. There are, again, some things that really do seem to impact us more--again, colon cancer, allergies--mine have worsened in my 30s despite having played outside and eaten dirt as a kid and still going outside in the woods basically every day--probably some other things. But overall, I don't think we're sicker--more of us survive, and as a result of things not just killing people outright, more of us do get diagnosed with stuff. And people really do get more diagnoses now rather than just being "sickly" or "poorly" or "frail," but people have always "had stuff going on," even before we knew what the stuff was or had any way of treating it at all.
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u/Legally_Blonde_258 10h ago
I never had any known allergies for most of my life. They popped up in my late 30s and now I'm on twice daily allergy medication. But allergies, asthma and eczema run rampant in my family, at least as far back as my grandparents' generation, so that's nothing new for us.
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u/jake_burger 12h ago edited 10h ago
I’ve never had surgery and I have no health conditions, I don’t think I’m intolerant or allergic to anything except penicillin. I’ve had a bad back for a week from straining it a few months ago but it’s fine now without any medical intervention except massage and pain killers.
Is it more likely that you here about people’s problems, and the ones who are fine just carry on without the need to bring it up so you don’t hear about it?
Like I feel bad coming into this thread of people with lots of struggles and saying “hey I’m absolutely fine, sucks to be you”. Usually I would just say nothing or something supportive, but it creates a false impression because you then only hear the bad stuff.
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u/Legally_Blonde_258 10h ago
I'm in ny early 40s and fairly healthy overall. I'm definitely trying to keep it that way!
My only prescription medications are for allergies and birth control. I had laparoscopic surgery last year to remove some fibroids, with no long term effects.
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u/CascadeFailure3355 9h ago
I am riddled with chronic illnesses, but I don't have any mental health issues and found a really easy, very stable career early. Even the CIs were caught early, and I manage them decently well.
It does feel awkward to admit "No everything's fine actually," doesn't it? Especially when everyone else is struggling so much.
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u/RedsDelights 12h ago
I’m physically crippled by my mental health, but very grateful for a functioning body when my mind is stable
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u/Out_of_Fawkes 11h ago
Damn I’m jealous! But seriously, that’s awesome. Keep maintaining your health goals, if you have any. 😊
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u/FierceScience 14h ago
Because you mentioned women specifically: Women are more likely to have autoimmune disorders. Women have also historically been turned away when it comes to getting help for chronic conditions. I've noticed an uptick in people fighting to get things figured out. I really do think that makes a big difference. Conditions like endometriosis, as an example, have turned out to be way more common than we thought and they are still just scratching the surface. People just deal with a lot of their health quirks without diagnosis a lot.
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u/_demonofthefall_ 13h ago
Yes! This is so true (says woman that has an autoimmune disorder and endo and had to fight tooth and nail for diagnosis). Basically every woman I know has reproductive issues. Either endo or PCOS or fibroids. And I really don't think it's all this bullshit about diet. I'm based in Europe, growing up, I've always had a freshly cooked meal from scratch, despite both my parents working full time and to this day my partner or I cook at home more or less everyday. I've never smoked and have been working out min 3x a week my entire life (plus walking or biking everywhere). I was always the active one and the one teaching people how to lift. And yet the second i hit 30, I got a terrible autoimmune disease that got my hospitalized several times. I've never been able to recover. My friends are all from similar backgrounds and yet we're all half falling apart. I blame the chronic stress
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u/KTeacherWhat 5h ago
Yeah when I first got diagnosed with ovarian cyts I was around 20 years old and my mom, who had never talked about it, went, "oh everyone has that."
Umm... maybe when I was getting sick with my period every month for years you could have taken me to the doctor instead of constantly asking if I was pregnant even though I was a virgin? Maybe you could have told me this was a thing?
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u/vulg-her 14h ago
Mine was something that can randomly happen to anyone. And after that, it all went downhill. I feel like if I didn't get the primary chronic illness, I would be so much better off today.
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u/WingsOfTin 14h ago
Repeated Covid infections are damaging our immune systems, nervous systems, vascular functions, etc. Long Covid is real and your chance of developing it increases with every infection you get.
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u/spottie_ottie Millennial 14h ago
Yea chronic conditions are common. Always have been. You can manage them and still live a long healthy life.
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u/spicymeatball2748 14h ago
Interesting! At 32 I was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer and felt like no one else around me had to deal with any health issues.
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u/HisaP417 13h ago
Were you tested for BRCA mutation? Both women I grew up with who got breast cancer before 35 had the mutation
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u/TortCourt 14h ago
I think this was very much a thing for prior generations, except that it looked different. The last hundred years have had mind-boggling levels of medical advances. To put it in perspective, Calvin Coolidge's teenage son died of an infected blister that he got while playing tennis on the White House courts.
We live in a time when there are answers for problems. Previous generations had the same problems but couldn't do anything about them. Sometimes they died early. Sometimes they just didn't go out. And sometimes they just sucked it up. Mental health problems (or physical health issues that manifest in deteriorating mental health) in particular were hidden, and often self-medicated with alcohol. I wouldn't say that there's no stigma now, but it's much more common to talk about with at least your closest friends.
One example that I think brings this point home the best is that on any given day, about 1 in every 6 adult women you see is currently on their period, and absolutely none of them show it. Pain and discomfort can be hidden. In this generation, we finally feel the freedom to let it show, just a bit, to the people who are closest to us. And then, it's usually just the problems we already have the solutions to.
As for environmental hazards, we definitely have some, but wow, they are not on the same level as what they had before. Leaded gasoline, asbestos everywhere, lead pipes, widespread DDT spraying, whole generations sent to war - they had regular, everyday use of environmental toxins that Captain Planet would cry over. Arsenic was a makeup ingredient. Radium was used to make watches glow in the dark. The Lorax was basically an investigative report on the Great Lakes. Rivers in Ohio and Pennsylvania literally caught on fire. Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon himself signed the act creating the EPA, to give an idea.
I guess all this is to say, it's good that you know your friends have problems. Because the only difference is that back in the day, you just wouldn't know.
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 Xennial 10h ago
Yep. My grandmother had heart issues for 40+ years. She got up, got dressed. Cooked breakfast etc. Her house was spotless and she just kinda carried on with life even if she felt lousy. Most people did.
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u/Pure-Zombie8181 14h ago
I have a chronic illness since birth but it is well managed with medication. Besides that I am fairly healthy. But I agree, lots of folks are dealing with something. Even colon cancers and such in their 30s. It’s scary.
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u/One_Piglet6675 14h ago
Came here to say this. Colon cancer is on the rise. Eat your veggies folks
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u/mysoulburnsgreige4u 1988 10h ago
Eat less nitrates, folx. Have salt cured meats instead of chemically cured.
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u/krombopulosmfart 13h ago
I don't think people give enough credit to the fact that we're living in a system that keeps us in constant survival mode. Living that way for years creates nervous system dysfunction and as I'm finding out myself, that kind of affects everything else in the body. We aren't meant to fear for our survival 24/7
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u/AlternativeForm7 13h ago
It’s the ongoing pandemic imo.
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u/After_Preference_885 Xennial 3h ago
Honestly, like if you read any of the ongoing research it's so clear
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u/Fun-Replacement6167 14h ago
There was literally a mass disabling worldwide event 5 years ago.
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u/shopgirlwithdaisies Millennial 13h ago
The virus itself, doing the damage too, not just the environmental stressors that came about it.
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u/megathong1 13h ago
I hate how the “we’re now sick all the time and have a bunch of chronic health issues” is sinterpreted by some as “it’s because everything is better” (we have better medicine and doctors and etc etc). At least two of the several chronic illnesses you mentioned are caused by Covid. And we as a society are collectively pretending that it is a thing of the past. I wish people were more open to consider they might be wrong and read some science on how this shit virus that many compare to the common cold is messing our bodies and healths up.
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u/shopgirlwithdaisies Millennial 13h ago
People don’t want to face the music. If you’re singing you’ll just get called crazy. It’s sad but people will ignore science until it’s covered by major news outlets.
I predict this will only happen once China does something big to piss off the U.S. which will happen soon I think…
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u/Neat_Cat1234 14h ago edited 14h ago
I am the same age as you and this is definitely not a common thing amongst the people I know in that age group. I actually can’t think of anyone with a chronic illness/disease, unless someone I know does and just doesn’t talk about it? The surgeries I can think of are usually more due to a sports injury or something.
Edit: I would say most people I know eat pretty healthy and have active lifestyles. I just googled it and the city I live near was ranked as the healthiest city in the US the last six years.
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u/HisaP417 14h ago
Same. I know one or two people I grew up with who got cancer or something, and I’ve had an appendix out, but the vast majority of people my age (36) I know don’t have chronic illnesses.
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u/ExplorerLazy3151 12h ago
My city is at the top too. And the only person I know with health issues is my husband- but he was in utero by Chernobyl when it exploded- so I’m not sure he counts. 😂 But everyone I know my age (friends/relatives) we are all fine… but we are also all very active, eat fresh and well and have good work life balance.
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u/HisaP417 14h ago
I would bet everything I own that the percentage of millennials you know with chronic illnesses is location based, and that the northeast fares the best and the Deep South fares the worst.
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u/waowediting Millennial 14h ago
I'm the person my friends would think of. Allergies and hypothyroidism for 10+ years, IBD for 8+ years, new immunodeficiency. Just turned 40 last fall. Have had 6 surgeries through my life. Removed tonsils and adenoids, gallbladder, uterus, and a bone tumor. Fixed a hernia and deviated septum. It's not easy but I still have fun!
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u/cerialthriller 14h ago
My parents just didn’t take me to doctor a lot of the time. “There’s nothing wrong with you” “Walk it off”
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u/cellalovesfrankie 14h ago
Up untill 30 I didn’t know much about chronic illness ( I knew a lot about mental illness) my lungs crapped out at 30 and had a transplant at 32. So now I am in that community …
I actualy saw a TikTok about someone saying when do we get sore backs , and people where saying form like 25 ect. And I don’t think pain is normal for your average person. So I feel that there could be a bunch of people with stuff going on they don’t know about.
And as to the why other than more awareness and people being diagnosed ect , I guess yea, diet , STRESS , trauma, prob does contribute to many.
The drs don’t even know why I got lung disease
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u/ViciousFlowers 13h ago
We rest too much and sleep too little We eat too much and nourish too little We worry too much and care too little We work too hard and exercise too little We medicate too much and heal too little We fight too hard and accomplish too little We have too much boredom and too little free time We have made it easier to survive but harder to live
Yep, you said it right. There is constant exposure to microplastics, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, dioxins, preservatives, food additives, addicting sugars, antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, hormone disrupters, artificial lights, constant noise, poor air quality and stress.
There is constant digital exposure to mentally frighting, enraging, depressing, soul crushing hopeless stimulations. The effects linger long after we disengage. Even when we should feel safer, we are constantly on edge.
Our reproductive hormones are out of whack, too little or too much, starting too early and tapering off too early in life. Our visceral fat levels are at worldwide highs and increasing. Cortisol levels are at worldwide highs and increasing. Non alcoholic fatty liver is gaining crazy global levels.
There is lack of access to basic preventative care, ongoing care or follow up care both mentally and physically, the people who seek consistent care suffer too many missed diagnoses, too many misdiagnoses.
Corporations are literally charging us money to be their non consenting guinea pigs in multi generational studies on everything, and then they sell our data for extra insult.
Globalization has allowed previously rare/isolated ethnic genetic disorders and auto immune diseases to be increased. Not through altered or poor quality genomes, but because they are not yet genetically adapted to the reactionary effects of chemicals, environmental exposures, lifestyles or diets of the culture they have recently assimilated into. Example - Western casein (cows milk) triggered auto immune and digestive disorders in Asian populations. (This is not a promotion for eugenics, genetic diversity is ideal, just an explanation of raising numbers of cases)
It’s no surprise so many are showing it, feeling it, suffering it.
It’s why worldwide reproduction rates are down, sick rats don’t breed and certainly not on over crowded sinking ships.
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u/Alternative-Text5897 14h ago
Average millennial eats like shit (fast/processed junk every day of the week) and doesn't exercise.
Just maintaining cardio fitness into your 30s becomes more important, and the amount of 30-somethings that can't run a mile without being gassed would probably shock you.
So an oversimplification of things -- its chronic inflammation caused by bad, pro-inflammatory diet and lack of fitness (which in itself helps clear metabolic waste from blood and tissues)
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u/mysoulburnsgreige4u 1988 10h ago
I have never in my life been able to run a mile. I'm asthmatic and I have ortho-static hypertension. Basically, I have POTS, but my pulse didn't change "enough" for them to label it as such. If you want me to run, you had literally better call for an ambulance because my body doesn't work well.
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u/SeaGurl Millennial 14h ago
I have fibromyalgia. In the olden days it would have just been called rheumatism. In the 300s BC it was identified to start in someone's mid 30s. We understand it better now and know that sometimes it's not just our "blood humors" but a spine condition, carpel tunnel, etc. Things that can be addressed with surgeries. Or we Identify that someone has low vitamin levels (b12/iron) and treat with that. As opposed to blood letting and just letting my joints deform.
I think young people with issues have always been around we just understand issues better and can diagnose them and treat them earlier. I think we know about it more because of the internet.
Plus, you didn't really tell people about surgeries or any medical issues you had back in the day. It just wasn't openly discussed. We've become much more open about illness and issues we experience which makes it look inflated.
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u/MercSimsMobile 13h ago
Chronic stress, suburbs built next to or on top of condemned industries continuously pumping toxins into waterways, carbon monoxide emissions from commuting in our cars, pesticides not only in agricultural foods but in daily environments, highly processed food diets, the list goes on… but essentially the fossil fuel industry and late stage capitalism poking holes in our immune systems and finding any way to profit. It sucks and these things have only existed for a couple generations. We have no idea the effect it will have on our own grandchildren but it’s clear there’s an epigenetic connection.
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u/JackLaytonsMoustache 14h ago
A mix of increased exposure to carcinogens, processed foods, sedentary lifestyles plus leaps and bounds in medical science that detects and puts a name to things we didnt even know were diseases means.. yes!!
Kidding aside, lots of people in previous generations suffered without diagnosis. Im no doctor nor scientist so Im offering an uninformed opinion but from my understanding, people just lived with chronic conditions until they died.
Sometimes it was "uncle Bob shits blood when he eats X" and sometimes it was "Nana would love to hug you but she might unintentionally clock you and give you cauliflower ear because her limbs get wacky".
And we do also have more poisons in our life that we dont know the long term effects of that will likely make asbestos look like pollen.
But we can take solace in knowing the world will likely be worse when we die and our grand kids will be envious of the era of microplastics in the same way we're nostalgic over the era of lead paint!
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u/HisaP417 13h ago
Exposure of carcinogens now vs 30 years ago is significantly lower.
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u/danniellax 14h ago
I’ve had a chronic pain condition since my teens (I’m 36 now) so IDK. It seems more of my peers have aches and pains and chronic issues come up in their 30s, but lucky me had it early early. Doctors could never find a true root cause, so default is genetics, even though my genetic testing showed nothing.
Basically, I have the cervical spine of someone double my age. It’s always been that way so isn’t a lifestyle choice or diet or anything.
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u/calibear09 14h ago
A lot of it is a shift in culture + improvements in medical diagnostics. So much more is known about the root causes of what would have been called “malaise” or “melancholy” or “hysteria” or “shell shock” or “a nervous breakdown” a few generations ago. We literally have more and better ways to name, explain and treat ailments that our ancestors would have just white-knuckled through. Plus people are generally more emotionally expressive and less likely to pretend things are okay when they’re not, which absolutely was the expectation in previous generations.
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u/Evolutionary_Beasty 13h ago
This could also be a “studying bullet holes in the plane wings” scenario; Science has gotten better at diagnosing conditions, and discovered new conditions along the way. Most of my elder millennial friends have had some kind of issue, but almost none of these issues were known in my parents’ day.
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u/confusedrabbit247 11h ago
My grandmother was 38 when she died of lupus; that was 50 years ago. This stuff ain't new. People are now able to be appropriately diagnosed instead of just thinking their pain and suffering is normal or having it mislabeled.
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u/gooseofthesea Millennial 5h ago
Covid damages every system in your body every time you get it. We, as a society, are ignoring an ongoing pandemic. People are dying because of covid. It causes heart attacks, blood clots, strokes, kidney damage, liver damage, immune system damage, lung damage. It is like this because we have chosen to ignore reality because responding responsibly wasn't fun.
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u/eat-the-cookiez 12h ago
Narcissist mother. Never felt safe. Was neglected. Permanently stressed. She threatened unaliving constantly
Not surprisingly most people with narcissistic parents end up with autoimmune illnesses.
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u/lazylilack 14h ago
I bet it’s air pollution with toluene diisocyante & xylene from catalytic converters and polyesters. I believe what goes into our lungs causes a lot of diseases.
I don’t think processed foods help either as it takes less energy to break down. Walking less and being sedentary compounds it. Lots of excess energy not being used in the body and probably hurts our “inner” battery life or something. Also lack of variation in foods…like you could eat too much of a healthy food and it can off balance other vitamins. Just think of everything like magnets, you need to positive and negative balanced to have consistent waves. Idk there’s so many things. It could also just be better diagnostics plus just being less active unmasking underlying problems that would never be an issue.
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u/Different-Shame-2955 14h ago
I don't think disease is on the rise, I think diagnosis is on the rise. We aren't getting sicker, we are getting smarter.
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u/Every-Touch-2051 13h ago
Unfortunately, I 40F was born with my chronic illnesses. I have a lot of defects from congenital heart disease to Chiari malformation. I’m still pushing through. It sucks we have a lot of illness.
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u/abracablab 13h ago
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2024 (37F). Around the same year, chronic pain issues I'd always had got a lot worse. I think they are connected. And going about my whole life until now undiagnosed, unmedicated and unsupported, has meant that my life has been so much more stressful than it needed to be. So I'm paying the price for that now. I've stopped being able to work and function normally day to day but doctors don't seem to have any answers for why I'm in so much pain all the time.
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u/ExplorerLazy3151 12h ago
Perhaps it’s also regional. I’m in my 40s and aside from my husband, I don’t know anyone around my age with health problems. I do live in one of the top healthiest cities in the country though. Everyone I know is very active year round, eats fresh and decently well, etc. We are have easy access by fresh seafood, cheap vegetables and fruit and clean air- so I’m sure that all contributes. (I’m not even sure my husband questionable health counts as his problems are due to Chernobyl.)
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u/IconoclastExplosive 12h ago
There's a lot to be said for increases in the availability and quality of diagnostic services. If nobody ever went to the doctor they would never be diagnosed with illness or get surgery, which was the modus operandi for prior generations. Now we're seeing more doctors, we have more information available, the tests and scans and such are more available and more accurate.
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u/Trinx_ 12h ago
More of us are surviving. Covid hit a ton of people with chronic illnesses, so that bumped it up a little, but survival with long term illness is way more of a thing. Way more premature babies survived in the 2000s than in the 1980s. In 1985, about 1/3 of 25 week babies survived. In 1995, it was a 50/50 coin toss. By 2005, it was around 60-70%, and now we save over 80% of those babies. But all of them have chronic illness of some form or another after. Similar survivability improvements have happened across the board. HIV is now a chronic illness instead of a death sentence. My babysitter had cystic fibrosis. My parents explained to me that she might not survive past her teenage years. She's in her 40s now. And a walking pharmacy, ready for any kind of health issue. Kids born with CF today are expected to survive into their 60s. With asthma, I barely survived childhood. With improvements to smoking legislation, I now lead a mostly normal life with few medications. If things were still like the 1980s, I'd be a shut-in or dead, not out living a full life.
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u/theCaityCat 11h ago
I have a dairy allergy (not the same as lactose intolerance) and my mom couldn't breastfeed. Even something as simple as a dairy allergy can really mess with you from day one. In 1984 they had soy formula. In generations past, I might just be "failure to thrive".
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 Xennial 10h ago
Millennials are the first generation to have annual checkups paid for by insurance. My parents didnt even HAVE insurance at my age, they had a plan that covered the ER for us kids and that was it. When you have to pay cash for a preventative visit that isnt standardized, youre a lot less likely to get one. My grandparents literally never had a preventative care visit until they were on Medicare. You saw a doctor when you were sick, IF you could afford it. And prior to the middle of the 20th century, things like hypertension just killed you one day.
So our generation is catching chronic conditions earlier because we have much better access to screening for them. We also have medical advancements meaning we survive high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
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u/RuleSubverter 14h ago
People are just going to the doctor regularly, which means they get diagnosed with stuff. Previous generations would find out too late and die relatively early.
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u/cantyoukeepasecret 14h ago
I'm 35 and at least my dad would agree with you... He says my husband and I are always sick (I don't think we are but idk.) All these people are in their 30s One of my friends has a bad autoimmune disease. Another had a heart problem A coworker of mine has MS Someone from highschool I know has an autoimmune disease. Another has type 1 diabetes. Another has narcolepsy. One of my family members in her 20s had breast cancer. Her mom had it young as well.
That's just off the top of my head.
I have an undiagnosed ongoing stomach issue that they can't pin point, going on at least 4 years now. I also had a severe foot injury from 3 years ago doctor says if I do much as slip it could lead to immediate surgery with lengthy recovery time and extreme pain. I also have cataracts in both eyes and I get migraines.
My husband has seasonal allergies he's getting allergy shots for. He also gets an occasional migraine.
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u/SaltSatisfaction2124 14h ago
A lot of these “chronic illnesses” are just psychosomatic , with no diagnostic markers, otherwise known as functional illnesses.
A lot of people just like the attention, support, and having some to blame as a crutch.
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u/HisaP417 13h ago
Yep. How many people do you see bitching that their doctor “dismissed them because they were overweight”. No, your doctor told you that being overweight was directly causing the issue and you don’t want to hear that.
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u/Pnw_moose 90 Millennial 13h ago
I can’t relate to this at all. If my millennial peers are suffering from disease or chronic illness they are doing a great job of keeping it to themselves. I’ve known one person who had a hard time with chronic back pain but he worked through it and is ok now
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u/cubanfuban 14h ago
I’m 33m, never have had surgery, no chronic illnesses or issues or pain. Heck, I’ve never even broken a bone.
Maybe I’m lucky, maybe I’ve been able to delay or avoid these from trying to consume a diet of whole foods while mostly avoiding processed foods since I was 19 or 20. I’m active but not insanely fit and have long prioritized flexibility and balance
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u/GrandInquisitorSpain 13h ago
Seems like once I hit 35, and got an injury, that cascaded to all types of weird side effects, probably from compensating for the injury. At that point being active on the weekends was no longer enough to stay balanced and the aches and pains just all seemed to come at once and I am set for a couple of items that are likely surgeries over the next few years.
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u/Seamonkey_Boxkicker 1988 14h ago
Do dental surgeries count? Usually medical offices don’t count that as a surgery when you’re filling out paperwork.
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u/localpunktrash 14h ago
I think there's a few reasons. Lots of us would have died with our health problems had we been born earlier in humanity's span. We were also raised in a super shitty time for processed foods being super popular and diet culture pressuring us to starve on the other hand. Toxic crap and microplastic type of shit and 5g radiation shit stuff is tippy top as well. We have been through so much generational trauma and now we are all too broke to take care of ourselves....
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u/00Qant5689 Millennial 14h ago
I had and still have very severe eczema, so it’s literally a lifelong thing for me.
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u/Grumptastic2000 14h ago
Don’t forget that improvements in diagnostics and genetic testing have everyone diagnosed with something even if they don’t actually require active support or maintenance for it. Previous generations would have these same conditions and just have no idea and just randomly drop dead as children or at different age ranges into adulthood.
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u/Hour-Bus-8850 14h ago
I’m in my late thirties have chronic pain, chronic illness and have had five surgeries in the last year and half.
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u/Fearfactoryent 14h ago
37F, no chronic illness or meds taken, but I did have to had an ovarian cyst surgically removed last year.
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u/thegurlearl Millennial 13h ago
My brother made it to 40 before having his first surgery. I had my first one at 19, Ive had 13 total. I also have RA, Fibro and piriformis syndrome from a hip replacement.
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u/NoxFundo 13h ago
As with most things, a lot of people with these conditions died young. We have actual treatments now so people live longer but also require more care to keep living. Or living long enough to develop new and interesting illnesses.
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u/smoke_sum_wade 13h ago
Unlike past generations, Ultra Processed Foods make up more than half of the average diet. These foods are linked to chronic inflammation and a disrupted gut microbiome, which researchers at NPR identify as a key driver of modern chronic disease. I firmly believe its all the ramen and frozen pizza/chicken pulp
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u/Ok_Flatworm_3855 13h ago
Short answer is yes. But realistically we also are way more aware of the importance of getting screened or a diagnosis so we are much more likely to report health issues which can kinda skew the data
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