The really big story of the past century

Look to your left. Look to your right. Without advances in agriculture and medicine, one of you would not be alive today. We're not only living longer; we're also getting taller and heavier.

The average adult man in 1850 in America stood about 5 feet 7 inches and weighed about 146 pounds; someone born then was expected to live until about 45. In the 1980s the typical man in his early 30s was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed about 174 pounds and was likely to pass his 75th birthday. 

For nearly three decades, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert W. Fogel has  researched what the size and shape of the human body say about economic and social changes throughout history, and vice versa.  “In most if not quite all parts of the world, the size, shape and longevity of the human body have changed more substantially, and much more rapidly, during the past three centuries than over many previous millennia,” he writes.


This “technophysio evolution,” powered by advances in food production and public health, has so outpaced traditional evolution, he  argues, that people today stand apart not just from every other species, but from all previous generations of Homo sapiens as well.

 “I don’t know that there is a bigger story in human history than the improvements in health, which include height, weight, disability and longevity,” said Samuel H. Preston, one of the world’s leading demographers and a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Without the 20th century’s improvements in nutrition, sanitation and medicine, only half of the current American population would be alive today, he said.

Eat your Wheaties, boys and girls.

What's up, Doc?

Always take this to a gun fight.

News from the world of medicine:

Manuka honey could be an efficient way to clear chronically infected wounds and could even help reverse bacterial resistance to antibiotics, according to research.

Researchers testing raw turkey, pork, beef, and chicken purchased at grocery stores in five different cities across the U.S. say that roughly one in four of those samples tested positive for a multidrug antibiotic-resistant “superbug” bacterium.

A new study by researchers at the University of Alberta shows that for best results in stable patients after a heart attack, early exercise as well as prolonged exercise is the key to the best outcomes.

A survey of more than 1,600 U.S. parents showed that that 74% of children between the ages of 5 and 10 do not get enough exercise daily, based on the 60 minutes of daily physical activity recommended in the government’s Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.

A serendipitous discovery has shown that a simple illusion can significantly reduce -- and in some cases even temporarily eradicate -- arthritic pain in the hand.

Treating high blood pressure and other so-called vascular risk factors in people who have mild cognitive impairment may reduce their risk of progressing to Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study.

Toss those cookbooks

I've been going through the business throwing stuff away. Seems I've saved every telephone I've ever owned. There are three computer printers down there. And more books than the Library of Congress. What to keep?

An article in the New York Times has some advice, including this on books.

Keep them (with one exception). Yes, e-readers are amazing, and yes, they will probably become a more dominant reading platform over time, but consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries. 

But there is one area where printed matter is going to give way to digital content: cookbooks. Martha Stewart Makes Cookies a $5 app for the iPad, is the wave of the future. Every recipe has a photo of the dish (something far too expensive for many printed cookbooks). 

Complicated procedures can be explained by an embedded video. When something needs to be timed, there’s a digital timer built right into the recipe. You can e-mail yourself the ingredients list to take to the grocery store. The app does what cookbooks cannot, providing a better version of everything that came before it. 

Now all Martha has to do is make a decorative splashguard for a tablet and you will be all set.

What's up, Doc?

Will live forever.

Middle-aged men and women may be able to lower their blood pressure readings by laughing more and listening to music they enjoy, new research indicates.

Prescribing antibiotics for patients with discoloured phlegm caused by acute cough has little or no effect on alleviating symptoms and recovery, a Cardiff University study has found.

Itching, like yawning, may be contagious, causing people to feel an urge to scratch after they see another person scratching. That’s according to a new study published in the British Journal of Dermatology.

Researchers have found that people living at higher altitudes have a lower chance of dying from ischemic heart disease and tend to live longer than others.

Cocoa, used throughout history as a folk medicine, may actually have significant health benefits, according to a new study by Harvard researchers. Their analysis of 21 studies with 2,575 participants shows that cocoa consumption is associated with decreased blood pressure, improved blood vessel health, and improvement in cholesterol levels, among other benefits.

A lesser known side effect of sleep deprivation is short-term euphoria, which can potentially lead to poor judgment and addictive behavior, according to new research

Regular exercise and a low-sodium diet are two lifestyle changes that are often recommended to lower high blood pressure. Now a new study shows that physical activity appears to help keep blood pressure from climbing after people eat eye-popping amounts of salt -- 18,000 milligrams a day to be exact.

Is this the next exercise fad?

Likes jumping rope and ice cream.

Traditionally the turf of the boxing ring and schoolyard, jumping rope is nearly perfect exercise in terms of conditioning, cost-benefit and convenience, William Hamilton writes in the Wall Street Journal.

"To coordinate that kind of rhythm, the whole body has to be in sync—core, shoulders, legs," said Brian Nguyen, the actor Mark Wahlberg's personal trainer. Mr. Nguyen trained with Mr. Wahlberg for his role in last year's film "The Fighter." "It's a very intense movement for the body," he explained. 

Jumping is also gentler and kinder, though. "You're getting the most bang for your buck, because you're working almost every part of your body, but there's not the impact of running, because of the way the foot lands," said Alexis Colvin, an assistant professor of sports medicine in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.

So then Hamilton gets down to technique.

John Snow, the manager of Trinity Boxing Gym in Lower Manhattan, has basic pointers. He has me jump in place, without a rope, practicing my arm movement: elbows to my sides, turning the wrist and bending and rolling the elbow, breathing through my nose, setting a pace, staying focused and loose. Mr. Snow called it "controlled relaxation," an eloquent attitude towards life, as well as rope jumping.

"An eloquent attitude towards life." I like that. I think Moose Tracks ice cream is an eloquent attitude toward life.

I say, let them eat broccoli

Will do well in corporate meetings.

If you’re not a big fan of bitter food, chemists have just the loophole for you. You still have to take the bitter, but you won’t have to taste it. Scientists have concocted a new and improved “bitter blocker.” 

We likely find bitter bad because many toxic substances are bitter. So an aversion to bitter may have helped our ancestors survive.

Right you are, Sparky -- that's why no one should ever eat beets. Ever. If you do, you will die.

Problem is, plenty of healthful foods are bitter, too. Take broccoli and kale. (Please.) The standard solution, drowning out the bitter with butter, sort of cancels out the veggies’ health food status.

Rather than getting rid of the bitter, chemists came up with a compound that simply blocks our receptors for the bitter molecules, and our ability to taste them. So you may not need that spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Or the broccoli.

However, we all know it's true: spare the spinach, spoil the child. God invented vegetables to give parents a means of disciplining children so that they will be prepared to go forth into the world and join the accounts receivable department at a global conglomerate and be miserable the rest of their awful lives.

Besides, how much bitter can a bitter blocker block if a bitter blocker blocks broccoli? You see what I mean.

I told you there is a god

Eat this, live forever.

Here's some good news: Strawberries have the potential to prevent esophageal cancer, according to a preliminary study.

Freeze-dried strawberries slowed the growth of dysplastic, or precancerous, lesions in about 30 people who consumed the fruit for six months. The freeze-dried substance is about 10 times as concentrated as fresh strawberries, but the study's lead researcher, Tong Chen, an assistant professor in the oncology division of Ohio State University, suggested people could still benefit from eating whole strawberries daily.

Stay with me. Other researchers claim that eating a bar of dark chocolate once a week can lower the risks of cancer, but what is more important: dark chocolate can be used even to inhibit the growth of cancerous cells.

Told you.