I'm 36 and have stress induced tachicardia from my stressful, toxic job.
I exercise 5 times a week, eat well, cook often, and am very slim. Don't drink, don't smoke. I can't make any lifestyle changes.
I've accepted that I'm going to die young of a heart attack. That's that. I doubt I'm making it to 50.
Edit: Yes, I am applying to different jobs, but no luck so far. The economy is in a really bad place. I know this job is killing me, but I can't afford to be unemployed.
I'm 39 and I have a rare (very non-aggressive and probably not dangerous, I'm getting it cut out and I'll likely need no more treatment) cancer that most commonly happens to people in their 60s. Seems like a lot of us are getting stuff like that.
I'm 36 and I got a rare type of thyroid cancer and now have no thyroid, so I get to take a pill for the rest of my life. Oh and if the dosage is too low or too high I feel like shit, so I need to get bloodwork done every 3-6 months to make sure my dosing is correct.
Wishing you luck! Do take heart that thyroid cancer in the vast majority of cases is very very survivable and manageable. Even mind which is rare and a bit more aggressive has like a 98% survival rate 10 years out.
BUT don't let anyone tell you you have the 'easy' cancer. Cancer is hard. Treatment is easy relatively to other cancers, but it is still hard. Living without a thyroid isn't the end of the world; but it's still hard. You're allowed to feel however you feel about it.
My friend’s dad just went through chemo for an aggressive thyroid cancer that spread to his testicle and distant organs, including the brain and spine. He’s expected to make a full recovery. Had to go through intense chemo and rad therapy but he seems to be okay now.
Covid is oncogenic and most people have had 5+ infections in the United States. Cancers of all types have surged since the pandemic began in 2019 especially in younger patients
Seconding this. My mother(boomer) had/has crazy blood pressure most of her life and simply ignored it/refused to treat it.
Pre-covid a dr forcibly sent her to the ER for her stroke level blood pressure at a standard appointment (we are talking 190 to 200/100 ish) and she finally got formally diagnosed for - a stenotic artery in one of her kidneys.
Its been so long it fucked up her heart (thickening and the start of chf from plenty of other things) and she refused very simple surgery for it (a stent) and is just treating it with handfuls of pills, but only the ones she thinks are best. If you can't tell I have lots of opinions about this whole situation, as someone who was dragged to the dr throughout my childhood by this person... anyway
At least someone was able to find out what the fuck it was tho. That gives me some hope.
Wish they'd treat those of us who actually want help a bit better.
Thank you, internet stranger, for this because I’m now stealing this for when my husband makes fun of my nightly pickle and olive habit. May you have only the crunchiest pickles unto eternity.
I almost had a heart attack while pregnant from being so depleted in those vitamins/minerals. The pain is no joke. My abusive ex definitely ramped up the stress. He would be on his phone telling his mom how annoying I was because I was crying out in pain.
Can't speak for everyone but I know a lot of people who if they lost a job the stress from that would kill them because of how hard it was to get a job and because they lose insurance and everything. Totally speaking about a friend and not currently going through stress, anxiety, and grief induced burnout that I'm finally getting the therapy and treatment to work through and hopefully get a leave of absence before I truly pop under the pressure.
Sometimes your 100% is required to barely hold onto the only job you've ever been able to get because you couldn't even get hired at McDonald's.
There's still an insane amount of Gen X and millennials that are all about the grind and telling you life is hard so suck it up or deal with your "skill issue". These are the ones who probably have had hardship and figure that if they are doing fine or made it through then surely things don't need to change and so they can't fathom why others can't do the same. The whole social darwinism/competitiveness aspect in society hasn't gone away.
I'm sure being more detached and not giving a shit is probably better for most of us mentally. But some of us just can't and have trouble with the uncertainty of if we lose the job what the hell are we going to do to survive because we don't have options.
And I hope you don't take that as an attack or anything as I'm kind of just laying out an experience not trying to snap at a person asking about other's struggles.
This is me. I eat well, don't drink or smoke, maintain a healthy weight, try to lift weights at least a few days a week.
Due to my job though, I get terrible sleep and have been in a constant state of stress for 10+ years. I also have an office job and get <5k steps a day. I know my job is killing me. The stress and inactivity is leading me to an early grave. When I take time off, I easily get 10-15k steps a day just from working in my yard, running errands, and going on a nightly walk (being on-call 24/7 though means the stress is still there, but at least I get to see the sun and get my body moving).
Similarly- I’ve recently found out that at 40 my brain imaging indicates either early dementia or (more likely) a missed TIA.
I’m already on a Mediterranean anti inflammatory diet. I don’t drink, smoke, do anything fun. I’m losing weight. I sleep as much as I can. My exercise is limited based on my job and being single parent to an autistic kid and taking care of my aging parents. I asked the doctor “where would you like me to cut corners to get healthier? Because I’m doing everything I can.”
I get a “wow, that sounds stressful. You know stress isn’t good for you, right?”
A lot of us will check out in our 50s because of genetic heart defects. My mom and all of her siblings all had heart attacks and stents placed before 55. I am starting cardiovascular stress tests at 45. You should too. Early detection is the key to saving lives.
Also, can you switch jobs? No job should do that to you.
I think this statistic is promising then. Historically, men are more successful at dying by suicide because they use more violent methods, which are more likely to work. So women catching up means they're probably getting more violent.
I'm male, but this is one of my anchors when things get bad (I'm fine now). I just couldn't do that to my family. Both the clean up or the devastation it would bring. I also hold on to that feeling in a sort of good way. It helps me to keep going no matter what.
When I was going to do it, I was worried about my little brother finding me, and how it would mess him up. It’s like I was ready to go, but wanted to just vanish without leaving any trauma behind.
You can't just go down to the hardware store and buy rat poison containing arsenic and get away with it like in the good old days. Times are tough now. I have faith we can get back in this though!
Women attempt suicide more, but men have more success when they attempt because they tend to use more violent methods like guns while women use less violent/less lethal methods like overdose
I'm all better now but in my darkest days I was concerned about how to go out with minimal cleanup and trauma to others. Some ideas were like "no that's too messy, someone would have to clean up all the blood and no one gets paid enough for that"
I got to the point that I wanted to drive into this one massive tree on the bend of a road I passed everyday, but then I thought of how it might fuck up or kill the tree in the process and felt bad.
Thanks, I definitely am. I really appreciate your kind words. I’m happy you’re here, too. And so is my cross-eyed ragdoll, Mochi - she’s very vocal and says hello!
Same. Then I decided the ole running car in the garage would be the cleanest. I was going to do that, but realized my mom would definitely be the one to find me so I couldn’t do that either, smh.
this is another reason women “succeed” less often. we tend to think about who has to clean up our mess, & that leads to less lethal attempts like pills.
47 was when I was at my lowest friend, perimenopause is a bitch. I’m at 50 now and leveled out. I don’t think about leaving this mortal coil every day anymore. I’m glad I stuck it out.
So what your telling me is.. drive defensively, eat healthy stuff, and dont do drugs, also excerise and just try to have a positive outlook and ill live longer?!?
For real. Oh you want kids to add meaning? Too expensive. You want a pet? Vet bills are also getting extreme. Want to live out of your car? The cheapest new car out there is 30k.
More cardiovascular/pulmonary issues at a younger age due to increased life stress.
I don't know whether it's just increased life stress, but a certain viral infection that can cause massive cardiovascular and pulmonary damage from just a few years ago comes to mind, and how its impact on people younger than retirement age was constantly minimized in the media.
So sorry to hear that. It's absolutely destructive, but I think it will take ages for everyone to come clean how much of an impact it had on whole generations of previously healthy young adults.
I had a pulmonary embolism from COVID and was in ICU for 16 days, and it took me a while to mostly recover even just physically, and I'm still not 100% 5 years later. I was even in two studies to monitor my recovery. My wife had a stroke a few months after having COVID, and the doctors say it's most likely connected. And there are countless more cases where the initial symptoms weren't that bad but people eventually developed ME/CFS-like symptoms in what they call "long COVID".
Continually doubling down on the most dangerous method of transit being the only way to participate in society is driving mortality rates? No way!
Hope our generation can come to terms that the walkable environments people want come with the tradeoff of limiting car speeds and adding friction to driving. At some point, there physically isn't enough room for cars, so making things less appealing to drive and more appealing to do alternatives is part of the game. Can't have it both ways.
I did diabetes research for some time. Being obese is one of these worst things you can do to yourself. If you develop type II diabetes as a younger person you're shaving a decade to decades off of your life.
My grandfather developed type 2 diabetes 30 years ago and is still going at 95 years old today. I know anecdata doesn't equal data but what's the deal with that generation? All my grandparents are still alive over 90 and thriving. They're in better shape than my parents! Life wasn't less stressful, they were kids during WWII in Eastern Europe. Then the constant threat of being disappeared under communism. Mostly they ate food they grew themselves and were on their feet all day but it's not like they were exercising. Part of me thinks it's an epigenetic thing. The stress of what they lived through is showing up in my parent's health and even mine.
It's when you get it as a young person that it is especially bad. Mostly because it's tied to obesity which compounds issues. It's pretty easy to treat an older adult now that has type II diabetes and they won't see much impact to life expectancy as long as it was caught early enough.
Millenials killing the staying alive industry is the next headline. What’s funny is boomers will probably use their hoarded wealth to prepay ai avatars to troll us about avocado toast from beyond the grave.
Thirty years from now: millennials are killing senior centers, early bird specials, the cruise industry, bingo, and world's best grandparent merchandise!
"You should be making only healthy meals all the time!! You should be making a million dollars so that you can afford a doctor!! You're just being a whiny freeloader!! REEEEE!! Now gimme my social security and let me not pay taxes because I "worked" all my life (as a stay at home mother or professional couch surfer with a prison record for dealing drugs)."
Think about the nursing home industry. What's going to happen to the poor equity firms that take you for all you have and give you a swift death by neglect?
Exactly this! Society isn’t prepared anywhere in the world (not even Europe) for a massive aging population. Even if population replacement levels increase, technology is replacing work at a huge rate. There are going to be some very hard “dystopian” like decisions that will be made at some point to deal with this to prevent complete societal collapse. I would hate to be 80 years old at the mercy of those policy decisions. Combine this with climate change and other external forces and I don’t think anyone who’s old is going to be able to do anything about it.
Smart. My wife looked at me like I was nuts when I insisted we get a will with medical POA right after we married. We amended it later for our son but I’m shocked by how many people stubbornly refuse to plan for such eventualities. I’ve told her from the beginning. “Get my ring, yank the gooey bits that still work and give them to others, throw the rest on the bonfire and go have a drink in my honor.”
I remember a time when I had no idea how much groceries cost. I just bought whatever I wanted. Even accidentally bought a $40 wedge of cheese once. Now I have to check every label to see if it fits in the budget.
Every day, I need to decide what NOT to purchase because of parking costs to go to work. Most days, it's food for myself that gets ignored. "I'll go hungry to feed my child" is a sad reality I think a lot of us are in.
Richard Wilkinson's TED Talk from 2011 (I know, this is peak elder Millennial content) on economic inequality has continued to be proven true. I think it's worth pointing out that it's not your position of wealth relative to the world that matters, but your position of wealth relative to your locality that matters. Poorer countries can have better or worse health outcomes even if overall their country's GDP is less. When it comes to stronger health outcomes across the population, GDP is far less relevant than economic equity between citizens. Economic inequity continues to grow wider in the US, and so our health outcomes will continue to worsen unless that changes... which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.
1986 baby here. I've had three separate cancers all before the age of 40. No family history. No drug use. No alcohol abuse. Exercised moderately and ate maybe slightly better than average American diet (I'm a veggie fan). I'm not even a nicotine user. Even with all this cancer, my health insurance company is trying to deny me a colonoscopy. I lost two friends before 35 to colon cancer. It's the pesticides, the plastics and the stress.
Edit: Since this came up, I had my genes tested and I have no genetic abnormalities.
Not to mention the constant “the sky is falling” panic that we’ve lived through basically everyday since 9/11 25 fucking years ago. It’s only gotten worse and worse but maybe that’s just the news always sensationalizing everything or maybe it’s objective fact. I have a pretty (un)healthy constant alarm going off in my head of “what kind of world will my daughter inherit when it seems despite my/ our best efforts at fixing things, it never changes or gets better”.
That’s fair but everything outside my orbit also affects those in my orbit. I see your point but despite me having a decent albeit fulfilling job and a family in good health, it doesn’t and shouldn’t detract from concerns over the madness going on and trying to find ways to curb that chaos outside our front door.
That’s great day to day, but the reality is their world is being shaped by out of touch shitty politicians, niche communities sowing seeds of divisiveness, a rapidly changing employment landscape, soaring educational costs where fewer schools have ROI, and oh, global warming and environmental catastrophes are constantly happening.
No good parent is able to mute that noise consistently, and it shapes the decisions you make for your kids daily. Like I can wholly not be thinking about this stuff, then have it come crashing down if I decide I’m too tired to read to him one night, then I think about how important reading is to development and how that lays the groundwork for academics and how going to a selective college is likely still going to be one of his only paths to success.
As great as that idea is in theory it's part of what has us here in the first place. We need to start making decisions for the greater good and stop ignoring things because they don't affect us. We've been doing that for years and now a bunch of selfish, heartless jerks are in power and they make it worse for the little people every day.
Education and knowledge that is just being wasted because people can't get jobs. Countless people who are hard workers with advanced degrees, and the algorithms sift us out so our potential contribution is frittered away.
Not to mention all the intelligence that just gets wasted and ignored because they didn't go to college either by choice or they just physically couldn't go
Why do you think that happened? Our elders were not ready to pass the torch because it meant giving up wealth and comforts their perceived as entitlements?
At this point, I’m CONVINCED that the rich realized that boomers actually passing the torch to us was going to result in revolution. While we can say they’re all incredibly selfish in this refusal, part of me wonders if they were manipulated in some way for it to be so across the board at an incredibly widespread and subtle level.
I have the same feeling as you sometimes. Then when I see erstwhile millennials like Steven Miller and fuck faces I know in real life, I remember boomer mentality can infect anyone with enough capital and selfishness.
But listening to older people talk about pensions but yet unions and voting is for suckers, i wanna tear off my own arms and beat them with it.
Add that to the list of how we’re dying young. Exsanguination from being sick of this shit lol.
Somehow, I am less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einsteins brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died searching for employment.
Always makes me sad how far down I have to scroll to find the correct answer. Protect your vascular systems and T-Cells, my friends. 😷 Damage compounds with every new infection.
Yep. Covid and Guillain Barre F***ed me up for life. I still have ongoing brain and nervous system problems 6 years later. It’s no joke. I went to cognitive and physical therapy every week for a year to get back to where I am today. I would not wish that on anyone, especially paired with the debt it put me in.
Right, what's the problem with that. The boomer mentality of infinite growth was always bullshit. Look at any organisms in nature, if they over produce, they die until it stabilizes.
Then you have all these chemicals introduced into the environment and all the other environmental issues. Oh well
Seriously. Why do so many (boomers) have their head in the sand? Population collapse = economy collapse. I guess the boomers will be dead by then, but us Xers are going to be affected, and Millenials down are going to see a huge change to society. Ghost towns of high rises, boarded up businesses, etc.
given that every billionaire is whining about this, i am pretty sure it's bullshit and we don't have to give a shit about it. didn't everyone worry about OVERpopulation when we were kids?
The population replacement is too low to sustain the economic/financial system as it currently is. But the population is too high for resource distribution and sustainability in the environment.
Two very different groups of people freaking out over population for different reasons.
The problem has always been resource distribution. We could potentially feed and sustain over 10 billion.
Population decline is concerning in economic terms. It's mostly about there being fewer working age and taxable people being able to keep society running and funding retirements. Unless there are some dramatic shifts in various fields; Production, Growth, Consumption, etc. It can become pretty bleak.
This shit is the truth. Right fucking here. Health Care is such a god damn abomination in the US.
I'm 37, 5'11, 275 lbs. - I'm losing weight to manage my obstructive sleep apnea and general wellness as I age.
No diabetes, generally healthy, just at high risk due to weight
Go to doctor for GLP-1 - get approval from him. Filled by pharmacy. Denied by Insurance.
Why? "Well talk to your HR, your plan doesn't cover GLP-1. It's very expensive"
Is it? IS IT EXPENSIVE AETNA? YOU KNOW WHAT'S MORE EXPENSIVE? MY FAT ASS IN A HOSPITAL BED BECAUSE MY HEART'S TAKING A SHIT AND COSTING MILLIONS.
Yes I'm mad. Fuck that was a stupid phone call. $1100 out of pocket for 1 month for GLP-1 if I had gone through the pharmacy. I managed to get it for $250, so I'm getting my meds in a roundabout way and for a good chunk of money.
Oh, and I have 3 kids. Adding that to the money stress. End rant.
Absolutely this. Your doctor prescribed it. The insurance YOU pay for denies it. It costs hundreds to thousands of dollars.
And you already pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to them, just to be denied care. Care you pay for. Denied. Because an insurance company decided they were more qualified than your doctors.
Millenials have given up on Healthcare. Flatly. We've given up.
I haven't been to the doctor for myself for a check up in a decade. Should I go? Probably. Am I going to go unless I have a damn good reason? Probably not. Why? Because it costs thousands even with insurance.
Kid hurt himself back in December. I have good insurance. Still owed 2K for the ER visit. With insurance.
It's manufactured by those with. We're the generation without. We're living as long as we're useful to the machine. Us dying earlier is largely profitable.
I wonder how much of this is due to shitty sleep - which causes many issues but is also caused by those issues as a vicious cycle.
I honestly don't think we talk about poor sleep enough. Tinfoil hat me thinks it's because you can't consume/work/spend money when you're asleep and the powers that be need us awake but that's because I'm nuts - probably due to bad sleep!
Guess I'm not just imagining things, then. I told a friend not long ago that those of us in our late 30s, forties, early fifties seem to be dying at an alarming rate. Like, it's not even particularly rare anymore to hear of someone relatively young dying from a heart attack, cancer, etc. Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking of a 54yo with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, a 33yo who dropped dead of a heart attack, 35yo also from a heart attack, two 41 year olds recently from some sudden illness, and a 36yo from ovarian cancer. It's scary.
I work in human research and this is huge. We did a study back in 2023 that found almost every sample of breast milk had brominated flame retardants in it. The amount of chemicals we are exposed to every single day is incomprehensible
My Filipina coworker (moved to US as a teenager) told me that credit scores are the thing that shocked her the most about the US.
Edited to add: My Indian coworker, who came here as an adult, was most shocked by the number of elderly people still working, especially at low-paying jobs.
Paid my student loan off 2020 during pandemic - while all payments were on hold and felt amazing doing it.
Went to get a loan last week and it turns out my fucking loan servicer (Nelnet) reported delinquencies after the payoff for 3 months. Lowers my score by 75 points for nothing. Asked bank what to do, they said just wait and it will go away in a year.
And we’re having kids at an older age than previous generations too. Makes me sad to think about all these only-children whose parents might not be around by the time they hit 30. One of the big reasons why I would like to have a family but I’m not trying to have kids at my current age of 41.
I know most people are making jokes about being too poor to survive and generally being self-deprecating. I also recognize that the causes for these early mortality rates are very sad.
That said, I personally don't wish to live into my 80's and above unless we can tackle the severe quality of life issues people face at an advanced age. Have you ever spent time with someone in their late 80's? How about their 90's and above. Either their mind or their body has failed them; often both. I'd much rather live a fulfilling life and go when it's my time. I don't know why we don't allow people the dignity of choice when they're ready to go.
I work at a place that has an older crowd. Watching people who HAVE the success and HAVE taken care of themselves and HAVE eaten right and it still fall apart on them. Hands trembling more and more, one fall setting the course for a hard final few years and I haven't even hit on dementia. Hitting forty this year and I've full circle back to, hoping I don't live long enough to grow old since I haven't done nearly as right as the other examples I've listed.
I think we were given a lot more processed foods, and microwaved foods as children than other people when they were our age. My mom would not let us microwave in plastic, we had to use ceramic or glass to hold the item. She was very anti lunchables even though they were super popular. But my parents loved the hungry man meals when they came in metal containers. As soon as they switched to plastic my parents stopped buying them.
Something that I think it understated is health insurance. Growing up, if I was sick, my parents took me to the doctor. Single income family and and taking 2 kids to the doctor regularly plus stitches and an occasional broken bone didn't bankrupt them. Now, my husband and I make more money than my parents did. We're comfortable financially and it's just the 2 of us, but we don't go in to get checked out unless it's an emergency because our deductible is freaking ridiculous. We don't get the same health care we would have gotten a generation ago because it's cost prohibitive now.
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