War and health: Why do disease rates drop sharply during war time?

Visuals by Stanka / written by Alen Mischael Vukelić

What is it that humans have changed most in their everyday lives, let’s say in the past 200 years? People will come up with answers like, for instance, their housing, their work, their relationships and so on. Some will mention technology as something that has significantly changed human existence.

All these answers are technically true, but are all tied to a perception that is influenced by one thing:

It is better now than it was back then

If we draw a picture in our mind of the 18th or 19th century, we definitely wouldn’t want to switch times and go back there. Today, people have better housing, better education, better health care, and many other things, but none of this would fit as an answer to the question:

What is it that humans have changed most in their everyday lives in the past 200 years? It’s pretty hard to answer this question, because we can only mention things that are within our perception and our knowledge, which were, of course, passed on to us from previous generations.

We see it as OUR understanding, but it isn’t. Parents, schools and the media gave us what we call our knowledge and all we can do is to rely on it as being accurate.

Affluence

Our grandfathers and grandmothers told us about food shortages during world war two, but rarely about sicknesses. Wounds from fighting yes, but seldom sicknesses. It seems, as if there was no time for cancer and other diseases during war.

Somehow they spread in times of peace and affluence. But isn’t it that we are supposed to live a better life when there is no war going on? At least, that is what everybody is saying: No war = good times, war = bad times – or – war=bad health, no war=perfect health.*

There is lots of data available on this quite controversial subject, where in all war affected countries disease rates were dropping sharply. Naturally, there can be a discussion, if this data is credible or not, but there can be no discussion on whether the disease rates were growing or not after the war, because they were and that is well documented.

Epidemic

Surely a not too hefty word for describing the death rates of cancer every year. We are having more doctors, specialists, researchers, hospitals and equipment than ever before, and still year after year the rates are going up continuously.

The picture gets distorted, because there are more and more cancer patients who live longer due to new developed drugs, but the overall rate of new cancer patients is rising, and the overall death rate as well.

Cancer is normal

The probably most perverted motto of doctors lately, and another word for resignation. They have admitted defeat, but don’t know how to call it. Just as politicians usually do when caught in a situation of no exit.

Another fashion is to blame it on age. Nice try, but why does this observation work only in western or westernized countries? Is it the western cancer gene? Why is it then that so many young people are getting cancer, increasing in variety and numbers?

Is it possible that those old people actually caught the disease at young age, but developed it maliciously at old age? Why is it that in many Asian and African countries old people incomparably less often die of cancer than in western countries? What are they doing differently? If it were the genes, then many of our ancestors must have died from cancer. Was it like that?

The ability to respond

We believe our parents, our schools, our doctors. What if they are wrong? Is it completely impossible? This Goliath of knowledge, which has accumulated over decades, what if it were all wrong? Like an error or mistake. It happened many times before that people were wrong and had to admit it, why not now?

Just because doctors or researchers say that it is impossible, then they must be right? Does it mean that they are entitled to such a huge responsibility, because they went to medical school? We paid for their education through our system, and now we expect them to heal us when we get sick, but what if they can’t do it? What then? Do we wait until they find a solution? For how long?

For now, it has been already a hundred years, and it is never too late, but for someone who is sick now, it is far too late. Perhaps nature or God want us to suffer and there is no way out of it. But why should they? They don’t function as humans do, they don’t make anybody suffer just for the sake of it. Or do they?

What is it that humans have changed most in their everyday lives in the past 200 years?

It’s stress. We work all day, have kids and bills, and yoga courses, and afternoon lessons, and we live fast, very fast, much faster than our ancestors did. We have problems! They didn’t have problems! They didn’t know what it is to have all this stuff on your head that we have to deal with everyday!

No? That’s true, not our stuff, but they had wars, epidemics, hunger and an abusive governing system to deal with, which wasn’t really that UNSTRESSY either – but they did eat a much better diet than we do. No affluence, but abundance in whole foods, mostly based on plants, and rarely on animals or dairy products.

Why do we underestimate this fact so much? It is by far the biggest change that humans have made and still the denial is so normal as if we had eaten like this the whole time. We did not, and even our recent ancestors have been much sicker than people who – thousands of years ago – naturally lived on a raw food diet, which had provided them steady health benefits without hospitals and without billion-dollar research projects.

Can it be that simple? Answer: Must it be complicated?! Heavy issues must have a heavy solution; it can’t be otherwise. Is it possible that all these people are wrong, completely misled and lost in the wrong direction? It’s quite possible.

This is no recipe. It is simply going back to the roots; that’s all, because it is insane to continue doing something which obviously does not work, even if the majority keeps running in the same direction. We can stop as individuals and look, look well, and see for ourselves. We don’t need any entitlement. We are entitled by birth to keep an eye on ourselves and equipped with the ability of observation for a reason.

Is that all? No. But it is very important.

*This short video directly links to my comment on war and health. It is always a great surprise to see that the truth is always hidden in our most common taboos.

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