U.S. life expectancy ranks roughly 55th in the world, just behind Panama, according to the United Nations. After generations of improvement, life expectancy in this country has barely budged since the 2010s.

Some evidence points to distinct phenomena, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and rising death rates from drug overdoses, suicides, homicides, traffic accidents and cardiovascular disease. But underlying a lot of that, say researchers, is also the growing prevalence of stress.

Demographic data suggest there was a key turning point with baby boomers born between 1950 and 1959. After them, subsequent groups have experienced worse expectancy outcomes, most notably late Gen Xers and elder millennials (born between 1970 and 1985), who have suffered more deaths from cardiovascular disease, cancer, especially colon cancer, and external causes.

There isn't enough data yet on later generations to know how they will fare.

Body of Knowledge

An infant's brain almost triples in size during the first year of life. By age 3, a child's brain is roughly 80% the size of an adult brain and will continue to grow until the person's mid-to-late 20s. Around age 40, adult brains begin to lose one gram (about one-quarter of a teaspoon) of mass per year. At age 90, the typical human brain is at least 100 grams lighter than a typical 40-year-old brain.

Counts

10: Percentage of U.S. carbon emissions that health care is responsible for, which translates to approximately 5 million tons (Source: Stanford University)

Doc Talk

Bungee jumper: Hospital slang for a patient who pulls on his catheter tube

Phobia of the Week

Lalophobia: Fear of talking, otherwise known as that of which we do not speak

Best Medicine

A car hits a man. Arriving at the scene, a paramedic asks, "Are you comfortable?"

The man replies, "I make a good living."

Hypochondriac's Guide

Visual agnosia is a neurological condition in which people do not recognize viewed objects, people or places by sight alone, even though their vision is unimpaired. They can see something, but they cannot identify it, name it or describe its use, though that can change once they touch it or hear it.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) famously wrote about such a case in his book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales" (1985).

The condition is very rare, with pure forms affecting less than 1% of neurological patients. It typically presents following brain damage from a stroke or tumor, or as a symptom of neurodegenerative diseases like posterior cortical atrophy.

Observation

"The French invented the only known cure for dandruff. It is called the guillotine." — English writer P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)

Medical History

This week in 1838, the first U.S. patent for a furniture caster was issued to Philos Blake, Eli Whitney Blake and John A. Blake of New Haven, Connecticut (No. 821). The patent was titled a "mode of constructing casters and applying them to bedsteads."

Though technically more of an engineering achievement, casters have prevented untold back injuries that might have otherwise occurred from actually lifting furniture.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that's hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore.

In 1999, the Ig Nobel Prize in science education went to the Kansas State Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution any more than they believe in Newton's theory of gravitation, Faraday's and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism or Pasteur's theory that germs cause disease.

Well, at least nobody is questioning the value of vaccines.

Self-Exam

Q: Remember the old classroom song about "the foot bone's connected to the leg bone; the leg bone's connected to the ..."? How many bones in the human body are not connected to at least one other bone? And by the way, there are actually 26 bones in the foot.

A: Only one bone in the human body is not connected to any other bone: the hyoid bone located in the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage. The U-shaped hyoid bone supports the tongue, aids in swallowing and is essential to speech, but it is anchored by muscles and ligaments rather than to other bones.

Last Words

"How did the Mets do today?" — Onetime WWII spy and Major League Baseball player Moe Berg (1902-1972). If he was asked the question today, the answer would likely kill him. (At the time of this writing, the New York Mets had one of the worst records in the MLB.)

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Matt Bennett at Unsplash