What medical conditions seem more common now than when you were growing up?

Peanut allergy.

Illnesses have not been invented recently, just with so much more knowledge they are being diagnosed and (hopefully) treated.
The Medics have always hated any disease/illness they cannot treat and cure, so many of these were many mentioned in the past. Think about the recent publicity on MND as a case in point.
My Dad suffered through much of his adult life with 'piles', they would actually bleed badly and he had to use a Sanitary towel to protect his clothes. He was in a job which did not pay if he did not work, and could never afford to take the time off to have these seen to in hospital He was in a very manual job. Was never talked about with anyone.

Sepsis as it is called now, and dangers recognised had the name 'blood poisening' in the past and did kill many people, particularly prior to the time of anti-biotics.

Cancer was 'The Big C', only mentioned in whispers and killed regularly.

I can also remember those horrific machine iron lungs which kept polio patients alive in them. Thank goodness vaccines prevent this dreadful illness now.

Indeed, far from more illnesses now, vaccines have helped to actually get rid some of them.

As for conditions like autism etc. it has always been there, unrecognised and undiagnosed and definitely untreated. Children were seen as naughty, and either sent to special school for such or kept locked up at home, or many in institutions.

Brain tumours seem to be increasing. An interesting article in the Guardian (refuted the following week) appeared in 2018 positing a link between brain cancers and mobile phone usage.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-cancer-inconvenient-truths

Sex, cancer, death were all hushed up

Yes, they were, except in some ways, death was more accepted.

Neighbours came in to ‘lay out’ my granny after she died in the 50’s, I assume she laid in state in the house until the funeral, which back then probably happened quite soon after she died.

Don’t imagine many are ‘laid out’ by friends or neighbours now, but I could be wrong.

My grandmother and her four sisters all had what was known then as senile dementia. Those of us who lived with it knew it was a lot more than being "a bit doolally'. My father had a long-term genetic neurological disease. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was in the 1950s and 60s.
We didn't mince words about illness in our family. It was everyday reality.

Some diseases have changed names. I never heard of cellulitis or Polymyalgia until recently yet they must have existed when we were young.
I never knew a child with asthma or dangerous allergies or autism but they were not diagnosed. Doctors were gods and never questioned and people were completely ignorant of how their bodies were made or worked.
Sex, cancer, death were all hushed up.

Daddima

M0nica

I do not think they were under reported just under talked about. There used to be what was considered a decent reticence about discussing health problems.

Cancer was seen as a death sentence, so not discussed, acid reflus, was called indigestion and dealt with, often unsuccessfully with Rennies and equivalents.

There was certainly much less Type 2 diabetes. We know that. Dementia was a bit like indigestion some old people went a bit doolally and were looked after in the family. Of course, a shorter lifespan meant that many people died before they suffered from it.

The other thing is that there are now remedies for so many of these diseases. There are far more effective drugs for acid reflux, thyroid problems.

In 1950 life expectancy was 69. In 2025 it is 82. That is an increase of 23 years. However part of this is accounted for by the fall in infant mortality from 32 per 1,000 births in 1950 to 2 in 2025

I do remember my friend’s granny being ‘a bit doolally’, but now, just off the top of my head, I can think of at least twelve people of my age (74) and younger who have dementia, and knew many more when the Bodach had dementia before he died at 74.
I also don’t remember any neurodivergent children at school with me, and only one or two at school with my children, but nowadays I know six children with autism who are non verbal and require a lot of support. That’s not counting some of my grandchildren’s friends who are on the spectrum ( one of whom my grandson and his pals refer to as having a ‘touch of the ‘tism, all the while supporting and including him).

The expression used by your grandson and his pals ( a touch of the 'tism) has made me smile.
For all the criticism that they seem to get, I can't help thinking that today's youngsters can be far more inclusive and accepting of differences than my own, and particularly my parents' generation were.

M0nica

I do not think they were under reported just under talked about. There used to be what was considered a decent reticence about discussing health problems.

Cancer was seen as a death sentence, so not discussed, acid reflus, was called indigestion and dealt with, often unsuccessfully with Rennies and equivalents.

There was certainly much less Type 2 diabetes. We know that. Dementia was a bit like indigestion some old people went a bit doolally and were looked after in the family. Of course, a shorter lifespan meant that many people died before they suffered from it.

The other thing is that there are now remedies for so many of these diseases. There are far more effective drugs for acid reflux, thyroid problems.

In 1950 life expectancy was 69. In 2025 it is 82. That is an increase of 23 years. However part of this is accounted for by the fall in infant mortality from 32 per 1,000 births in 1950 to 2 in 2025

I do remember my friend’s granny being ‘a bit doolally’, but now, just off the top of my head, I can think of at least twelve people of my age (74) and younger who have dementia, and knew many more when the Bodach had dementia before he died at 74.
I also don’t remember any neurodivergent children at school with me, and only one or two at school with my children, but nowadays I know six children with autism who are non verbal and require a lot of support. That’s not counting some of my grandchildren’s friends who are on the spectrum ( one of whom my grandson and his pals refer to as having a ‘touch of the ‘tism, all the while supporting and including him).

I think the same illnesses and conditions were around, but as Monica said, cancer was not talked of. It was usually diagnosed so late that treatment was more or less futile.

The main difference to me is that today a lot of medical conditions have names, whereas whe we were children they were just lumped together under the heading of Old Age, Bad back, or wrongly diagnosed, like asbetosis that was frequently thought to be asthma.

Others were misnamed because the patient, like my grand-uncle, maintained stoutly that his complaint was bronchitis, because he did not wish to think of the real cause, which was mustard gas posioning in France in 1917.

Margiknot

I suspect ADHD has always been around but first children now get a higher level of adult supervision so are less likely to get into difficult or potentially fatal situations ( so survive to pass on the adage genes) and also modern life is less suited to people with impulsiveness or difficulty sitting at a desk.

Marginot I think absolutely the opposite to you, and I write as family who can trace neurodiversity in the family backwards and forwards several generations.

I think one of the problems with ADHD now compared with the past is that children then lived a more structured life with times for getting up going to bed, eating meals - eaten as a family. The same at school, life was more organised and this gave those with ADHD an external structure they did not have internally. I was 'Fidgetty Phil who can't sit still', the classic description of ADHD children in the past and while I would be wiggling and jiggling when sitting (DH says this still describes me) I would not get out of my chair at school because I knew it would get me in to serious trouble. The same at home, Most ADHD children can see the things they do that cause problems and develop their own coping mechanisms.

The problem now is children live such unstructured lives, eating what they want, when they want it, going to bed as and when, with phones to distract and hyper concentrate them education is more informal, Life is full of distractions and distraction is one of the biggest problems when you have ADHD.

My ADHD son could not wait to get to secondary school and learn properly. ie sit in a classroom without other children talking and moving around him all the time and just listen to a teacher. He found that difficult enough, and his head was always in the clouds, but it was not as difficult as learning in a classroom with other children moving around and talking together and speaking to him.

The reason he eventually went to private school at 11 was because the Head master of our local secondary school came to talk to parents of children intending to send their children to the school and told us with pride that the teaching methods children were used to in junior school were used in the first 2 years at secondary school. We knew this would make the concentration problems worse so we sent him to a private school with more structured teaching where teachers, while not knowing about ADHD, recognised a child with concentration problems and had their solutions

I suspect ADHD has always been around but first children now get a higher level of adult supervision so are less likely to get into difficult or potentially fatal situations ( so survive to pass on the adage genes) and also modern life is less suited to people with impulsiveness or difficulty sitting at a desk.

Don't forget that the vocabulary being used nowadays, did not exist until comparatively (in medical terms) recently. Neurodiversity, autism, ADHD and so on ad infinitum.

@Fara56 sepsis was septicaemia. Tetanus is lockjaw.

ME
Food allergies
Obesity in children

Surely Sepsis was then known as blood poisoning or even lock jaw sometimes Likely it was even more prevalent than now. But all sorts of things could have been put on death certificates

MawsRosie

Plevey08

Multiple autoimmune diseases
Inflammatory bowel problems
Depression and anxiety
Obesity
Migraine
Sepsis
Hemaroids

Oh haemorrhoids existed OK only they were called piles!

I agree with most of the diseases or conditions mentioned by GnsNetters except for haemorrhoids to which my late parents were martyrs and which seemed to be the disease that all their age group suffered from.
My OH has just opined that all these diseases were around it was just that the medical profession didn't know what they were.Basically you caught or suffered from something unknown and eventually died of it.🤣🤣🤣
On the bright side he reminded me of all the diseases now eliminated or controlled that people used to die of ; polio; TB( my late Aunt Rose died of that); Whooping Cough. My late Aunt Rose , incidentally passed an immunity to TB through my late mother ( who used to keep company with her under a table during the WW2 bombing raids) to my elder sister. The immunity stopped there unfortunately and I had to have the vaccine.

Very overweight people.

While I do think that people tend to talk about things more, I think there's more of just about everything around these days.

Yes Bluebell , people alluded to things but they were never named. Words like breast/cancer/depression rarely spoken or in hushed tones like the Les Dawson sketches.

How sad what happened on the Channel Islands.

My friend in primary school was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes age 10. She was on insulin but died in her twenties due to kidney failure.
ME is a new condition and definitely more adhd and autism diagnosis.

SpinDriftCoastal

Primrose53

I caught part of a report on TV this morning regarding lots of illnesses that are affecting young people now. One was diabetes and I was thinking about when I was at school. Nobody at our primary school had diabetes and I never heard of anybody at grammar school having it.

My grandparents lived in the Channel Islands during the German Occupation in WW2. Before the Germans invaded diabetics had insulin. When they invaded the insulin ran out and they died.

My grandparents were there too. My Granny told me the Germans took control of all medication on the island and when GP's ran out they had to go, cap in hand, to the German authorities and ask for more and it wasn't always given, hence the deaths.

Fallingstar

Autism and many other mental health issues.

Autism is NOT a mental health issue. It is a neurodevelopmental disorder.

^I think there are now more allergies and more mental health problems but that is surely down to more diagnosis and treatment

^

I wouldnt say that is true of allergies, personally.

Were there really less or were they not talked about and many not even recognised by doctors ?

The word cancer was not ever said out loud
My Nan told me her mum died from rheumatism !!! And her dad from a broken heart because after her mum died her dad took a very young wife who ran off with his money and his heart !!!

How about the illnesses that have been practically wiped out like polio, whooping cough. scarlet fever, and others that people can now live with that were death sentences back then My granddad died from a heart attack he had been treated with tablets, he would have had a stent put in now
I think there are now more allergies and more mental health problems but that is surely down to more diagnosis and treatment

Type 1 diabetes is not more common, as SpinDriftCoastal's post says.
It is not related in any way to obesity.
There was a school in my area for "delicate children", which would have included diabetics, as it would have been difficult to manage any medical conditions in a busy classroom before the days of Teaching Assistants.