Looking back at my family history - the generations I was lucky enough to know - I’ve noticed a clear pattern: each generation seems to live about 5-10 years less than the one before. My family has lived on the same land for more than seven generations, so this pattern feels very real to me.
My great-grandmothers, on both my mother’s and father’s sides, lived to be over 90. Born in the early 1900s, they had several children, usually before the age of 30, and spent their lives in constant movement - taking care of the home, raising kids, working the land. Their lives followed the rhythm of the seasons, the day and night cycle, and their natural stages of life. They survived poverty, war, and hunger. But they lived on - strong, resilient, and deeply grateful for peace when it finally came.
My grandparents lived shorter lives, around 80 years. They were born during the war, in the mid-20th century. Their childhood was shaped by hunger, but their youth came during the golden years of agriculture in the Soviet Union. The country was changing fast - food became more available, “chemistry” entered their lives, television appeared, and travel became possible. But with all these new comforts came new kinds of stress - lack of sleep, toxins, and processed foods. My grandfather was an agronomist and worked closely with chemicals. Later in life, both he and my grandmother suffered from liver and kidney problems. He died from cancer; she from liver failure before reaching 80.
My other grandmother is still alive. I’m lucky to still hear stories from her - stories from 60 years ago, told by someone who lived then. But her health story is hard: Crohn’s disease at 30, breast cancer, and skin cancer. She spent 10 years working at a tobacco factory, breathing chemical fumes for eight hours a day. Many of her co-workers are gone now, most after fighting cancer, cirrhosis, or fibrosis. What saved her, I believe, was quitting that job. She returned to a simple life - her home, her garden, her church. Without much money, most of her food came from her own garden: seasonal vegetables, fermented foods, simple meals, and very little overeating. Crohn’s disease forced her to be selective, and that may have kept her alive.
My parents’ generation grew up surrounded by even more food and comfort. They didn’t have to work in the fields as much; studying became more important, and life turned more sedentary. My mother remembers the smell of “dust” from her childhood - it was a pesticide sprayed everywhere to protect crops. She remembers playing near warehouses full of chemicals, the ground covered in toxic powder. Decades later, those places still exist, buried under soil and touched by rain, slowly seeping into the water the village drinks. No one connects these old chemicals to today’s illnesses - but maybe they should.
In the last ten years, my parents have lost many of their peers, often in their 50s or 60s. Liver failure, kidney disease, but also depression and suicide. Chronic inflammation, poor detoxification, gut problems - all tied together.
For more than five years now, my parents have been trying to live differently - not changing everything at once, but slowly eating better, ignoring marketing tricks, and prioritizing sleep. The results are visible. They feel better, and so do the people around them.
My generation grew up in yet another world. We lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, watched our parents adjust to a new reality, and became the first to use computers, then mobile phones, and now AI. Our diet includes many foods our grandparents never ate - cheese, avocados, exotic sweets, pizza, burgers. We sleep less, spend less time outside, and are losing touch with real human connection. The sense of touch, smell, the presence of another person - these are powerful brain stimulators, and we’re losing them.
In the end, I think we’ve all done our best. Progress is a natural and exciting part of being human. The key is to choose wisely - to know what supports us and what harms us. To say “no” to what brings long-term damage, even if it feels convenient today. Our ancestors didn’t know what was slowly poisoning them. We do. Or at least, we have the chance to find out. Mistakes happen - what matters is to learn from them and have the courage to stop what doesn’t serve us.
