The ’80s were a weirdly dissonant time when it came to health. Dive into the SLM archives, and you’ll find full-page ads for beer and cigarettes next to ones for vitamins and “Energetics” classes.
Reporter Kathy Flood summed up this clash of habits in an April 1982 article on the aerobics craze. “Back in the old days,” she wrote, “health ‘nuts’ and religious fanatics reminded us that the body was a temple that housed the soul, and everyone laughed and warmed up the pizza smothered in artificial cheese food and went through a pack of Salems by the time the TV stations signed off. Now no one’s laughing.”
Later, the feature “How to Live a Long Life” explored the new field of “biopsychosocial” medicine, or “the role that attitude—and genes—play in physical health.” The story led with an anecdote about a meat-cutter named Norman, who expired of a heart attack at age 38, just like his dad. The article quotes Norman’s psychiatrist, who explains that his mind—specifically, his guilt—killed him; he had no evidence of actual heart disease. Stress, the writer pointed out, can affect the higher nervous system—and thus affect the electrical activity of the heart.
Though SLM’s reporting on mind-body medicine was prescient—particularly regarding the dangers of stress—we were still stating the obvious on tobacco in January 1987, when we reported the National Academy of Sciences had discovered that low-tar cigarettes weren’t any safer: “The study concluded that the only way to minimize danger from cigarettes was to quit.”
That issue’s pink-and-turquoise cover featured another aerobics queen, and on page 49, Cheryl Jarvis interviewed a range of experts for the article “Future Fitness.” “I thought the fitness craze was a fad,” admitted Bruce Clark, an exercise physiologist at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Restaurateur Lee Redel opined that by 2000, salt and sugar would be obsolete, along with white flour, whole milk, cream, and butter. He got some things right: a public smoking ban and the decline in beef consumption, along with a rise in “foodstuffs made of soy.”
Dr. William Masters—yes, of Masters and Johnson—swore that “a reversible, effective contraceptive for both men and women” would be everywhere by the turn of the century. His optimism was admirable, if misguided (though perhaps he’d be happy to know his work went on to inspire a TV show—and that the dashing Welsh actor who plays him has a full head of hair).
Ophthalmologist Dr. James Bobrow had some of the most interesting—and in odd ways, most accurate—health predictions. “In 15 years…living contact lenses, now in a highly experimental stage, will become commonplace,” he told us. “Human eye tissue will be taken out after death and given shape, then freeze-dried, like coffee. Ophthalmologists will be able to send out for a cornea of a certain size and power and sew it to the patient’s eye.” He also predicted better drugs for the treatment of glaucoma, including “a non-euphoriating marijuana derivative. These things will happen,” he insisted. And they did—they just manifested as Lasik and medical marijuana.
