Finns' ability to function is weakening (HS). Finnish Fpa and THL confirms my warnings from 2019. The case for language and nutrition

Finland's The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Fpa) and institute for health and welfare (THL) warns that since 2010, Finnish people's physical and mental health have deteriorated. One key issue is nutrition. I brought this up in early 2019, and in January 2020, I was invited to the department of food and nutrition at Helsingfors university, to give a talk about the future of sustainable food - the case for mental health. Since then, Helsingfors Police, Ministry of education and culture, Finland's child commissary, and other sources point to Finnish children's cognitive impairment, and women's relational aggressiveness, and Alzheimer's. I argue, with support from international research data, that the cause for the prevalence of mental issues in Finland could be traced to (1) the suppression of Swedish, and (2) the implementation of the proposals from North Karelia Project. 9 pages.

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden) or MobilePay (Finland).

Finland's Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Fpa) annually conduct a review of Finnish people's physical and mental health. They claim that since 2010, Finnish people's ability to work and function has deteriorated. It is predicted to continue to deteriorate if the government doesn't start acting now. Finnish people's lack of work performance ability is attributed to issues with mental health. Fpa/THL also mention:

• obesity.
  
  
• poor nutrition.

Link to source.

It's important to understand that this is nothing new, but rather that the people at Fpa/THL have ignored the obvious.

In January 2020, I was invited to the Department of Food and Nutrition at the University of Helsingfors, to open that year's seminar series for experts on Food and Nutrition: What’s the Prospect of sustainable Food? The Case for mental health. During my talk at the department of food and nutrition, I challenged the prevailing Finnish view that saturated fats cause cardiovascular events, and I argued that the reason Finnish people have health issues, paradoxically, is The North Karelia Project. My claims cause some academic heat - some colleagues disagreed and some agreed.

In support of my claim, here are some of the references I used: Ede (2019), Howard et al. (2006), Teicholz (2014), and Ramsden et al. (2016). The commonality between these studies is the rejection of the diet heart-hypothesis. These results are acknowledged by international experts, but rejected by Finnish nutrition people.

Finland has issues with physical and mental health, especially among women.

• In May 2020, media reported that after that acting prime minister Sanna Marin and her cabinet, Katri Kulmuni (Centre), Maria Ohisalo (Green), Li Andersson (Left Alliance), and Anna-Maja Henriksson (SFP) had imposed the Covid-19 lock-down, suicide rates in Finland increased by 15% (Yle News, 2020
  
  
• In November 2020, Eva Roos, at Folkhälsan, claimed that Finland had a child obesity epidemic.
  
  
• In August/September 2021, during the communal election in Helsingfors, I got in contact with some politicians. Most of them mentioned people's lack of mental health in their campaign, i.e. depression was souring.
  
  
• In April 2022, Helsingfors Police department said that Finnish women's relational aggressiveness (psychological violence) (Crick and Grotpeter, 1995; Hyde, 2005) is a huge issue. Note. Relational aggressiveness is part of Domestic violence, which is also dominated by women.
  
  
• In parallel to that, the media reported about a mother who murdered her 12-year old son. The social service had isolated the boy with the mother at a place they call 'an institution for women with mental issues' (Björkqvist, 2022).
  
  
• In May, 2022, a director at Finland's ministry of education and culture claimed that the PISA-ranking was misleading - Finnish kids fail reading comprehension and numeracy. The latter is crucial for instrumental and epistemic rational thinking.
  
  
• July, 2022, a mother in Borgå, 50 km east of Helsingfors, tried to kill her 5-year old son. The social service probably knew she had mental issues, because they were the ones who called the police. Despite the police breaking into the home, she continued to beat the little boy (Nyquist, 2022). Ergo. Another case where authorities knew the mother had mental issues, but didn't take measures to protect the child.
  
  
• In September, 2022, the minister of education, Li Andersson, warned that Finnish boys are failing school. And speaking to another minister, Ville Skinnari, he said that the simple jobs (n~600 000) that in a historical perspective gave these boys a chance, are gone.
  
  
• In October 2022, I mapped research on Alzheimer's. It showed  that Finland has the most cases per capita in the world (Österberg, 2022).
  
  
• In November 2022, at a conference about children's legal rights, Finland's Child Commissary, Elina Pekkarinen, said that 20 % of Finnish children and adolescents born 1997 or later, have mental issues (that is a staggering 265 000 young humans). Pekkarinen, who specializes in political science, claimed that the cause was carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and neuro-psychiatry.
  
  
• March 2023, Finland was still topping the suicide ranking in Fennoskandia and Denmark (the Nordic Countries except Iceland) (Österberg, 2023).
  
  
• April 2023, during a residents discussion organized by the city of Helsingfors in collaboration with an organization called Arbis, which provides education in Swedish, one researcher made the claim that “Swedish speaking Finns are happier and live longer” [sic].

Paradoxically, Finland has been ranked the world's happiest country by the United Nations for the sixth consecutive year. The claim is based on an inquiry distributed to 150 of the world's 195 countries. But the inquiry does not assess happiness but  Life satisfaction. And it's unclear whether the sample (n=1000) represents Finland's two major socio-cultures or not (the main author of the report refuses to answer that question). Based on the contradiction to the facts reported above, it's fair to say that the report is misleading.

That didn't stop Finnish politicians from cherry picking the UN report. One example is former acting prime minister Sanna Marin.

Link to source.

Why has this happened in Finland - is 2010 really the starting point?

It's a complex question, so the answer will not be finite, but rather a starting point for a discussion.

Language creates and sustains socio-culture. Nutrition is crucial to sustain physical and mental Health.

Part of the explanation goes back to when Finland became a civilization. During the Vendel period (540 - 750 AD), a socio-culture emerged in the area we now call Uppsala in Sweden, but at that time was called Östra (Eastern) Aros in the kingdom of Svitjod. Findings in Valsgärde (close to Uppsala), Haga borg in Janakkala south of Tavastehus, and Salme in Estonia, tells us of a trading and exploration culture that spread around the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic Sea. Eventually, the people living around today's Åbo asked to be included in that kingdom.

Little by little, Finland became the eastern part of Svitjod, which from 1384 was called Sweden. With the influence of Christianity, renaissance, science revolution, and enlightenment, the Swedish kingdom underwent an extraordinary development (McKneown, 2009; Widmalm, 2012).

But in parallel to this progress, tribes who spoke different Uralic languages, lived in the inland of Finland. In an effort to baptize these pagans, the Swedish priest Mikael Olofsson (1510 - 1557) made a first attempt to write a standardized version of these languages; three books, one for children, and two translations from the bible, was producers, as well as an list of Gods they worshiped. That's a marker for tribalism. Olofsson also changed his name to Agrikola (Mörne, 1918).

Henrik Porthan's (1737-1804), a fennophile and scholar at the Royal Academy in Åbo specializing in philosophy, who was very fond of myths and folk songs, went on to explore these myths and folk songs. This is a marker for romantic nationalism.

In 1808, Russia invaded the Swedish fortress Sveaborg (1748 - ). Two years later, the Fennoman movement started, likely an extension of Olofssons/Agrikola and Dr Porthan's efforts. The implication: the influence of renaissance, science revolution, and enlightenment, that became prevalent in Finland when the country was the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom, now started to be suppressed.

Today, only 47% of the Finns speak the language that brought enlightenment thinking to the Eastern part of the kingdom.  87% of the Finns speak the language which was imposed by Kreml and which brought about tribalism and romantic nationalism. Remember, staff at Helsingfors city claimed that Finns who speak Swedish have better health and live longer.

Another part of the explanation is nutrition. During the 1940s, the Swedish biochemist Haqvin Malmros (1895 - 1995), conducted a study on health. He took data from the Nordic countries as well from a northern state in the US. Dr Malmros conclusion: saturated fat and cholesterol causes Atherosclerosis. (Malmros, 1950). The diet-heart hypothesis was born.

In 1958, a large epidemiological research project was launched to further test THE diet-heart hypothesis. Rumors say that the project initially included 22 countries.But when the effects failed to show, the researchers began to remove countries from the dataset. The Seven countries study (SCS) was born. Finland, but not Sweden, was part of SCS.

1961. The newly founded American Heart Association (AHA) gave the first dietary advice, warning people that saturated fats will raise serum cholesterol, leading to cardiovascular disease, including Atherosclerosis.

1972. The North Karelia Project was founded in Finland. In Finland they sampled data from the Swedish-Finnish population in the south-west (Åbo), and the uracil-Finnish population in the north-east Karelia.

In the 1980s, governments around the world introduced dietary guidelines, where they warned people that meat and saturated fats are bad for health.

In parallel to that, data from statistics Finland showed a rise in Alzheimer's. Finland is now topping the global ranking for Alzheimer's. Sweden is No 10 (Österberg, 2022). Women are more than twice as likely to contract the disease.

2006. The largest and most expensive study on women's health tested the diet-heart hypothesis. The result rejected the diet-heart hypothesis but showed that women with a history of health issues who decreased their intake of saturated fats, had a 28% increased risk of contracting CVD (Howard et al. (2006).

When the Seven Countries Study was scrutinized, data revealed that despite the fact that people in Åbo and the North Karelia ate a similar diet, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease was three times as high in Karelia compared to Åbo (Teicholz, 2014).

In 2016, researchers found data from the Seven countries study in a basement. And it wasn't epidemiological data, it was data that could be used for something called randomized control trials (RCTs), which makes possible conclusions about cause - effect. The result rejected the diet-heart hypothesis (Ramsden et al. 2016).

Welfare diseases, like Type 2-diabetes, high blood pressure, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and cancer are typically explained by consumption of sugar and ultra-processed products (Hall et al. 2019; Lustig, 2017; Yudkin, 1972). Some say obesity is the cause, others say it's a marker (see presentation by Dr Robert Lustig). Mental health issues are also food-related, especially lack of animal source food (Balehegn et al. 2019; Ede, 2019; Ylilauri, 2019).

This has an Influence on another factor - the home environment. During the först four years of living, emotional adjustment and cognitive development is intense, and dependent on parent relations, including THE way parents communicate with their children (Baumrind, 1966; Gopnik, 2016; Hart and Risley, 1995). Early childhood is typically ruled by mothers, and if these mothers don't eat nutritious food, they will be unable to apply reciprocal authorization. 

There's also a father effect. Children who grow up with both parents or with the father have better emotional and social adjustment as well as cognitive development, including visuospatial perception, compared to children who grow up with a single mother (Baker et al. 2020; Farran och Formby, 2011; LaFlamme et al. 2012; Olsson, 2022; Rolle et al. 2019; Sethna, 2017; Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004).

While mapping relational aggressive women i Finland and Sweden, a pattern emerged: high degree of neuroticism and Borderline Personality Disorder, caused by Complex childhood trauma, and manifested through aggressiveness and jealousy (Jiang, Dong och Wang, 2022; Ode et al. 2009; Weisberg et al. 2011). Borderline Personality is associated with women's relational conflict, manifested by a contradiction: fear of abandonment, yet paradoxically acting in ways that ensure they'll be abandoned (Ruffalo, 2024; Zalewski et al. 2014). These also showed in the Case against Amber Heard. See Dr. Shannon Curry's testimony/diagnosis of Amber Heard (Forensic Psychologist Dr. Shannon Curry Testifies (Trial Day 9)).

Conclusion. Fpa and THL claim that Finnish health had a positive development between the 1970s to 2010, but that can't be true. That's because the data shows the opposite. Health in Finland didn't start to deteriorate in 2010, but rather between 1808 - 1940 when the Swedish language, which brought enlightenment thinking to the Eastern part of the Swedish kingdom was suppressed in favor of a language that brought about tribalism and romantic nationalism. A facilitator to this was the North Karelia Project, which encouraged people to abandon the food the human's brain needs to sustain physical and mental Health.

Also read: Finland retains Life-satisfaction title, suicide remain highest among the Nordic countries, and children have mental issues due to [women's] home conflicts.

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden ) or MobilePay (Finland).

More about my expertise:

Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter