Do you ever wonder what's ahead of the human race centuries from now? Of course, we won't be around that time unless, by some miracle, we can discover a potion for immortality. But for the sake of discussion, have you considered how health care is going to be, say, in the twenty-third or twenty-fourth century?
A group of researchers from Austria also asked the same question and completed a study about it. They wanted to know how heart health is going to be around two centuries from now. The problem is there's no available data.
That's why they turn their attention to Star Trek. One of the biggest sci-fi franchises in history, this tells the voyage of humans across space-planets and galaxies-many centuries from now not only to search for habitats but to establish good relations with the other aliens.
While we can expect AIs and other out-of-this-world technologies, like in many sci-fi movies, Star Trek still depicts humans to be non-immortal and vulnerable to illness and death, such as due to cardiac arrest.
For the study, the team analyzed more than 500 episodes from some of the latest instalments of Star Trek like The Next Generation and Voyager. They specifically paid attention to those that involved cardiac arrest and found out that in 90% of the cases, the patient died.
Simply put, cardiac arrest, a condition wherein a person stops breathing properly and the blood doesn't circulate anymore, will still be a major health problem, per Star Trek standards.
But the cause may no longer be related to health and diet. Most died of cardiac arrest due to being fired by an energy weapon or several physical injury.
As long as the 24th-century humans eat a healthy diet, the chances of dying from cardiac arrest are small. Besides, health care assistance is quick, thanks to the tricorder, which can detect almost any condition by merely scanning the tool in the body, and teleportation.