Magical Resilience to Medical Malady

[WereElephant]

Magical practitioners live longer. They heal from things more completely than vanillas, injury or sickness. How completely does this "healing factor" cover things across the medical spectrum? Does it reduce or eliminate mortality rates for commonly terminal diseases, such as pre-vaccine smallpox, polio, etc? Does it prevent onset of things like dementia or Alzheimer's?

[peregrine]

Probably it stops Alzheimer's and other dementias because if it didn't, at the lifespan Wizards get, they'd all be crazy after 150 years or so.

As for other stuff, it would depend on the disease I imagine.  It might keep someone alive long enough to let the body naturally build up an immunity.

[Mr. Death]

I remember there's some WOJ on this somewhere, that they get sick, but they don't get as sick, and once they're over it they recover completely. I think the WOJ was in reference to stuff like the Black Plague.

[Talby16]

Here is the WOJ on healing:

(long ago) Disease, in general, was a lot more rampant and likely to kill you.  Yeah, wizards have the capacity to recover from things, but they don’t have any particular increased resistance to contracting a disease.  They just come back from it in better shape than regular folks.  For example, if you get a good case of pneumonia (like I did), you’ve got a reduced capacity to resist subsequent similar infections.  And that’s it.  In fact, having gotten pneumonia once gives you a pretty darn big mathematical probability that you’re going to die of pneumonia in the future.  (Pneumonia being one of the main things that actually does the killing when you’ve got cancer or other serious medical issues.)  Wizards don’t face that same danger.  If they beat it, they beat it, and it isn’t of any more consequence than getting over a cold.
But even so, before antibiotics, wizards were as worried about disease as everyone else was.  And a great way to not get diseases was to STAY HOME.  Which most of them did.

Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disease thought to be due to environmental/lifestyle factors. It is possible that a wizard would have those causative factors in play, but I would guess that his natural healing ability would slow down the whole process. It would be a race between healing and degeneration. Degeneration would most likely win in the end, but Alzheimer's would develop slower in a wizard and he/she would be able to live longer with it than a vanilla mortal.

[WereElephant]

How about cancer? On the one hand, I could see this being affected like any other disease - slowed and made recoverable. On the other hand, I could also see the healing factor working out to the benefit of the cancerous cells as well, since they are technically part of the wizard. Too much of a stretch?

[Mr. Death]

I don't know about the regular healing factor, but the rpg book cites this as one of the reasons wizardry healing via spells is rare and works slow. You need to know what you're doing or else that "accelerate cell growth you close a cut" spell turns into a "cells grow out of control and becomes a tumor" spell

[Dashkull]

There was a question relating to this at one of the recent signings (I forget which). It was asked about mental illnesses like Alzheimer’s or depression. The response is that wizards are still human. Something like Alzheimer’s is a real threat (to a lot of people’s well being should a powerful wizard get it) and Jim said it is something they are constantly watching for signs of in each other at council meetings.

Think what Professor X did in Logan. I don’t remember what the movie specifically says happened but iirc it’s hinted that he had a seizure and killed a significant portion of the x men, as well as the population of the East Coast.

[Fcrate]

As the cloud of dust settled gently over the sleeping boy, the colors began to swirl as the spell interacted with his aura, the energy of life that surrounds all living things. Irwins's aura was bloody strong, standing out several inches farther from his body than on most humans. I was a full-blown wizard and a strong one, and my aura wasn't any more powerful. [truncated]
Irwin had begun to develop a reservoir of energy to rival that of anyone on the White Council of Wizardry.
That was likely the explanation of Irwin's supposed immunity to disease: The aura of life around him was simple too strong to be overwhelmed by a mundane germ or virus. Supported by that kind of energy, his body's immune system would simply whale on any invaders.

The fact that cells make near perfect copies likely would stop, or at least slow to a dramatic degree, the onset of Alzheimer's. I don't know about Dementia.
As for other diseases, the text above answers that, the life aura around a full-blown wizard would make him or her immune to any "mundange" germ. I suppose mundane here means "Not magically induced". And the stronger a wizard (Thus their aura), the more immune to disease they are. However, just like what happened to Irwin, if a germ does invade the body and take hold while the aura is weak, the body will have a tough time getting rid of it on its own.

[Talby16]

The fact that cells make near perfect copies likely would stop, or at least slow to a dramatic degree, the onset of Alzheimer's. I don't know about Dementia.
As for other diseases, the text above answers that, the life aura around a full-blown wizard would make him or her immune to any "mundange" germ. I suppose mundane here means "Not magically induced". And the stronger a wizard (Thus their aura), the more immune to disease they are. However, just like what happened to Irwin, if a germ does invade the body and take hold while the aura is weak, the body will have a tough time getting rid of it on its own.

Thanks for pulling in that quote from the Bigfoot stories. I had forgot about them. If the body is used to having/using a strong aura to bolster the immune system and then that mechanism is reduced/hampered, the body will certainly struggle with mundane infections (mono in that particular case). The body becomes used to doing things a certain way and is not great at switching tracks quickly when the usual way fails.

[Bacchus]

From a more medical perspective Dresden's healing and longevity is based on more perfect DNA and cell replication,

without better DNA replication he would start having all the problems vanillas do once they get past age 65 or so. Having a body that can still correctly clone cells after 350 years would have to rule out a large chunk of all age related diseases for it to make sense.
 I mean all types of cancers at the most basic level is cells copying wrong. its not like theres some external thing attacking the body.


 heart and lung disease are the 2 leading killers and those  usually kill people from wear and age related damage done over at least 40 years, his complete heal times have always been predicted as much shorter than that so heart and lung disease as it kills vanilla mortals wouldnt matter
 dementia and alzehimers can be dumbed down to brain cells not copying right.  elderly people have something like 7-9% less brainmass than when they were young which help cause these.

EDIT
 can someone with more medical training then me think this through.
my thoughts from half forgotten paramedic training is that almost every disease that you cant really get before age 50 wouldnt apply To wizards.
any diseases based on bacteria, viruses, fungus genetic defects would effect them the same as a healthy young person
 well until this mechanism for DNA replication seems to fail around 300-400 years old at least

[Dashkull]

Alzheimer's boils down to cellular regeneration but the root causes of it are genetic. If it were some extrenal thing the body could fight off, maybe a wizard would be "immune" to it. But if it is something they are born with it would still effect them eventually. If the body is making defective cells because the genes are telling it to do so, thems the breaks.

However we dont understand the disease all that well. It is clear that damage to the brain from things like head trauma can accelerate or even possibly be the cause of it in some cases. So if it was caused by that, the wizards would have much more insulation from the effects.

Honestly, Jim has a ton of leeway in how it works, because of how little we understand about the disease and poor understanding of the human brain in general. In this case, it is very easy for it to just be whatever he says goes and it will still make perfect sense. So to that end, we know from WoJ that Wizards CAN get it (and related things like dementia) but likely will get it much later and slower. And that fits just fine with the story.

[RobReece]

Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disease thought to be due to environmental/lifestyle factors. It is possible that a wizard would have those causative factors in play, but I would guess that his natural healing ability would slow down the whole process. It would be a race between healing and degeneration. Degeneration would most likely win in the end, but Alzheimer's would develop slower in a wizard and he/she would be able to live longer with it than a vanilla mortal.

I think that since a Wizards cells make such perfect copies of themselves, that would almost negate the chance of any degeneration.  Also my understanding is that one of the ways to prevent such degeneration is to make sure your brain stays active to constantly look at things differently creating new pathways of thought, that's almost a given for someone working with magic on a daily basis.  So if the lifestyle is a contributing factor to the diseases origin, then their lifestyle would strongly prohibit it's inception.

[Talby16]

I think that since a Wizards cells make such perfect copies of themselves, that would almost negate the chance of any degeneration.  Also my understanding is that one of the ways to prevent such degeneration is to make sure your brain stays active to constantly look at things differently creating new pathways of thought, that's almost a given for someone working with magic on a daily basis.  So if the lifestyle is a contributing factor to the diseases origin, then their lifestyle would strongly prohibit it's inception.

At some point the perfect copying mechanism wears out. Otherwise wizards would not age at all. My read is that everything is slowed down for wizards. Aging and degenerative changes included.

[Quantus]

It would help against anything that is actual Damage, acute or accumulated, so degenerative diseases would likely get fixed with time.  Purely genetic disorders would likely not, since theoretically your body is following the correct script, it's simply poorly written.  The grey area would really be things like cancer that can have both a genetic component as well as environmental aggravators.  As a datapoint on that, after his diagnosis my fathers oncologist told him that a male human WILL die of Prostate cancer unless something else gets us first.  It's simply an end-game failure mode of our bodies. 

[Bacchus]

Yes but what I'm saying is that the genetic component IS that your more prone to your body making bad copies for these things, no mater what your genetic component is it takes a full lifetime of your cells constantly replicating and doing it worse each time for you to get these. i believe the ends of the DNA chains actually start to get lost after a long life.


Genetic disorders that you seem to be talking about are things like heart valves formed incorrectly. if it brakes something critical you die, if it breaks other stuff you have whatever problems from that.  thats not a replication error, thats a blueprint error.
 The environmental factors lead to things being tougher on the cells and they may start to have runaway broken replication sooner(cancer).
wizards would only have to be super careful about things that could kill a person rather quickly like poisonings, radiation etc on the environmental side,

like for smoking the epithelial cells in the lungs that get damaged by the smoke get replaced by a different type that is more prone to cancer, alvioli grows back thicker and not very good at its job. but even with smoking only half of smokers die from smoking and it takes a LONG time in most cases.


Also i wouldn't worry too much about Alzheimer's and dementia for plot reasons
There are literally dozens of other mental disorders that are also barely understood and don't seem to be age related any any way.
and since we know this stuff only helps for so long, anyone senior council age would start to become susceptible to all this stuff again.

 To be clear im just theorizing with all this