Christopher Wanjek
LiveScience's Bad Medicine Columnist
LiveScience.com
2 hours, 59 minutes ago
Researchers have found the unexpected in U.S. life expectancy: We might have peaked.
Life expectancy rates rose for most of Americans over the last four decades by about six years, from an average of about age 71 to age 77. Yet a sizeable portion of the population, mostly in rural regions, saw those modest gains level off and even reverse starting in the 1980s. This is in contrast to all other industrialized nations.
Nearly 20 percent of American women, in fact, experienced either stagnation or a decline in longevity, what researchers at Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington call a "reversal of fortunes."
A team led by Harvard's Majid Ezzati published these findings today in the online medical journal PLoS Medicine. The analysis - the first to look at mortality trends county by county - is based on mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau between 1959 and 2001.
Living large, and less
The findings are troublesome, the researchers said, because life expectancy, along with infant mortality, is a major indicator of the health of a nation. A decline in life expectancy, as is seen during turmoil such as war and famine, is a sign that health and social systems are failing.
This failing trend could easily spread to the rest of the nation, meaning that for the first time in the history of this country, parents will have lived longer than their children.
Hardest hit are regions in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, in Appalachia and also the southern part of the Midwest reaching into Texas. The culprits - largely preventable with better diet and access to medical services - are diabetes, cancers and heart disease caused by smoking, high blood pressure and obesity.
Two Americas
The U.S. life expectancy already is nothing to brag about. The United States is the wealthiest country on earth, yet the life expectancy of its people is only about 78 years, which places us 41st on the 2008 CIA World Factbook list, behind Bosnia but still edging out Albania.
What the new analysis reveals is the reality of two Americas, one on par with most of Europe and parts of Asia, and another no different than a third world nation. For example, previous research has shown that the U.S. state of Georgia has a life expectancy and infant mortality rate similar to the impoverished Eastern European nation of Georgia. In Harlem, African American men are less likely to reach the age of 65 than men in Bangladesh, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The United States might still be the destination for complicated surgery and cutting-edge procedures, but for the most part it fails its poorest citizens, with about 36 million of them (12 percent of the population, according to the CIA World Factbook) living below the poverty line. As a result, the U.S. healthcare system ranks 37th on a list of 191 systems compiled by the World Health Organization.
Science can't increase life expectancy forever; good ol' inequality will trump it every time. The new longevity analysis should be a wake-up call for voters that this nation isn't No. 1. Maybe it doesn't need to be No. 1, but, given our vast resources, it would be nice to strive for something better than 41st place.
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I was going to put in something like the bottom paragraph, but the author did it for me.
Much of the nation's medical bill is due to treating self-inflicted, life-style diseases like diabetes, stroke, CVD. The leading killer is still cigarettes.
The best defense against the food industry, which wants you dumbed down and consuming their sickening crap is smarting yourself up about nutrition.
But hey, we have a market based health care system that is obviously sooo much better than those ing socialists in Europe...
You're going to die, I'm going to die, that's a shame.
Everybody dies.
But shorten a nation's life expectancy and you
1) shorten their contribution to the economy.
2) take their related caregivers out of the workforce, doubling or tripling the economic losses
The surest way to stunt a nation's growth is to shorten the population's overall lifespan.
Given the fact that we spend, just in out of pocket costs, more than any other industrialized country on health care for what we DO get, means that our current system is HORRIBLY inefficient, in terms of dollars spent and outcomes.
So, that Harvard boys are implying that smoking and over-eating has an adverse effect on life expectancy? Wow! Thanks for posting RG, it's gonna take a while for that to sink in.
In another peer-reviewed study, published in the prestigious Science Magazine, scientists have concluded that massive blunt force trauma to the head can also be a cause for a decline in life expectancy!
The study says that life expectancy in the US has FALLEN.
Not that doing stupid things are bad for you.
Let me know when you actually bother reading the OP.
Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one .45 caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days concentrated emergency raisons; one drug issue containing: antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair a nylon stockings. Shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
Great quote! The anti-self destruct button blew up.
I don't know ... about how old can people get? Even if we had the perfect medical system, and great nutrition for everyone (of course, government controlled) do you think we'd be able to really push life expectancy much past 80? At some point we have to think of diminishing returns.
For instance, Americans are much taller than they were 100 years ago, and people in general are much much taller than they were in the Ancient Near East. This is due to more balanced diets and better nutrition and medical care. But there has to be a limit to how tall we can get. I don't think the average man is going to get much taller than 5'9", if that. There's only so far it can go.
Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one .45 caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days concentrated emergency raisons; one drug issue containing: antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair a nylon stockings. Shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
Great quote! The anti-self destruct button blew up.
I don't know ... about how old can people get? Even if we had the perfect medical system, and great nutrition for everyone (of course, government controlled) do you think we'd be able to really push life expectancy much past 80? At some point we have to think of diminishing returns.
For instance, Americans are much taller than they were 100 years ago, and people in general are much much taller than they were in the Ancient Near East. This is due to more balanced diets and better nutrition and medical care. But there has to be a limit to how tall we can get. I don't think the average man is going to get much taller than 5'9", if that. There's only so far it can go.
Not too concerned. Past 78 you become decrepit, live off medications, and your chances of dying from cancer or heart disease skyrocket. I'm aiming for quick death by trauma in the 68-74 range. It's less of an economic strain on family and society.
Excellent deduction Holmes!
"The culprits - largely preventable with better diet and access to medical services - are diabetes, cancers and heart disease caused by smoking, high blood pressure and obesity".Not that doing stupid things are bad for you.
I don't believe that it would be especially difficult to conclude that engaging in life shortening activities such as, smoking, and over-eating to the point of being obese, qualify as "doing stupid things that are bad for you".
In essence, it does say that.
Okay, I'll PM ya.Let me know when you actually bother reading the OP.
Don't take this stuff too seriously RG
Fail.
Shorten life expectancy = Shorten amount of time you collect Social Security.
McDonalds, Krispy Kreme and Marlboro are a front Corps for a branch of treasury designed in the '60's to make sure Social Security never goes bankrupt. Other advances attributable to this organization? Dish with 250 Channels, the "Super Slurpie", "You Porn", and "Deal or no Deal".
That's it! An evil conspiracy.
Well, it does make sense. I can see no other reason for the success of Dunkin Donuts and Burger King, or "reality TV." It's a communist plot to make sure we die of stroke and obesity.
We should try it on the terrorists.
They have done studies on small worms in which they turn off ONE gene and the life span of that organism increased SIX TIMES.
The advances that they are making in researching aging are really remarkable.
At some point we will be able to custom grow individual organs. This will go a LONG way towards extending life spans.
I think the fact that, as a population, we aren't living as long as we used to is due mainly to the lack of access to health care.
(shrugs)
This simply supports my assertion that the opportunity costs of doing nothing and letting our ty health care system limp along will increase over time.
The only question in my mind is when will those costs be so obvious to the blindly ideological right that even they might admit that not all problems have pure free-market solutions.
Excellent deduction Holmes!Yet a sizeable portion of the population, mostly in rural regions, saw those modest gains [in life expectency] level off and even reverse starting in the 1980s.
Does this passage indicate that life expectency has fallen, or does it say that smoking is bad for you?
Ok, you are right about that.
BUT
The thrust of the article was not to reiterate that these things are bad for you. It was that these things are having a marked effect on life expentency in the US.
Meh. I don't take it that seriously. I do get worked up when people only read what they want to in data.
Yes, I've heard. I'm not so sure about your optimism that we can apply to results that we get with worms to human beings. Now, if we routinely start seeing people living to 120 (this is "only" a 50% improvement over 80), then I'll get a little excited. But I wouldn't count on it.
And wouldn't you attribute the rise in life expectancy to the sheer numbers of people who are living to a reasonably old age (70-80) as well as a massive decline in infant and child mortality? In other words, life expectancy hasn't gone up so much because people are living longer (although some are), but because a lot more people get to live to 70 or 80. I'm suggesting that there's a ceiling, and we're getting close to it, barring some technology that we're not even close to.
And I'm not sure how state-run health care helps much. This is not to say that the current system is good -- it isn't. But, ultimately, technological advances will be fueled by investment and market forces, and only a little by government subsidy.
No health insurance= no access to preventive care.
As the article points out, you can have the most technologically advanced system, but if you have no access, it doesn't mean much.
I agree. The current system is fatally flawed. A good study on the history and development of the HMO system might be helpful here. Didn't it come about in the 70's at the urging of Ted Kennedy, et al?
Second, is the life expectancy number a statistical average? If so, I would like to get a look at the median, the mode, and some other interesting numbers. I wonder what that would tell us.
Well, as an average, it is a number that doesn't have that much absolute variation from the mode for each standard deviation like say, income.
I think in this case the average and the median are probably pretty close.
Got any stats that show more preventive care = longer life?
Life Insurance companies charge less for non-smokers, skinny people, and people who don't jump out of airplanes.
They don't ask if you have regular physicals.
Why is that? Maybe it doesn't matter statistically.
Also, you might want to check the following statistics before you assume this is healthcare supply related:
Poverty and Smoking
Poverty and Obesity
Poverty and Nutrition
Could it be lifestyle choices of the poor in this country that are causing the disparity in life expectancy?
Ok, here is a bit of honesty:
I don't have any stats to show that more preventive care = longer life.
I would be highly interested to see some solid data on this, and might do an interwebs search.
Given no other data, is it a reasonable conclusion that, over a large population, more access to preventive care would save lives that would otherwise be lost to fatal diseases?
A simple yes or no will suffice for this.
Yes.
Could poverty be the cause of lifestyle choices?
Quid pro quo. Honest answer.
Reasonable? Yes.
Accurate (as in actual underwriting data supports it) No.
The VAST majority of people don't see the doctor until they sense something is wrong - NOT preventive care, but care with a diagnosis.
For the people that actually enter the doctor with no complaints - they leave the office with a clean bill of healthy; even if they shouldn't have one.
The tests to pick up Cancer are not standard; and they are often specific to a type of cancer - you have to be looking for it; to be looking for it, you have to have a reason....
That's one of the big killers. The other one? Heart disease. Doesn't take a physical to know if you are living a lifestyle that is condusive to a healthy heart; or to know if you are at risk. Nothing the doctor can do about it, anyway.
Chicken?
Egg?
Yes.
and
Poverty is the RESULT of lifestyle choices.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between intelligence and lifestyle choices.
I also wouldn't be surprise if there was a correlation between intelligence and socio/economic status.
Therein, with no politically incorrect data to support my theory; would be where I would bet the correlation would lie.
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