SAD diets taking their toll.
Statistical fact now.
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Life span shorter in parts of U.S.
Obesity, smoking cited; state not immune to trend
By TOM PAULSON
P-I REPORTER
For the first time since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, life expectancy for a significant proportion of the United States is on the decline largely because of an increase in chronic diseases related to obesity, smoking and high blood pressure.
Although life expectancy for all other Western nations and for most of the U.S. has continued to improve over the past several decades, researchers at Harvard University and the University of Washington say many of the worst-off here are getting much worse.
One of every five American women, and one of every 25 men, are either dying at a younger age or seeing no improvement in life span. Although this deadly trend is mostly centered in the southern parts of the nation, several largely rural counties in Washington -- Cowlitz, Lewis, Benton and Grays Harbor -- are also on the verge of seeing a decline in overall life span.
"It is what you would expect to see in a developing country, not here," said Dr. Majid Ezzati, a Harvard professor and lead author of a study published in the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine.
"This was a complete surprise," said Dr. Chris Murray, co-author of the study and director of the UW's new Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the Department of Global Health. "It's remarkable in the history of the U.S."
Between 1961 and 1999, life expectancy in the U.S. increased overall for men from 67 to 74 years and from 74 to 80 years for women.
Most of this improvement is attributed to a decline in deaths from heart disease and strokes.
Beginning in the early 1980s, however, life expectancy in some of the nation's "worst-off" counties (based on overall health indicators) either stayed the same or declined by 1.3 years for both sexes. For those living in those counties, men on average die about 11 years earlier and women die 7.5 years earlier than people in better-off counties.
Nothing like this trend has been observed in this country since the massive deaths caused by the 1918 flu pandemic, Murray said, and nothing like it appears to be happening in any of the other industrialized nations around the world.
"And I don't think you can take any comfort if you happen to be living in an area today without an overall decline," he said. "It appears to be a problem that is spreading."
Ezzati, Murray and their colleagues initially performed an exhaustive analysis of county mortality data between 1961 and 1999 (the latest year for which the data were available) looking for health disparities. They did not anticipate discovering that so many Americans, especially women, were dying at an earlier age.
"We started noticing this period, starting in the early 1980s, where the gaps between the best-off and worst-off were getting wider," Murray said. Not only were the disparities getting worse, he said, but those with the worst health indicators were dying earlier.
"It was pretty shocking to us," Ezzati said. And contrary to what might be expected, he said the observed declines in life expectancy did not seem to correlate with race or income. Ezzati emphasized this wasn't just a trend affecting poor minorities.
"This appears to be something beyond race and income," he said. Most of the worst-off counties were lower-income in comparison with other counties, Ezzati said, but the decline in life expectancies did not simply correlate with income. "For example, the data for low-income whites in northern Minnesota looked quite different than low-income whites in Appalachia," Ezzati said. "The geographical differences here are capturing something significant."
The researchers found that the diseases most closely associated with the observed declines in life spans appeared to be related to smoking, obesity and high blood pressure. Women probably have suffered more significant declines, Murray said, because of increased rates of smoking and obesity, compared with men.
"But that's still just speculation," he said. "We really don't know all the reasons for this."
Both Ezzati and Murray said it would be wrong to simply conclude these declines in life expectancy in certain regions are attributable to poor lifestyle choices -- smoking, poor diet or lack of exercise.
"If this was just a matter of bad individual choices, you would expect to see these declines in life expectancy evenly distributed around the country," Ezzati said.
"I don't think it's as simple as lifestyle," Murray said. Having high blood pressure or diabetes isn't really a matter of choice or lifestyle decisions, he said.
In the 1960s, when traffic deaths were increasing, Murray said the nation launched a safe-driving campaign that failed to reduce deaths or accidents. When policymakers instead began treating that as an engineering and regulatory problem -- requiring cars to have seat belts, later air bags and improving the safety of the roads themselves -- "that's when the deaths started to go down," Murray said.
Likewise, he and Ezzati said they hoped their findings will spur policymakers to both improve chronic disease surveillance and explore methods aimed at curbing this disturbing, deadly trend.
IN WASHINGTON
Over the past four decades, life expectancy in the U.S. has increased overall for men from 67 to 74 years and from 74 to 80 years for women. But in certain locations, starting in the early 1980s, researchers say life expectancy began to stall or decline -- especially for women. In Washington state, four counties (Lewis, Cowlitz, Benton and Grays Harbor) are among those places where life expectancy has not declined, but also has not improved much since the early 1980s.
P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or tompaulson@seattlepi.com.
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Source:
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/359985_dyingsooner22.html-----------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYp-m2aSFk