The rhythm of aging: Stability and drift in the individual rate of senescence
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I hate to say it, but capitalism is failing most Americans.
Of course, not rich Americans.
Socialized medicine provides a basic floor and standard of care that helps people live healthier and longer.
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The number of years people in the UK spend in good health is falling, according to a new report.
Over the past decade healthy life expectancy (HLE) has dropped by around two years to just under 61 for both men and women.
The UK is one of only five of the richest 21 countries to see HLE decline and its fall was the second steepest.
The Health Foundation, which produced the analysis, said there was a significant economic cost to this trend and the findings should act as a watershed moment.
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I found this to be an interesting graph:
Source: https://x.com/mboudry/status/2060694769890635887?s=20
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Interesting, but not surprising, right? These are countries which were recently fairly poor, and now have a massive influx of abundant (tasty) food, high calories etc. Certainly in Kuwai, Qatar, Saudi, Bahrain etc, you probably aren’t having much of an outdoor active lifestyle or much routine daily activity. Those places have some of the lowest daily activity levels in the world. (I remember Fitbit publishing the data and the average steps per day in Saudi was like 3,000, lol).
One “funny” aspect is that the overtly Muslim countries have such high obesity rates, while excessive consumption and gluttony is expressly forbidden in their religion, and they even practice fasting.
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It is interesting that the highest in this list are all very high elevation counties. This correlation is widely discussed with the received view being that the differences are not statistically significant after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics. I think this conclusion may be inaccurate. For one, a variable removed as a confounder (inappropriate in my view) was the higher adsorption of vitamin D at high elevations. The increased probability of clean air and RBC constituents are a few among several additional considerations.
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It’s interesting that the UK is better off, even with the terrible state of the once-great NHS. Sadly we are heading down the US route and I find myself worried in case I fall seriously ill now, or have an accident.
How is this evidenced? My personal experience and that of my family is that it is responding reasonably well and using tech quite well.
Incidentally during the late 1970s I was the night cook for a week in my local hospital (I was a student and they employed me because I could do the maths). Much that I am a fan of having health services that span the wealth divide and I do think the NHS could be improved. I do not think it has deteriorated or was once great. I think it has improved.
I quite like the big newish hospital in Birmingham called the QE which is in many ways a quaternery service and a project I was involved in progressing when I was a local member of parliament.
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