Health News
- Study: Secondhand Smoke And Road Pollution Contribute To Obesity In Children More In Combination Than Separately
Diet and physical activity aren't the only causes for the obesity epidemic that is sweeping our nation; a recent study finds that secondhand smoke and roadway pollution are also contributors, Ryan White writes for Reporting on Health. Photo by ctvnews.caResearchers...
- Smoking Persists Or Even Increases In Poor, Rural, Working-class Counties; New York Times Cites Clay County As An Example
Clay County has a dubious distinction. It has the highest rate of smoking for any U.S. county with a population under 15,000. Researchers at the University of Washington pointed that out, and The New York Times focused on it in reporting the larger...
- Owsley Men Most Likely In U.s. To Be Obese, Perry Women Most Likely To Die; Morgan Women Led Nation In Increasing Exercise
Men in Owsley County are the fattest in the United States, and women in Perry County have the lowest life expectancy, 72, according to an NBC News report based on data assembled by the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which...
- Female Life Expectancy In Several Eastern Ky. Counties Declined
The life expectancy of the average U.S. female increased 1.7 years from 1999 to 2009 -- 79.6 to 81.3 years. Good news on the whole, but Daily Yonder reporters Bill Bishop and Robert Gallardo went a little farther in their analysis of the data from the...
- Should Women Be Taking Vitamins?
By Dr. Madelyn Fersntrom You might have heard about a recent study reporting that women taking vitamin/mineral supplements died at slightly higher rates compared to women who did not rely on supplements. Can this be true? This study, and the surrounding...
Health News
Life spans of the least educated are shrinking; steepest decline among white women, biggest gap among white men
Here's some bad news for states like Kentucky, which are overwhelmingly white and have large shares of the population that did not graduate from high school: A new study "that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites," and four previous studies support that case, reports Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times.
"The reasons for the decline remain unclear," writes Tavernise, "but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription-drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less-educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least-educated Americans who lack health insurance."
White women without high-school diplomas are at particular risk, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. They lost a whopping five years of life expectancy between 1990 and 2008, he said.
That's big. To understand just how big: The average life expectancy for white women without a high-school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger: 67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those with a college degree or better.
The slump is now the subject of an inquiry by the National Academy of Sciences. ?There?s this enormous issue of why,? said David Cutler, an economics professor at Harvard University. ?It?s very puzzling and we don?t have a great explanation.? And it is yet another sign of distress in one of the country?s most vulnerable groups during a period when major social changes are transforming life for less educated whites. (Read more)
"The reasons for the decline remain unclear," writes Tavernise, "but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription-drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less-educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least-educated Americans who lack health insurance."
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| Dr. S. Jay Olshansky |
That's big. To understand just how big: The average life expectancy for white women without a high-school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger: 67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those with a college degree or better.
The slump is now the subject of an inquiry by the National Academy of Sciences. ?There?s this enormous issue of why,? said David Cutler, an economics professor at Harvard University. ?It?s very puzzling and we don?t have a great explanation.? And it is yet another sign of distress in one of the country?s most vulnerable groups during a period when major social changes are transforming life for less educated whites. (Read more)
- Study: Secondhand Smoke And Road Pollution Contribute To Obesity In Children More In Combination Than Separately
Diet and physical activity aren't the only causes for the obesity epidemic that is sweeping our nation; a recent study finds that secondhand smoke and roadway pollution are also contributors, Ryan White writes for Reporting on Health. Photo by ctvnews.caResearchers...
- Smoking Persists Or Even Increases In Poor, Rural, Working-class Counties; New York Times Cites Clay County As An Example
Clay County has a dubious distinction. It has the highest rate of smoking for any U.S. county with a population under 15,000. Researchers at the University of Washington pointed that out, and The New York Times focused on it in reporting the larger...
- Owsley Men Most Likely In U.s. To Be Obese, Perry Women Most Likely To Die; Morgan Women Led Nation In Increasing Exercise
Men in Owsley County are the fattest in the United States, and women in Perry County have the lowest life expectancy, 72, according to an NBC News report based on data assembled by the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which...
- Female Life Expectancy In Several Eastern Ky. Counties Declined
The life expectancy of the average U.S. female increased 1.7 years from 1999 to 2009 -- 79.6 to 81.3 years. Good news on the whole, but Daily Yonder reporters Bill Bishop and Robert Gallardo went a little farther in their analysis of the data from the...
- Should Women Be Taking Vitamins?
By Dr. Madelyn Fersntrom You might have heard about a recent study reporting that women taking vitamin/mineral supplements died at slightly higher rates compared to women who did not rely on supplements. Can this be true? This study, and the surrounding...