A new study shows four preventable health complications that are cutting people’s lives short. The recent study shows smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose and obesity currently reduce life expectancy in the U.S. by 4.9 years in men and 4.1 years in women.
“This study demonstrates the potential of disease prevention to not only improve health outcomes in the entire nation but also to reduce the enormous disparities in life expectancy that we see in the U.S.,” said Majid Ezzati, associate professor of international health and author of the study.
For the study the researchers used 2005 data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
A press release put out by Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington found that a person’s ethnicity and where they live is a predictor of life expectancy and how healthy a person is. Some of the findings include:
- Asian American men and women had the lowest body mass index (BMI), blood glucose levels and prevalence of smoking
- Blacks, especially those in the rural South, had the highest blood pressure
- Whites had the lowest blood pressure
- Western Native American men and Southern low-income rural black women had the highest BMI
- Western Native American and low-income whites in the Appalachia and Mississippi Valley had the highest prevalence of smoking
“It’s important that public health policy makers understand that these behavioral and metabolic risk factors are not just personal choices or the responsibility of doctors,” said Goodarz Danaei, a postdoctoral research fellow said. “To improve the nation’s overall health and reduce health disparities, both population-based and personal interventions that reduce these preventable risk factors must be identified, implemented, and rigorously evaluated.”
