The US may not be number one...

REWahoo

REWahoo

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
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...when it comes to an unhealthy lifestyle:

Researchers analyzed data from more than 6,500 participants and discovered that almost the entire adult population of Scotland (97.5 percent) were either cigarette smokers, heavy drinkers, physically inactive, overweight or living on a bad diet – all risk factors for serious disease.
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Does Scotland have a death wish?
 
Not surprising. I was in Glasgow for a conference a few years back. It was darn near impossible to find a fresh vegetable, a salad, or something that wasn't deep fried. And lots of drunks stumbling around the streets. Nice place but the above quote does not surprise me at all.
 
Sounds like I should have spent my 20's there.
 
My peoples!

Well, I guess you can take the Scot out of Scotland, but you can't take the Scotch (whiskey) bottle out of his hand...er, or something like that. I got Scots-Irish genes from both parents (splendiferous alcoholics, God rest their souls) and spent a fair bit of my teens and twenties smashed enough to think I actually was in Scotland. I just hope DW's pure Germanic blood can offset the effect in our boys. Maybe they'll just drink beer.
 
I think it may be the result of having to live there. I doubt that it is hereditary.

Are any expat Scots still eating haggis? (Dad was from Glasgow.)
 
calmloki said:
CIA world fact book has the US 2010 estimated life expectancy at 78.24 years. The UK is at 79.16 years. Is life in England so very healthy that even the evil Scot habits can't drag the average below the US?
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Maybe so! I guess one's lifespan isn't 100% a result of living a virtuous lifestyle, after all. Heredity matters too, as do those environmental factors that are beyond one's control. It seems to me that I read somewhere that some ethnic groups have a higher or lower life expectancy than others, all else being equal. Can't provide a link, though.
 
DoingHomework said:
Not surprising. I was in Glasgow for a conference a few years back. It was darn near impossible to find a fresh vegetable, a salad, or something that wasn't deep fried. And lots of drunks stumbling around the streets. Nice place but the above quote does not surprise me at all.
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LOL. I visted Scotland once in the Summer and the place struck me as grey, dull and perpetually damp. I would be a drunk too if I had to live there.
 
calmloki said:
CIA world fact book has the US 2010 estimated life expectancy at 78.24 years. The UK is at 79.16 years. Is life in England so very healthy that even the evil Scot habits can't drag the average below the US?
Click to expand...

You've got to be careful with those life expectancy statistics. The US infant mortality (and therefore life expectancy) statistics include any infant that showed any signs of life at birth. It doesn't matter how many months of gestation or what the child's weight was. According to Wikipedia :
France, the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Poland do not report all live births of babies under 500 g and/or 22 weeks of gestation.
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. It also seems that the EU uses the WHO criteria, which is slightly different (and results in lower perinatal death numbers) than the US criteria. This issue comes up a lot when people compare infant mortality in the US with that of Europe. Obviously, infants who die and who are counted in the life expectancy statistics skew the numbers a lot.
If we adjusted for all these perinatal factors (maybe used "life expectancy at 1 year old: instead of "life expectancy at birth) then we'd have a more useful figure for the present purposes.
 
Again quoting estimated 2010 CIA figures, the UK infant mortality rate/1000 is 4.78 while the UW is 6.14. Even if the rate is reported differently it doesn't seem that 1.36/1000 is enough difference to make up for about a year/person of decreased lifetime. I figure the big difference might be the UK drunk drivers don't have enough room to get their cars up to a good fatal speed. But that's just a theory.
 
Letj said:
LOL. I visted Scotland once in the Summer and the place struck me as grey, dull and perpetually damp. I would be a drunk too if I had to live there.
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I have a bunch of McDowell ancestors over there that I suppose I should try to track down someday.

I spent over half of 1984-86 in Holy Loch, Scotland doing refits on a U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarine. It was typical Cold War routine-- six weeks' work compressed into 21 days before we went to sea to hold back the Evil Empire.

The "good" thing about Holy Loch was its latitude (56 N). The sun was up so long during the summers that you had 18 hours of daylight and could get lots of topside work done. During the winters it was so cold that no one wanted to risk leaving the warmth of the boat, even for the local lager. And once you'd sampled the delights of nearby Dunoon, that was it. For the next 20 days you were content to work long hours on the boat to get the heck out of there, comforted by the knowledge that you weren't really missing anything.

Maybe it's different now. Maybe someday it'll be one of the celebrated stops on a "Cold War Memory Tour". But I'm not real eager to leave Hawaii to find out...
 
calmloki said:
Again quoting estimated 2010 CIA figures, the UK infant mortality rate/1000 is 4.78 while the UW is 6.14. Even if the rate is reported differently it doesn't seem that 1.36/1000 is enough difference to make up for about a year/person of decreased lifetime. I figure the big difference might be the UK drunk drivers don't have enough room to get their cars up to a good fatal speed. But that's just a theory.
Click to expand...

The 1.36/1000 difference might not seem like much, but when there are 4,300,000 babies born each year in the US compared to the 650,000 in the UK, I think it could have some significant effects on life expectancy. With the estimated population of th UK at roughly 61 million and the US at roughly 307 million there definitely are a higher percentage of babies in the US, so I would think it would effect the age expectancy a little more.
 
calmloki said:
unexpected reviews on this:
Traditional Scottish Haggis (Pack of 2): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food

...
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Ick... If freshly prepared Haggis sounds unappetizing? What da ya think about Haggis from a can! :p

Haggis is a dish containing sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis
 
Martha said:
Rather than speculating as to whether the UK looks at live birth different from us, I used WolframAlpha to find some age 10 stats.
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Martha, do you want to becomea killjoy?

Ha
 
Martha said:
Rather than speculating as to whether the UK looks at live birth different from us, I used WolframAlpha to find some age 10 stats.
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Martha, thanks for the info. It looks like the factors surrounding the live birth stats don't account for the entire difference, but they might account for about half of it.

UK/US difference at birth: 1.71 years
UK/US difference at 10 yo: .92 years

I guess because their attained age is so small, including even a relatively few children who die at birth could have a big impact on the computed average life expectancy number.
 
Mmmmmmmmm, Scotch . . . reminds me I'm long overdue for a "wee-dram".
 
Martha said:
us life expectancy at age 10 - Wolfram|Alpha

uk life expectancy at age 10 - Wolfram|Alpha
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That's a very interesting search engine/web site.
Seemingly contradictory factoids:
1) At young ages, people in the UK have a longer average life expectancy that people in the US.
BUT
2) If you live in the US and you are at least 20 years old, there's a better than 80% chance that you'll live to be 70. AND, people who are seventy in the US can expect to have longer lives than people who are seventy in the UK. (85.24 years in US vs 85.21 years in the UK).

After age 70, people in the US continue to have a longer life expectancy than those in the UK. At age 90, the average American can expect to live about 7 months longer than the average UK citizen who is 90.
 
samclem said:
At age 90, the average American can expect to live about 7 months longer than the average UK citizen who is 90.
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But how does the quality of life compare? Are they on life support?

So many numbers yet so little information!:cool:
 
kcowan said:
But how does the quality of life compare? Are they on life support?

So many numbers yet so little information!:cool:
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It's hard to know. But I'd say that apparently most people, after evaluating everything about their life situation, want those extra seven months. If not, they could vote with [-]their feet[/-] the plug and the numbers would be equal.
 
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