Women’s life expectancy declining

So you did Stumbledin. Sorry. Not sure how I missed that as I was looking at Feminism Chat at about the time you posted. Here’s the link to the full report. I want to read the original as there are some points made up thread that I think would be good to check (eg rate of increased life expectancy versus actual life expectancy) in the original, not just filtered by media reports.

www.instituteofhealthequity.org/about-us/the-institute-of-health-equity/our-current-work/collaborating-with-the-health-foundation-

Yes I posted the link to this yesterday but nobody said anything!

PigletJohn Yes, and Yes. In the South-East and the North-East.

Elderly parents and in-laws, all alive and in their 80's and 90's. Various health issues among them, including:

Breast Cancer - 15 years ago
Heart Bypass - 10 years ago
Stroke - 20 years ago
Prostrate Cancer - 5 years ago
Life Long Asthma
Hip Replacement - 20 years ago

Plus many and various, random operations for this, that and the other.

Why bother looking after your health, for a future which you honestly believe is going to be as shit as your present?

What's the point?

Looking after your health is planning for the future.

You need to have hope to do that.

So I see they again that people regard themselves as poor without really understanding poverty. Where there isn't the money to feed yourself and keep the lights on. When it's not a choice of apple or biscuits for a snack, but all you can afford to spend that whole day, and porridge is out as the cooker is off

Although that level of poverty is rare, there is also the other level, where you treat yourself because it's the only thing you look forward to. Which is fundamentally why poor people often drink and smoke. It wastes money they haven't got, makes their health worse. But gives a moments fun,

Interesting to see how the interpretation of the experts is being dismissed
Yes, seems to be very fashionable in recent years with Gove saying people in this country have had enough of experts.

Given that men don't live as long it makes sense that they would still have potential gains in life expectancy while women wouldn't.

Women are drinking more but the whole population smokes less (men and women both smoked in astonishingly high numbers until the declines started in the 70s and 80s)

Indeed. My mother died thirty years ago and nearly all her generation smoked.

Interesting to see how the interpretation of the experts is being dismissed.

Just to add to the complexity, Ben Barr has an interesting thread (engagement elsewhere by Michael Marmot who thinks it's an interesting perspective) that 'Vote Leave' areas are those that are showing the greatest declines in the rate of growth of life expectancy etc.:

The places experiencing recent adverse trends in life expectancy are much more likely to have voted leave in EU referendum. This seems to ‘explain’ the recent pattern of LE change more than many other factors (e.g deprivation)

twitter.com/Benj_Barr/status/1232635724425498624

Women are drinking more but the whole population smokes less (men and women both smoked in astonishingly high numbers until the declines started in the 70s and 80s)

Its a scandal. Austerity stores up so many problems for the future. And women bear the brunt as usual.

So reading the report it seems that alzheimers and dementia has put a ceiling on women's increased life expectancy.

Not quite as emotive as austerity kills. Well the data shows its dementia and alzheimers doing the killing.

continuing to increase life expectancy without good health is not universally welcomed.

Yet it's what a number of organisations and patients are lobbying for - several patient surveys and audits for charities and patient organisations report that patients want early access to (sometimes unproven) therapies if it will extend life. They also claim that they're willing to tolerate any side-effects for that extension. And those responding to these surveys/audits are people who may have already been through a lot of surgery and chemotherapy etc. so they know how disruptive those side-effects can be and how much they diminish health related quality of life.

Some of the reports show negligible drop-off in these attitudes across the age spectrum so it's not as if people older than 70 or 75 take quality of life into account more than other age groups.

@Baaaahhhhh

"Healthcare is the best it has ever been. Just compare the drugs and surgery which is available now compared to 30 years ago."

I'm delighted to hear you live in a district with good healthcare.

Where you live, can you get a GP appointmernt is less than a week?

Have you ever had an elderly or frail relation with, say, a stroke, heart attack, or broken hip? How long did they last?

Babdoc is correct.
I'm afraid a lot of people in Britain don't want to take responsibility for their own health and well being, and this is the result.
1 apple or a packet of biscuits? Well I'm pretty poor (full time carer for a family member) and would choose fruit over biscuits 99 times out of 100. But I care about my health, no matter which party is in power.

appg-longevity.org/

Lots and lots of report on here if anyone has a few hours spare!

DH marginally involved in creating the strategy, he's obviously very invested in a good outcome from their recommendations.

This was Matt Hancocks response to the report:

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/adding-years-to-life-and-life-to-years-our-plan-to-increase-healthy-longevity

Strangerthantruth It will be interesting to see how this pans out going forward. Reading other MN threads on elderly care, and elderly parents, 99% of posters do not want to live their last ten years in the same condition as their current parents. I think as a society we will move more towards living shorter but healthier lives. Of course this does still reference improving lives in the above report, but continuing to increase life expectancy without good health is not universally welcomed.

If you factor out deaths due to drug abuse, alcohol abuse and suicide I wonder what it woudl come out at?

I wonder if the improved use of DNR has been factored in. Certainly in my family this made a difference, with one person being kept alive in hospital against their wishes for 6 months in the early 2000s versus another having a sensitive consultation on DNR which led them to leave hospital to go home and die 24 hours later as they wanted in the mid 2010s

Public Health England 's A review of recent trends in mortality in England is a free to download report that discusses the complex factors behind the slowdown of increased lifespan:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/827518/Recent_trends_in_mortality_in_England.pdf

For anyone who wants to read the executive summary or full report, they're available free of charge to download:

www.health.org.uk/publications/reports/the-marmot-review-10-years-on

I have issues with a lot of this report - sorry but I do.

The people being recorded now, who are dying slightly earlier, hence the reduction in life expectancy, would have been born in the 50's and 60's.

Healthcare is the best it has ever been. Just compare the drugs and surgery which is available now compared to 30 years ago.

I accept there could be an element of lack of social care in later life, but I suspect as much of the decline could also be due to poor social choices, poor diet, obesity, drinking and smoking. Smoking has to be a big factor, as most people in the 50's/60's smoked.

I would very much like more detail into the causes of the deaths to which the reduced life expectancy is linked to.

At the end of the day, and along with all other Western countries, life expectancy will eventually stall, as we can't live forever. I accept that the main issue is with the health divide, but to just blame it on the last
ten years is lazy. Many health outcomes are dictated by your early years, so perhaps we should be looking back at what happened in the 50's.

I think women have adopted some of the, previously male, unhealthy practices too - smoking, drinking and over-eating. Probably from the 1960s onwards.

We wanted a government that would cut public services and neglect healthcare, so we voted conservative.

It's important to remember that actually more of the electorate voted NOT Conservative than voted Conservative at the 2019 election:

Conservative- 43.63%
Labour - 32.08
Liberal Democrat- 11.55
SNP 3.88
Green 2.7
Brexit 2.01

It's FPTP that creates the Conservative majority, not the wishes of the electorate.

Well there is a strong correlation between poverty and ill health and poor diet,
So it's not surprising if there are more people struggling you will have more people eating a poor diet and more people then dying as a result

Either poverty leads to poor diet, poverty is caused by poor diet or the two are just coincidentally related

At the poorest levels a junk diet is cheap and cheering. 1 apple or a packet of biscuits?