Why are middle class older people so much more healthier than their poorer counterparts?

[Gorzf]

Sorry, if this is obvious to people but I can't help but notice all the well off people I meet in their 50s/ 60s / 70s, they're just healthy, their skin is glowing, they're fit and mobile.

I am a child of immigrants who came with nothing. We were quite poor growing up, the only kid in my friendship group on free school meals. Even as an adult I'm not particularly well off, just getting by. Growing up, most older people in my poor area / community just declined. It was almost a thing I thought was just normal, that's what happens.

It wasn't as I grew older and started meeting people from different socioeconomic status that I realised that wasn't the case.

It can't just be about having more money, surely. What is it that they're doing that the poor folk around me didn't do.

Yes, it is obvious! Surely you've worked this out?

Aside from diet, they tend to live in clean, leafy areas and not breathing in car fumes, etc.

I’m not sure about sure of these stereotypes.

My parents and their 5 siblings were as poor as church mice. Bought up in the inner city, lived in council estates and worked long beyond retirement age. All bar one lived well into their 80s

Weren’t smokers or drinkers, cooked all food from scratch and kept active not by gyms or classes but by walking, gardening, cycling (no car for years). Plus appearance was very important to them, so always dressed well.

And a health service which looked after them. They had plenty of stress in their lives (loss of children, redundancy, money worries) but a fatalism which meant they just carried on.

Some of it is genetic but a lot is attitude- being poor doesn’t mean you have to give up.

What you're citing is anecdotal. It's a blip. The big picture says something different. Look at the studies that have been put up on this thread.

They need better support and care. Caring for family members is hard work and often under-appreciated.

Better diet, you can afford to buy organic, from farm shops etc. As someone else said you can aslo 'risk' trying new things.

Access to a car so you can get to a particular shop.

Access to exercise, yes most people can go for a walk but if it is cold and rainy and you have a hole in your shoe it's not much fun. A membership of a gym or use of a pool makes a difference.

Shift work and manual labour both take their toll.

Knowledge of food / nutrition but this links to what you can afford, what is available locally.

Sadly cooking is a bit of a luxury these days due to cost of fuel. I have a reproduced wartime cook book that tells you to try cooking using just one ring, but you have to have the right equipment to do that, it might be an ordinary pan with veg in and a plate on top but if the plate isn't metal you risk it breaking.

Smoking, not just the individual but neighbours, in the street, at school pick up.

Not worrying about if benefits are going to be slashed because you have a private pension.

Ability to buy better quality furniture, a mattress can make a huge difference to the quality of life.

Going in to work when ill because you can't afford to take time off.

Money is probably the main issue, but it’s also expectations, as someone else pointed out. If you’re a 16 year old girl, whose mum and grandma were both pregnant in their teens, left school without qualifications, never worked, had kids and just about survived on benefits, you’re more likely to see that as an inevitable path for you too. Breaking the mould takes courage and strength that not many people will have in their teens, so they get stuck in a poverty rut. As someone else said, you see what your parents have and assume that’s normal. So if your family and neighbours all smoke and expect to have heart attacks in their 50s, that will be your normal, and you won’t strive to avoid it.

I notice Australian oldies look amazingly fit and healthy - I'm a british oldie,
On hols they are slim, tanned, in casual shorts jackets etc suitable for the weather - not so easy for Brits in our wet damp weather.
We seem to look more stressed in the UK. Perhaps there is too much 'news' so it feels awful things are always happening. Or we live too close to others which can be stressful on our cramped island (yes, I know there is lots of space but I'm not moving to a mountain)
Also I think a warm climate encourages a healthier diet. Cold, damp and you want filling, comfort food. You probably exercise less.

Having said that the present younger generation has many more regular gym goers.

According to stats, most Australian adults are overweight or obese , and coronary heart disease is still the main cause of death.

Haha, I suppose when you are on foreign hols you only meet the ones slim enough to fit in an airplane seat 😂

It is about money. But it's also prioritising and making the effort.

You can buy lots of frozen fruits very cheaply in Tesco (their frozen wonky berries are ridiculously cheap - £2.99 for a KG). You can make 8-10 smoothies out of that or 20+ days worth of porridge (using water) with berries. Lots of good frozen veg. However, when I've been in Tesco recently I've seen several carts pushed by families who clearly do not eat healthily (and you can tell when people do eat healthy and pretending otherwise is disingenuous) full of cans of coke and Fanta and shit like that. Not a single vegetable in the entire trolley.

I didn't grow up rich (at one point we had to take toilet roll from my mums office as we couldn't afford it...) BUT we always had fruit and veg. Only drink was tap water. We had cheap cuts of meat (liver/kidneys) instead of fast food etc.

There is a 'class' issue but there is also a prioritisation issue - and a lot of people forget that.

And of course if you eat healthily then you look healthier and you are healthier and you have more energy, more drive etc. There's been several studies done about the correlation between 'eating crap' and depression/low self-esteem etc.

I work in the NHS and we see massive health inequalities based on where people live. Poorer people tend to live in more congested areas which has more pollution (e.g. near airports, motorways, busy roads etc). They're also more likely to have manual labour jobs, or jobs that expose them to hazardous substances.

Also what other people have said - more money = better options.

• access to healthier food
• access to wellbeing services (gyms, counselling, yoga etc)
• access to outdoors (less likely to live in congested areas)
• access to healthcare (waiting lists and GPs in poorer areas are oversubscribed, and people can pay for private healthcare).
• access to childcare (nannies/nurseries)
• access to education (i.e. also leading to more education around healthy habits)
• etc etc.

In our case.
Retire at 55
Have a gym at home. Exercise in some way every day.
Eat well.
Sleep well ( not worrying about money)
Husband plays golf 3x per week. 18 holes = 5 mile walk.
Nice house in Nice area.
Brilliant Doctors surgery.
Never smoked.
Drink very sparingly.
Time to care about clothes, hair etc. Money to buy decent quality items.

I lived as a single parent for many years ( husband left in 1996)when my children were small. Worked as a supply teacher. Had just enough to pay rent and feed us. Rented a TV and phone from Radio Rentals. Met a lovely man who was wealthy. Married 20 years so far. When I was alone I thought about/ worried about money/ car breaking down, fridge failing / child costs 24 hours a day every day. It affected my sleep. I was constantly exhausted. I still pinch myself at the life I have now. I appreciate every second of it.

Op, thinking of the generation of my own family who grew up poor, and low paid jobs, factory workers, postmen etc but made it to their 80s and 90s.

They all ate homemade food, very basic traditional diet, stews, mince, potatos, occasional chips, occasional chicken, Sunday roast, soups veg or lentil, no elaborate sauces, no rice or pasta.

The very occasional takeaway was a fish supper. Sweets and fizzy was very limited
The men would have a few beers at the weekend, the women sherry. They all smoked!

So I'm going to put it mainly down to diet. They knew how to make cheapish food work. But that was before manufacturers started making, even cheaper food so the cheap food seems expensive by comparison.

Some people don't have the space/money for a freezer. I've lived in a lot of homes where there was no freezer.

Diet, less chaotic lifestyles (it's harder to prioritise healthy habits when you're working two jobs just to pay the bills), being able to afford better products (try washing your hair with washing up liquid for a few weeks, I've known people that have had to do this, it's not good for your hair and it won't look healthy), regular dental care, outdoor activities and access to green spaces, educational opportunities (I worked in a deprived borough in a public health role, the average adult in that area had a reading age of 7), smoking is less prevalent in more affluent communities, better housing without damp and mould and being able to heat the house, less likely to work shifts. The knock on effect of having a lower income is huge

Re: smoking, on a population basis this isn’t true though. Smoking is massively correlated by socio economic status. It’s why the “sin taxes” are regressive - poor people pay so much more.

I live in East Asia and there are many Ozzies here. I'm used to having to mentally subtract 5-10 years when guesstimating the ages of Australians over 30 or so because of the skin aging issue. I'm genuinely not being bitchy, just totally honest here. Tanning is NOT good for your skin!

Australians are, if anything, slightly more obese than the British. It's a very car-dependent lifestyle in most parts of Australia, in my experience. Perhaps you just saw an unusually fit cohort, or perhaps older Ozzies are only likely to travel overseas if they are fitter than average, given that it's a long flight from Australia to Europe or America.

Alcohol is classless...every end of the socio economic spectrum has people who drink too much and/or are alcoholics. The only difference is what they drink.

Smoking is now though very much something that is overwhelming done by the lower social classes.

When it comes to buying food and diet, if you have plenty of money you can afford to buy something new and if it turns out you don't like it, it's not a problem, you can eat something else.

Yes - and the same logic can be applied to things like OTC products to help with a chronic condition (e.g. eczema) when there is a very long wait for NHS treatment. It just isn't affordable to try lots of different products in the hope that one might work.

My Aunt is pushing eighty but you'd never know to look at her. She lives in luxury, retirement complex very much like the one in The Thursday Murder Club books. Every day she's swimming, or yoga or pilates. Gets regular massages and facials. Sees a private GP. She's just back from her third luxury cruise of the year and looks lightly tanned and glowing.

Basically it's money. Lots and lots of money.

Yours is probably one of the most eloquent and eye-opening posts in this entire thread, @NeverDropYourMooncup !!

Food and cooking is a class issue in the uk. I think decades ago, wc people would cook from scratch but convenience food is now so cheap, cooking has become a middle class activity. I had a child round for a playdate...I made roast chicken. He was primary age and it was the first time he'd eaten chicken that wasn't covered in breadcrumbs.

Food and nutrition is no.1 IMO