to think it's not a bad thing that life expectancy has stalled in the first world?

[A580Hojas]

I mean, really?

Why should we all expect to outlive our parents if they died at some point in their late 70s or early 80s?

I am quite old in Mumsnet terms but I don't feel entitled to live to 90 or 95 or whatever.

Very old people staying alive for a year or two more isn't something to be celebrated is it? I say this as someone with a parent in reasonable health in their late 80s.

The difference in life expectancy between those living in the poorest areas and those in the more wealthy is thirty years.

And after Brexit the Tories will continue with austerity whilst offering further tax breaks to corporates.

That is completely unjust.

I think you are being incredibly insensitive. I have just lost a friend at 58, another in early 50s has a couple of weeks to live. Cancer is all around at the moment.

I sort of agree with you OP. I don't ever want to end up in a home. That would be torture for me. Life is for living, not enduring. Obviously that is a very personal opinion. But it is mine.

Are you ok with people with a learning disability dying 13 years earlier than the average person because the health and social care they have received is not good enough?
That is one of the reasons why it is important to look at why length of life as stopped increasing.

As many have already said, it is much more complex than a blunt "life expectancy" average. There are many, many, more elderly people in our population, my mother is 90, and she gets exceptional care from the NHS, weekly visits from her GP, endless tests and drugs, to keep her going, even though she's had enough and wants to die :-(

At the other end of the spectrum many more babies are being born with complex issues, who wouldn't have previously survived pregnancy and therefore wouldn't have figured in older statistics.

I agree that the poorer households have poorer health. Where I will disagree is that it isn't exclusively down to income, but also to poor education and poor life choices. They drink more, smoke more, are fatter, and don't exercise. The healthcare they receive once they are ill, for heart or diabetes or whatever, is the same for everyone, so they should have equal outcomes, but they need intervention at an earlier stage in order to stop the poor choices, this I think is education, which is perhaps where we should be focusing.

I don't know, it is difficult. I am not sure we should look at how long we live, but at how healthy we are whilst we are alive.

Complacency is not a good enough response to these stats.

Statistics were the starting point for Florence Nightingale's reforms.

Olderthanaverage, I'm sorry to hear about your mum. Life expectancy is very blunt and we'd all want "healthy years" really.

I live near a very deprived part of the UK and yes the contrast in life expectancy is startling. Ime it also includes a fair few drugs and drink related deaths. Its a social issue as much as a health service one.

Doesn't surprise me at all and will almost certainly be down to social factors but, more likely, nutrition. As long as cheap ready meals - with all their additives - are pedalled as real food, this will become the new trend.

I was only saying to DH last week that the pension problem is finite because life expectancy will surely start dropping soon.

I genuinely believe that our parents' generation will be the last to achieve a longer life expectancy as they had the benefit of enough food (post war) but still (generally) cooked from scratch.

I see my mum's generation as the healthiest old people are likely to be.

Before her was malnutrition, rickets, tiny grandparents, kids working indoors all day etc.

She and her siblings ate well but not excessively and grew to their full height. They were on school hours and playing sport until 15. They also did a lot of exercise by bike riding and walking into adulthood. Kids did fall prey to infectious disease which our children are immunised against: one good reason life expectancy at birth has risen over the generations since.

With the current trend of people being noisily proud of their grossly obese bodies, I wouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised if life expectancy reduced further in this country. So many people are making unhealthy choices and just don’t care a bit. The NHS is also failing the population in comparison to systems in other countries.
We are in decline in so many ways in this country.

I think there are two major factors - pollution and obesity. There was an article this week saying a link was suggested between pollution and Alzheimers/dementia.

We can't do a huge amount about the first one unless we all pull together to use bikes more, walk more, and use cars less.

But the individual is in control of how much they eat, and how much exercise they get.

So you might not be able to ward off pollution-related Alzheimers unless you move to a very rural location, but you can avoid diabetes (type 2) and other obesity-related illnesses by making lifestyle choices. And I suppose using cars less also contributes to less pollution, so maybe the dementia rates would also decrease.

Infant mortality rates are rising in the UK - and that is worrying.

Austerity of health and social care.
Poor lifestyles, particularly excessive alcohol consumption and obseity
Illegal drug use rising
Smoking has a regular core still. The mass scale of people giving up has passed.
Anti-biotic resistance.
More babies surviving pregnancy/birth with life long complex needs and low life expectancy.

Most of these factors are negative and signs of decline in society.

Reduced migration of healthy adults is also distorting the statistics according to one report.

The polarisation of life expectancy of different social groups is interesting. One of my relatives had severe learning difficulties and died in his late 40s. The cause of death was never fully established. His physical and mental health had declined through his late 30s and 40s. He could offer little feedback to assist investigation and became more and more remote from us. His peers tend to stay youthful for a prolonged time, then age rapidly. It is hard to keep them mentally and physically stimulated for good health. He may have died prematurely, but his best years had long passed, and it was like saying good bye at the end of a long life. More medical rigour wouldn't have improved his life, but what he and his peers really benefited from is regular staffing building positive relationships, engaging activities and balanced food. 30 years ago they had budgets for occasional foreign holidays, and trips out have got rarer over time.

Quality of life matters most, but if your quality of life is declining, your life expectancy probably will too.

Austerity of health and social care.
Poor lifestyles, particularly excessive alcohol consumption and obseity
Illegal drug use rising
Smoking has a regular core still. The mass scale of people giving up has passed.
Anti-biotic resistance.
More babies surviving pregnancy/birth with life long complex needs and low life expectancy.

Agree with this, the poor are disproportionately effected by the above reasons. But I don’t think anything can really be done about that.

I think it’s a sign that the NHS is falling. Soon the UK will become like the rest of the world, where your healthcare is directly linked to what you can afford.

Obesity is a big thing that will bring the age down. Just like smokers and alcoholics.

It’s the choices individuals are making. Smoking is being tackled. Alcohol and obesity seem to be the ones needing to be tackled but nobody high up seems to have the balls to do so as we are now celebrating just how fat we are becoming.

chillpizza

People should be free to live how they want so if they choose to kill them selves with drugs, pizza and booze. That’s their choice and I guess we should accept that.

....just the matter of the tax payer footing the bill for that.

Cancer seems to be on the increase. All you seem to hear and read now is about people with cancer (of all ages).

Also so many people have such unhealthy lifestyles. Now I am not saying myself and DH are the healthiest people (we are both a bit overweight although trying to tackle that) but neither of us have ever smoked, we don't really drink, we are vegetarian and cook almost everything from scratch. We don't exercise enough but do walk our dogs every day

I look at young people and so many of them smoke and drink quite heavily, We are friendly with a fair few young families where we live and they eat rubbish - takeaway pizza at least twice a week, McDonalds, ready meals etc. None of them seem to cook anything themselves. They drive everywhere and the ones with dogs never ever walk them

I am really surprised that so many youngsters smoke. Is it really still considered cool? Also they all seem to walk round with a can of some sort of energy drink. They can't be that good for you either surely?

Energy drink is the new coffee for younger people.

That’s the issue redneck people want to drink/eat themselves into oblivion and everyone else to pick up the pieces because it’s normal to eat and drink that way. Apparently.

People have gotten to used to the nhs fixing everyone and life must be preserved at all costs. We have babies being kept alive to live their whole lives in hospitals, older people just being pumped full of drugs to last a few more months and a few more without care for quality of life.

Are you deliberately being goady, OP?

My parents were 99 and 97 when they died. Their quality of life was awful for the last couple of years. I absolutely don't want to go there. Longevity is pointless if your life gives you no pleasure.

OP you may feel different when you're 80+.
My 94 year old grandmother told me she drank and smoked when she was younger, didn't care about the risks as had no intention of living long enough to be an old woman.
When she got to her 50's she decided she'd like to get old after all as didn't fancy the alternative .
She was on 40 cigs a day and stopped cold turkey. Still has the odd whisky but otherwise a model of healthy living.

No, of course I'm not deliberately being goady .

It's the cuts in health care funding by the conservative government. I guess they hope the poor people die.