AIBU to think poor health in later life is a UK problem?

[BePunnyLilacCrow]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20q07w3gl9o

I just read an article about healthy life expectancy in the UK, and I find it quite sad that we are basically at the bottom of the list among the world’s richest countries. Even the US is better than the UK on average??

Life expectancy in the UK is:

Men: ~79-80 years
Women: ~83-84 years

BUT

Men spend about 19–20 years in poorer health
Women spend about 22–23 years in poorer health

I know that the UK has relatively good overall life expectancy, but that mainly means we are keeping people alive for longer. Unfortunately, those extra years are often not spent in good health. These facts are not true for wealthier parts of the UK, but even the more affluent areas still tend to have lower healthy life expectancy than many average European countries. I am curious what
people think about the contributing factors? I think:

• Weaker family/social connections (I seriously think this is a big one)
• Obviously diet + high consumption of UPFs
• Low every day
activity (again, loneliness contributes to this esp. for the elderly)

There are many reasons, but in my opinion these contribute a lot. Especially weak social life I see in the UK compared to most countries I’ve lived/been to. For example something as simple as cooking together with people, or for family gatherings etc can have a huge impact on how people eat, because you are encouraged more to home cook food in that way, rather than just get a greasy takeaway or eat out, or just get a rubbish supermarket ready meals most people have etc.

This post is not about judging anyone’s lifestyle choices. But I think we should all be concerned about this because there is no point in living longer if it’s spent in illness. And I’m saying this as someone under 30.

What do you think? How can we improve these measures and live a better life in the UK?

There is a really poor food and exercise culture in the UK. We feed children nuggets and chips because we can't possibly think they'd eat actual food.

You go to a restaurant here and half the menu is "& chips" and people think that's a treat. Not a lovely sea bass or lamb dish, no BBQ chicken and chips is a "treat" rather than high quality, fresh tasty food.

If you go walking regularly people think you are some sort of pro athlete because the culture here is so sedentary.

Fruit and veg consumption is very low, especially in poorer males.

We don't have a natural tendency towards older adults going for a walk, doing yoga.

My dad has a lot of old injuries from sport and his old job. He’s in his 70s
just back from 2 weeks in Lanzarote , he hasn’t been abroad for the best part of 40 years
I asked him what he enjoyed and he said “walking with no pain. We walked miles and my shoulder and my knees and my wrists didn’t hurt at all”

I think this Gen Z thing is either a myth, is class/area based or applies only to the younger ones.

Of people I know in their 20s, the young men are into the gym but also eat a lot of takeaways, drink a lot of alcohol and cannabis use is common (and for some harder drug use too). The young women eat
badly and whilst they may not drink as much alcohol, they seem to drink a lot of sugary pop or sugared lattes and don’t do the exercise.

You're misquoting me. I said that nutrition is a key issue. The pp said that reaching home economics is a factor. I conflated those things to make the point that teaching children about nutrition is a key factor.

We're not talking about chicken nuggets v organic chicken thighs. We're talking about understanding the value of nutrition, how it impacts our health age, and how to eat healthily, lifelong. Of course there are other factors, but nutrition is a vital one.

Family life tends to be more stressful in the UK. I can “feel” it sometimes. Obsessions with schools and exams etc. On MN you see single parents, and sometimes married parents, barely coping with the demands of everyday life. We have more choices, some of them are great. I already mentioned the kind of food available in supermarkets now is AMAZING. But at the same time life is much more complicated than it was in the 1970s. How many times a day do people have to go on their phone to book something, arrange something, cancel something, respond to something.

I do think there is more social isolation. I think the UK is quite a divided country - culturally and socially. People tend to have ‘community’ and trust with people like themselves and, though it may be an unpopular opinion, it does affect people that this is less common, especially for those living in cities.

Housing is a nightmare for many. Though to be fair, that is mostly in comparison with the 1960s to 1980s. Before that, it could be pretty tough too. It wasn’t unusual for a teacher at the turn of the 20th century to live in one room in a boarding house!

I think obesity might? Which can be linked to lack of exercise, and poor food choices.

That’s pretty much a socio-economic thing, is it not? Like many West Midlanders I love a day out in Weston, but it’s not exactly upmarket is it?

Too many massively obese people, who eat absolute crap and don't, or more likely can't, exercise.

We have an epidemic of diseases like diabetes. I don't like to medicalise what are lifestyle issues in my view ( I've got my hard hat on there! ) but WLI should be more widely available for people who need the help to lose weight, because I accept its fucking hard to do it, and it's really hard to exercise when overweight and you get trapped in a spiral.

Obese people exercise too.

Greece Has higher rates of obesity than the uk and has amazing weather

It obviously is not as simple as you say, or there would not be so many problems with peoples health, and so much obesity, prevalent in Society.

What do they mean by poor health ? Are they talking about 'wear and tear' type issues which are largely inevitable as you age ? So an element of sight and hearing loss, wear and tear to joints, or are they talking about heart disease, kidney disease, cognitive decline ?

I wonder if it has anything to do with people living separately from their families nowadays. every woman I know works full-time even though they have more than one child. If I lived near to my brother and his family, and my parents, and my in-laws, I do feel like we would all pass everything around and feel a more relaxed and healthy.

I know you can share it between two people if you have a partner, but it is very complicated creating a meal for four after 5 pm. It’s also hard to get outside and move if you’ve worked full-time in an office job, and get home, cook a meal & get the kids in bed by 7. I feel like if we all live nearby, we could pop round with the kids and do some jobs for my parents on a weekend, and keep them active, and during the week they could roll up with a shepherds pie in my dad could paint a fence, or help out with jobs that we now have to pay for, so maybe I could work three days a week. Everything would benefit each other.

I think everyone’s focusing on obesity, but maybe people are stuck in poor housing because they’re on their own, and can’t afford it, because they don’t have a family to come and help them out so they’re paying for everything. Maybe people are obese because they’re feeling sad and lonely and depressed.

I wonder if we brought the whole community thing back, and people were more likely to live near quite a lot of Family, some of these things might fall away. It’s easy to blame processed food. This is also the generation who were the first generations where the women did go back and work full-time. My parents generation. Maybe we’re just seeing the impact of that on their health. This generation also have their parents live longer. My mother-in-law is 70 and her mother only just died last year. That’s a very long time caring for children & then a parent.

Can confidently say that I won't be taking up running in my 60s.

I know not everyone was SAHM, but there were a lot more about than today! The generation that did not have a car each, and one for each of the children, that allowed post partum women to rest in hospital for a week, and where visiting hours were strict and enforced, where the shopping for food was done every day so everything was fresh and cooked more or less on the day (not many fridges and freezers about), where people walked or took the bus, where kids were not ferried to school and the notion of driving the kids to school was unheard of, and so on. Kids playing together on the green or the street every evening in Summer. A lot more activity but not planned or timed like today (gym, pilates class, kids activities etc.).

I'm 68 now, and the above was the case when I was growing up. Back further my gran was the same. All the husbands had good jobs and we were well fed and had decent housing, we were working class in council housing and I don't remember ever being hungry or neglected. I was lucky, but most of my peers were the same. Expectations were not as high as today I think, everyone was in the same boat and there was very little competitiveness regarding status.

A big yes about the decline/removal of adult education, evening classes, etc. These days, once you hit 21, the usual leaving age of University/higher education, you're really buggered if you want to learn new skills, get more qualifications, etc., whether for your work, mental health, socialising, etc., as there's basically nothing except for the odd course provided by charities etc if you fall into their demographic.

Go back to the 90s, and we used to get a huge "directory" of all the different courses at various venues in our locality, from accountancy right through to flower arranging, car maintenance through to skiing, plastering to knitting. Our one remaining "adult education" college (we used to have four) now only provides courses for 16+ school leavers.

There is an abundance of SAHMs in all the countries that outscore us...

Denmark?

Which countries? It’s not clear from the article what countries have been compared. Denmark, for example, cited above is nowhere near the top 20 richest countries in the world

Sorry, got that the wrong way round. I meant that all the countries above us also have fewer SAHMs than they used to... duh.

https://www.health.org.uk/reports-and-analysis/analysis/healthy-life-expectancy-trends-in-the-uk-a-watershed-moment

21 countries are listed here.

This would be a good start.

Where would you start for the biggest wins?

https://www.health.org.uk/reports-and-analysis/briefings/uk-mortality-trends-and-international-comparisons

This report tells us the mortality rate has risen in 25 to 49 years olds, depressingly.

I disagree, there is more avaialbility that ever to learn and educate yourself....try asking google or chatgpt

I don't think that's the point really, evening classes were a point of contact, of social interraction, and connection. Now most interests/hobbies covered by the former night classes (if available) are solitary and mostly online.

Thank you for that- this is such an interesting chart- look at the major change in most countries, only Japan and USA (top and bottom) remaining steady.

there will be some relatively to the uks position, it won’t be just about features of the uk but rather the features of the other countries over the time period.