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European Health Levels Suddenly Collapsed After 2003 and Nobody Is Sure Why
KentuckyFC writes "Europeans are living longer. But since 2003, they've suddenly enjoyed fewer years of healthy life. For example, in Italy between 1995 and 2003, life expectancy increased from 75 to 80.1 for men and from 81.8 to 85.3 for women. At the same time, the number of years of healthy life increased from 66.7 to 70.9 for men and from 70 to 74.4 for women. But since 2003, while life expectancy has increased further, the number of years of healthy living has plummeted to about 62 for both sexes. More worrying still is that demographers say the same trend has been repeated right across Europe. Only the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands appear to have escaped. That raises an obvious question: what happened in 2003? One idea is that the weather is to blame. In 2003, Europe experienced an extreme heat wave that led to some 80,000 extra deaths across the region. And the higher temperatures could also have triggered ill health, particularly in older people suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes. That has important implications for governments who have to pay for health costs in Europe. And it raises the possibility that climate change is already having a bigger impact on human health than anyone imagined."
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My guess would be that they are just following America's lead and are becoming fatter.
The article even says:
And yet this increasing lifespan masks a dark secret. Many developed countries are suffering an epidemic of chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease thanks to poor diets and sedentary lifestyles. The numbers are such that they must inevitably influence the health of nations as a whole but by how much?
Then the authors go on to blame it on the weather.
Rather than conclude that the heat wave is the culprit, first find some comparative events. Its not like there is a historical shortage of heat waves to use to validate the theory, yet there seems to have been no attempt to do so mentioned.
How about the austerity measures, put into place across Europe. Perhaps the stress countries are coming under is spreading to peoples health to the point were it is a negative response. Happy people live longer and in many EU countries, people are not happy.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
This has to all be Barak Obama's fault, personally. There is no other possible explanation.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Screw it. It's too hot to go outside we'll stay inside and eat. I know that most older people that I know start going downhill quickly when they stop moving.
... of less healthy people, who probably experienced more malnutrition and disease in childhood, might explain it.
More likely it's just a bug in the survey's methodology.
The article lists Sweden among the countries where the years of health are going down, but when you look at the graph for individual countries, Sweden has a strong positive trend, and does not go down significantly in any year. Is that an error, or have I missed something?
On a side note, the article is confusing "Europe" with "The European Union". They aren't the same thing, especially when making statements like "Only the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands appear to have escaped". They didn't consider Iceland, Norway, Switzerland or any of the eastern european countries, for example. (Also, France is among those considered, and also doesn't seem to be declining).
Finally, the study is based on interview subjects' own perception of their health, and so might be affected by news reporing on health or other psychologial effects. But it is definitely an interesting result they've found.
There's no lameness filter for bold!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
We have cellphones and wifi in the UK, and I'm pretty sure they have them in the Netherlands too ;)
which is totally what she said
This has been posted on here before, so I'm kind of just karma whoring, but I have long suspected, and explained to others, that this idea that we can all work until we're 70 or 75 because we'll live to 100 for this generation is bullshit, a scam to keep us grinding along and working until we drop dead. I say that with all the technological advances we've made in the last 50 years we may have less of an idea of what much of it does to the body than we think. it might not be making for a good quality of life at advanced age.
We may be living longer, but what I feel I am seeing in older people is that some of them are quite unhappy with how they feel. Then again, others say anything is better than being dead.
Thoughts?
Whew, is it hot in here or is it just me?
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lots of immigration into europe. and if they eat anything like my russian in laws this explains everything
the russians eat too much carbs. the only people on the planet to eat pasta and bread and potatoes together. and then they wonder why they get diabetes
Is the cause in 2003 or is it a delayed cause from a decade, two decades or even eighty years ago?
You can't jump to conclusions about the weather. The thing about France is telling. They didn't drop until 2006, and I remember hearing some truly awful things about what the heat did to the elderly there. If I had to guess, I'd say that some change in government policy had something to do with it. UK is not as strongly tied to Europe. Some of these other countries are tied in economic union; but they are still sovereign. Perhaps France was able to provide good retirement benefits just a bit longer. That would be the first place I'd look--the impact of government policies that impact the elderly. If you suddenly have to take an early retirement and aren't getting the same benefits that will impact your lifestyle.
Government policy impact does a better job of explaining discrepancies between countries, the sudden change, and why some are not affected even though they share a similar climate.
Of course my speculation is no better than theirs. The people that are getting paid to do this need to go back and analyze their data some more.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Could this be because it's easier to get diagnosed with diabetes, COPD, or other non-healthy conditions than it was in 2002? I've heard enough anecdotal evidence to make me ask the question, but it would be nice to see a study. How many people who were considered healthy in 2002 could visit a doctor in 2013 and be declared unhealthy, and how does that fraction vary by country? Unless an article can control for that variable, the other numbers don't really mean much.
More and more of electronic pollution? Mire wifi usage, more cellphones + more upper gigahertz traffic (G2, G3, G4)?
Imbalanced chakras? Cold and squared audio output from transistor amps? The decline of the department store?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Medical technology keeping unhealthy people alive far longer than it used to....
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/11/26/1511238/why-scott-adams-wished-death-on-his-dad
love is just extroverted narcissism
Could it be related to The Great Depression? Somebody who lived until they were 85, and died between 2003 and 2013 would have been born between 1918 and 1928. Basically, they would have been quite young during the great depression. I wonder if something like this could have big effects so much later in life. It's mostly likely that, or possibly that a lot of them ended up being veterans of the war, as they would have been around 15-25 years old when the second world war was going on. I'm sure there's some very reasonable explanation why this group of people aren't living so many healthy years.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
...is what happened in 2010 to cause the even larger spike upward, and why did it reverse itself.
I bet its food quality. The quality of our food has gone down as we try to get more and more off the land. Health care has gotten better though.
So people are staying alive longer but are less healthy.
This paper is in its infancy. It is somewhat garbled, the methods don't really specify the methods.
The methods are basically "we graphed mortality over time". But you can't really criticize it much,
because it is not published, and probably not submitted yet. The only question is why did it get to slashdot?
The most likely explanation for the effect at this stage is some kind of error. Either in the calculation,
or as the authors point out, in the wording of the questions (which probably would be a good idea to
test before this paper is published ?)
"Standardized translations of the questionnaire have been used; nevertheless it is likely that linguistic or cultural differences, as well as changes in the wording of questions, have influenced the way the respondents indicate a longstanding health problem or disability and their way of communicating the types of restrictions caused by this problem"
Or, in the population measured (migration from East-Block countries?) or many other possible problems.
All these I'd bet much higher chances than a real health effect.
So what else happened to the European Union after 2003? Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary joined the E.U. in 2004. These countries have huge numbers of elderly people in relatively poor health as a result of mediocre Warsaw Pact health and nutrition. This will obviously lower the overall health of the EU average, but I'm willing to bet a bunch of them migrated to other EU countries and depressed the stats for individual nations.
Don't think I'm arguing against immigration here: the effect is to increase the health of the European continent overall, which is a good thing.
it's probably car accidents. since 2003 the car ownership rate has skyrocketed. there was a jump that year due to a change in import/export control laws.
Whatever you do don't put the blame on you blame it on the rain yeah yeah. Cuz the rain don't mind and the rain don't care.
Really well!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1864111-the-post-crisis-facts-are-in-and-theyre-not-kind-to-keynesian-thinking
Exactly, that's why tropical areas enjoy such a healthy life!
and drinking American beer.
I thought drinking water was generally considered to be good for your health.
All the H1B programmers that had been hired to work on Y2K returned to Europe, bringing with them the North American diet.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
For sure the claim that "socialized medicine stopped working so well when those economies hit the skids" makes far more sense than "it's all Global Warming: Mother Gaia punishes us for the sins of carbon emission".
BTW, I'm 20% cooler than everyone upthread.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
which as near as I can tell is code for Wealth Inequality. Around 2003 the rich made a major money grab, netting the biggest gains in history while saddling everyone else with massive debt. You've probably got a lot of Europeans putting in American style 60 hour (high stress) work weeks. They're also probably drinking more sugary caffeinated drinks to cope with the extra workload needed to keep their heads above water while their wages plummet.
So basically, cut peoples standard of living through a program of massive wealth transference to the top 1% and their life expectancies go down. Who knew?
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I think the shills will be right this time. I think we'll find that they changed the definition of what is a "healthy life" around 2003. It explains, for example, why the phenomenon honors national borders (and why Sweden was affected, but not Denmark). This smells of change in methodology.
So sure, we can blame climate change, water fluoridation, or imbalanced chakra, but as I see it, there probably isn't any change in EU human health to worry about here.
I know you're trying to be snarky, but in fact it would be true if the warm tropical weather came by itself without the increase in disease carrying insects and vermin, torrential rain, etc. Not to mention the cultures that evolved in tropical climates have yet to develop science and medical technology.
The few places in tropical climates that have developed to European levels enjoy excellent health and longevity. Singapore would be one example.
Fact is, people (especially old people) die en mass in cold winters and do well in hot weather. Why do you think old people all move to Florida instead of enjoying their Michigan/NY winters?
Without the very bleeding edge in anti-parasitic technologies, warm weather means increased parasite load starting among children and young adults, and continuing to EOL. The American south is something of an exception, because the US FDA (remember, the gumment ain't done nothing for you!) has eliminated yellow fever, screwworms, and most of the least pleasant parasitic buddies of tropical living, with air conditioning mopping up the rest. Were it not for that, they'd probably be hanging out with their buddies, getting schistosomiasis, and being generally useless in the face of the northern hemisphere.
McDonalds.. The American fast food chains started pushing HARD across europe.
The Herpes that is american fast food is spreading across the planet.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That has important implications for governments who have to pay for health costs in Europe.
Government does not pay health costs. Citizen do through taxes, or insured people do through fees.
I applaud your effort to bring actual data to the discussion, but I'm not certain those links support your claim of temperatures "equal to or higher than todays". Closest I could find in the first paper was:
The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th century, equalling or slightly exceeding the mid-20th century warming, is in agreement with the results from other more recent large-scale multi-proxy temperature reconstructions
(emphasis mine) ... but we know global temperatures have risen significantly in the last 60 years. Do you have evidence that this is not the case in Europe?
The second link was paywalled, but the abstract says northern Sweden experienced "similar levels of summer warmth in the medieval period (MWP, c. CE 900–1100) and the latter half of the 20th century". Hard to pin down the comparison dates, but again, not "equal or higher than today".
The third link says that some reconstructions of northern Sweden and Finland specifically have indeed been up to 0.6C warmer 2000 years ago, when compared to the 1951-1980 mean (rather than today's warmer temperatures), but also says that proxy reconstructions can vary wildly, by 1.5-3C, depending on which Scandinavian record is used, and finishes with:
We conclude that the temperature history of the last millenium is much less understood than often suggested, and that the regional and particularly the hemispheric scale pre-1400 temperature variance is largely unknown.
So basically, it was certainly fairly warm in Europe during certain past periods, but the evidence is not reliable enough to say exactly how warm, and no paper supports the claim that it's "equal or higher than todays" temperatures. In any case, Europe in general (and Sweden/Finland in particular) are only one part of the global picture; temperatures were relatively low elsewhere in the world even during the MWP.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Right after you and Facts get together for a first-ever meeting.
Logic though is an old best friend of mine, I guess you didn't know that as Logic says you hardly stop by any more.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley