People in the world are living longer than before, but they are not always living healthier lives during those extra years. A recent study by researchers at the MayoClinic found that while life expectancy keeps rising, the number of years people spend in good health does not increase as much. The study has been published in the journal Communications Medicine.Basically, scientists are seeing that just because people are living longer these days (that’s what we call “lifespan”), it doesn’t mean they’re living all those extra years in good health (“healthspan”). So, life is getting longer, but not necessarily better, because more people are spending a lot of their “golden years” dealing with sickness or disabilities instead of being healthy and active.
How did they figure this out?
The research team did a massive study that looked at health and life expectancy data from 183 countries all over the world. They used information from the World Health Organization and other big international sources to figure out two things for each country:Life expectancy: How long, on average, people live in that country.Health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE): Basically, how many years, on average, someone lives in good health, not hampered by illness or disability.The “healthspan-lifespan gap” is just the difference between those two numbers. So if the average life expectancy is 80, but the average healthy lifespan is 70, that means people spend around 10 of their years dealing with health problems.
What did they find?
Globally, there’s now a gap of about 9 years between lifespan and healthspan — and that gap is getting wider, not smaller! But it’s not the same everywhere. For instance, people in Europe and North America tend to live the longest, but they also spend more years in poor health. Meanwhile, people in parts of Africa may have shorter lifespans overall, but spend a higher percentage of those years in good health.One interesting part is what causes people to lose those healthy years. In wealthier regions like the Americas and Europe, most of the gap is because of chronic, non-infectious diseases — think heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and things like that. In poorer regions, people tend to die younger, but more often from infectious diseases or conditions related to childbirth and nutrition. However, chronic diseases are on the rise everywhere as people adopt more modern lifestyles.
What about mental health?
Another thing the study pointed out is that problems like depression and substance abuse are pretty common across all regions. These mental and behavioral issues don’t explain the differences between places, but they’re a big deal just about everywhere.
Why does it matter?
This growing gap between how long people live and how long they’re healthy is worrying. It means more folks are facing years of poor quality of life, with pain, disability, and all the stress (and cost) that comes with illness.Even more, the researchers noticed that economic factors (like a country’s wealth and health spending) and patterns of disease in that society can predict this gap. Richer countries tend to have more years of chronic illness, probably because people survive longer with disease management, but don’t necessarily cure the illness. Poorer countries, on the other hand, are catching up as their populations age.
So, what now?
The main takeaway is we can’t just focus on making people live longer, we’ve got to think about helping them live healthier, too. Each region of the world has its own challenges, so there’s no single solution. The study says we need to tailor health policies and disease prevention strategies to the specific problems in each place, rather than treating everyone the same.In short: More years doesn’t always mean better years. The world has some homework to do if we want those golden years to actually be golden!