Baby Boomers Sicker Than Parents’ Generation, Study Finds

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-04/baby-boomers-sicker-than-parents-generation-study-finds.html

Baby boomers have more chronic illness and disability than their parents, as their sedentary habits and expanding girth offset the modern medicine that enables them to live longer, a study said.

Baby boomers, the 78 million Americans born from 1946 through 1964, engage in less physical activity, are more overweight and have higher rates of hypertension and high cholesterol, according to a study released yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The study, among the first to compare the generations, shows that baby boomers aren’t as healthy and active as most would believe, said Dana E. King, the lead author. They become sicker earlier in life than the previous generation, are more limited in what they can do at work and are more likely to need the use of a cane or walker, the research found.

“The results of this study say you become sicker sooner and you are burdened with chronic disease and are taking medications yet you live longer,” King, a professor of family medicine at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown, said in a Feb. 1 telephone interview. “We are not as healthy as we think. There needs to be a new emphasis and continued attention to programs to improve healthy lifestyles in this age group.”

[BeyondGeography]

1. Yeah, but our stuff is way cooler

[Champion Jack]

2. Yah, and we have much better music

[Brainstormy]

3. Boomer parents ate real food

before 10,000 additives, GMO, and petroleum-based everything. We can expect the next generation to be sicker, too, and fatter, with shorter life spans. Nothing mysterious about it.

[mopinko]

4. boomer parents weren't raised on petroleum fumes.

cars were still a rarity for my folks. i lived on a state highway, sat on the front porch just watching the cars go buy. playing games with my sibs, counting them. i am sure i sucked in many gallons of lead laced petroleum fumes.

[progressoid]

5. I would venture to say that it will be worse for the generations after us.

[Nay]

8. Yeah-- they think the boomers are sicker? Wait until the current generation gets old, after

they have eaten pizza 5 times a week, sat on their butts at work AND at home in front of the computer or game console...in retrospect, the boomers will look like Jack LaLanne.

[Warpy]

6. That's what you get when you start sucking too much profit

out of sick people. They stay sicker longer before they finally seek help and often seek it too late to avoid having something that was initially curable turn into something chronic.

The private sector has failed us miserably. It's time to put health insurance 100% into the public sector.

[SheilaT]

7. I'm 64, a Boomer, and I'm constantly amazed at how

almost everyone around me has some sort of disease, or chronic condition, or some sort of manifestation of ill health. It's almost as if they're reveling in the poor health.

Me, I take no regular meds, not even vitamins. I don't get flu shots, either. I'm annoyingly healthy, never get what's going around. Last had flu a good thirty years ago. Get a cold maybe every other year. I am a little overweight, sigh, but I do an awful lot of my own cooking from scratch. I could stand to eat more fruits and vegetables, so I'm far from perfect. Oh, and I love meat.

I'm currently single (divorced actually) and I'm not sure I want to get into a new relationship with anyone my age because of all the chronic illness I see. I do not want to be a nurse for someone else in my golden years.

[hedgehog]

9. I am in much better health than my grandfather was at this age -

he was a very old man, still working at a steel mill, but very crippled up. Ironically, his main problem was severe rheumatic arthritis in his hips. My main problem is also an autoimmune disease, Sjorgren's syndrome. (it's my daughter, his great-granddaughter who is dealing with RA.) The biggest difference is that I wasn't starved as a child like he was, I didn't spend years doing punishing physical labor and I have access to modern medicines to control my symptoms!

[quadrature]

10. another arguement for rationing food

where I live,
I see a lot of people
who have been overfed

[LeftishBrit]

12. Rationing food?

Do you seriously mean that you think that the government should be rationing food for everyone?

[LeftishBrit]

11. I suspect that at least part of the reason...

is that the parents of the 'boomers' had to be quite healthy to survive to old age in the first place. The general lack of medical knowledge, plus rampant poverty especially during the Great Depression, killed off the less healthy, often before they could even get to be parents; and even among those who lived to adulthood, before they reached old age.

Thus, you're not comparing like with like. Someone - especially a man - who was born in 1900 and reached 65 in 1965 was part of a somewhat selected group. One-sixth of his contemporaries had never even reached the age of one. Someone born in 1948 who reaches 65 in 2013 is doing what everyone does, except the very unlucky.


The old saying, 'If I'd known that I'd live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself', may apply here.

[bemildred]

13. What a load of Edit: unfalsifiable horseshit. nt