Studies: Baby Boomers Less Healthy Than Their Parents
Posted on Fri Apr 20, 2007 at 01:03:00 AM EST
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Off-topic perhaps, but it's Friday and I'm sick of all the crime news this week.
In today's Washington Post:
Data shows that baby boomers are less healthy than their parents. Hard to believe with all our focus on gyms, health food and quitting smoking, but these are the facts:
Boomers are healthier in some important ways -- they are much less likely to smoke, for example -- but large surveys are consistently finding that they tend to describe themselves as less hale and hearty than their forebears did at the same age. They are more likely to report difficulty climbing stairs, getting up from a chair and doing other routine activities, as well as more chronic problems such as high cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes.
One explanation:
"People are working two jobs. They are not sleeping as much. They're experiencing more job insecurity. They have less time to take care of themselves. They are more socially isolated," said Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Public Health. "This all could add up to a huge crisis and really calls for us to examine the things that perhaps we're not doing so well."
So, we may look ten years younger than our parents did at our age, but apparently, we're in worse health.
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