20 May 2022 – Geneva: The World Health Organization has published its latest comprehensive set of World Health Statistics for 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic – which led to an estimated 4.5 million excess deaths in that year.
The statistics reveal the extent to which the pandemic has affected health systems worldwide, in some cases severely restricting access to vital services. These disruptions are likely to set back global progress on both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy made in the first 20 years of the century.
Global life expectancy at birth had increased from 66.8 years…
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a metabolic disorder of insulin resistance — a reduced sensitivity to the action of insulin — which leads to high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia. Approximately 12% of American adults have T2D, and more than one-third of Americans have prediabetes, a precursor to T2D. This is a major public health concern, as T2D dramatically increases the risk for heart disease, including heart attacks, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure.
The development and progression of T2D is affected by many factors. Some, such as a person’s race/ethnicity, age, and gender cannot be modified. Others, including body weight, exercise,…
Moderate exercise and positive social relationships are two of the habits associated with longer lives
Shutterstock/Ground Picture
People who adopt eight healthy habits by the age of 40 may live about two decades longer than those who don’t. The effect is lower but still significant for people who have these eight habits by the time they are 60 years old.
Xuan-Mai Nguyen at the VA Boston Healthcare System and her colleagues collected data on physical activity, diet, sleep, mental health, relationships and alcohol use from a group of more than 700,000 US veterans between 40 and 99 years old. Participants…