The gap between living long and living healthy is widening

MSN

There was a 9.6-year gap between years lived in good health and total lifespans among people living in 183 countries, and the United States had the greatest “healthspan”-lifespan gap of any of them, according to research in JAMA Network Open.

The gap means that on average, 9.6 years of people’s lives are burdened by disease. Researchers studied data from the World Health Organization’s 183 member states and concluded that the United States had the greatest chronic disease burden of all WHO members, and a healthy years-lifespan gap of 12.4 years.

Across the WHO members, there was a health-adjusted life expectancy of 63.3 years vs. a 72.5-year mean life expectancy. In 2000, the beginning of the study period, the gap between healthspan and lifespan was 8.5 years; it climbed to 9.6 years by 2019, for a 13 percent increase over the two-decade study period.

“These results underscore that around the world, while people live longer, they live a greater number of years burdened by disease,” the researchers wrote. Between 2000 and 2019, lifespan increased faster than healthspan, said the study’s senior author, Andre Terzic, a professor of cardiovascular research at the Mayo Clinic…