Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Five theories about why middle-aged, white Americans are dying at such shockingly high rates
National Post ^ | November 6, 2015 | Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post

Posted on 11/07/2015 6:08:40 AM PST by rickmichaels

"Half a million people are dead who should not be dead," Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics told my Post colleagues Lenny Bernstein and Joel Achenbach.

Deaton, an economics professor at Princeton, was talking about the stunning finding that he and his wife, Anne Case, made while analyzing U.S. death data from the past few decades. The researchers found that the mortality rate for white men and women ages 45 to 54 with less than a college education took a sharp turn upward in 1999 - a disconcerting reversal that has been virtually unheard of in advanced countries.

To put that number into perspective, Deaton estimates that a half-million deaths is "about 40 times the Ebola stats." He added, "You're getting up there with HIV-AIDS."

The couple's study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, offered a number of possible reasons that this might be happening. And since its publication, other experts have weighed in on other trends that might explain this phenomenon. Below is a look at five of their theories. Many of them have to do more with psychological distress than traditional causes of death such as heart disease or lung cancer.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS: health; middleage
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160161-180 last
To: Sequoyah101
It is better to be pissed off than pissed on.

I just wish they would quit insulting our intelligence by telling us it is raining. It's tedious.

161 posted on 11/07/2015 5:55:47 PM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 76 | View Replies]

To: fatima

Our grandkids never had baby sitters besides us, neighbors on the same cul de sac and a few other relatives when they visited the east coast.


162 posted on 11/07/2015 6:05:54 PM PST by Grampa Dave ("If you use FR and don't donate. That means that you are a LeYft Wing or Rino plant, to be ignored!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 150 | View Replies]

To: Grampa Dave

Us too except for mountains kids.We have 25 Greats and Grands.Negotiating barter now because we are both retired so got a case of beer,bottle of wine and dinner for tonight with left overs.Proud of myself.They are already an hour late.Might renegotiate :)


163 posted on 11/07/2015 6:18:11 PM PST by fatima (Free Hugs Today :))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 162 | View Replies]

To: Theodore R.

I am fine. What I have done is retooled my resume to end prior to 1995. I got MS- Applied Physics in 1997, so that’s the last education that I list.

I know it’s not completely honest, but I have to play the game. It makes me look 38 instead of 53.


164 posted on 11/07/2015 6:22:23 PM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 142 | View Replies]

To: Ouderkirk

((((Hugs))))


165 posted on 11/07/2015 7:08:20 PM PST by fatima (Free Hugs Today :))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies]

To: Bryanw92

The popular one has stolen all your vacations from you.


166 posted on 11/07/2015 7:36:11 PM PST by Theodore R. (Liberals keep winning; so the American people must now be all-liberal all the time.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 148 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe

I guess Tedious is one word for it.

I’m just damn mad. It wouldn’t do for me to carry. A two foot section of 1 1/4” pipe is bad enough.


167 posted on 11/07/2015 8:08:01 PM PST by Sequoyah101 (It feels like we have exchanged our dreams for survival. We just have a few days that don't suck.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 161 | View Replies]

To: rickmichaels

One answer.....stress.


168 posted on 11/07/2015 8:09:43 PM PST by Cold Heat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe
I like what you wrote. We think what we think and write what we write. We know the government is censoring but so what? We don't care. As you said, internalizing the stress is a killer. If we have to censure what we think, feel and write, we are not free any more and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my remaining years self censoring. The PC devil can go to hell!

If they want us to die, then Molon Labe! Until then, we live a sane and moral life, take care of our own, pray, prepare and communicate with like minded people locally and on Free Republic.

Live Free or Die means more now than ever.

169 posted on 11/07/2015 8:17:36 PM PST by Art in Idaho (Conservatism is the only Hope for Western Civilization.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: Sequoyah101
I'm damned mad, too. My ancestors came here long before there was a country, my wife's ancestors predate them by a few thousand years.

In the various branches of the family tree are nobility who gave up that advantage to help establish this Republic, including a Signer of the Declaration.

Our family has fought in most of the wars, from before the Revolution to the present day, and yet we are progressively stripped of more rights and property by a government which was intended to secure those.

I am ever reminded that "...Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed".. and only wait until that consent is more universally revoked.

If I live so long, perhaps we can set this country straight. Perhaps not, but given no other choices, I'd rather die a free man than live in bondage.

For now, I am content to plant the seeds of freedom in whatever mind I can, to remind people of the Rights infringed by the Government's overreach, and to exhort them to insist that Government and our public servants conduct themselves as they are supposed to.

It is an uphill battle, especially among 'exceptional conservatives' who are conservative, except ______(fill in the blank of their pet issue).

The concept of fairness has been so distorted that people can't see eliminating pet projects to reign in the continued expansion, and they still cry out "there ought to be a law".

It is tedious...

...and yes, I'm angry at the people who lie to the public and daily infringe upon our Rights for personal gain.

If there is another American Revolution, it won't look like the last. It will more closely resemble The Terror (post French Revolution) as the reprisals will continue for years, if not decades, as the "criminals" (defined by the victors) are hunted down like medieval outlaws.

170 posted on 11/07/2015 8:23:25 PM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 167 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe

Or if you get depressed the Doctor hands you anti depressant.
White people I know who have died in the last 15 years that were young.
I worked with a person who’s son was shot dead in front of her.He was 30.Drug dealer shot him.
His brother’s best friend died from a drug that made him forget to breathe.Died in his sleep.He was 30.
His brother in law died from an OD and his daughter found him in the basement.The only thing she remembers is that he only had one shoe on.She was 10 years old.
Moving on My daughters friend jump off a cliff to his death.We search for him all night.He did not do drugs but his girlfriend confessed to an affair that night.
A week later her classmate went to sleep and never woke up.Took a bunch of pills.Her grades were not up to par for parents .They were both 24.A week after that my daughter’s friend at school’s brother committed suicide while she was out shopping.She found him.He was 30.

My son committed suicide at 40-started with anti-depressant’s.
Good old family Doctor gave the whole family anti-depressant’s after he died.One got hooked and became suicidal but thank God we all intervened and prayers from FR in Freepmail.
These people have not reached the stats and I have more.
OD from Heroin at our local high school is the 4th largest in the country but that figure will go up because it’s so cheap now.
I know so many who OD on Heroin.
Why do I know this-because I am out there.Any numbers that you are reading now are nothing to what is happening to our young .


171 posted on 11/07/2015 9:11:09 PM PST by fatima (Free Hugs Today :))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 170 | View Replies]

To: sagar

It’s strange that such a reversal had occurred, particularly since white males are supposedly so “privileged”. It’s also quite unbelievable that somehow white males eat more fast food, drink more alcohol and engage in other destructive behaviors at a higher rate than their peers in other demographic groups. Maybe there are factors outside one’s sphere of personal responsibility, that just maybe some things can’t be controlled or compensated for easily by any individual.


172 posted on 11/07/2015 9:59:05 PM PST by Crucial (At the heart all leftists is the fear that the truth is bigger than themselves.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 100 | View Replies]

To: Theodore R.

>>The popular one has stolen all your vacations from you.

I really wish I could blame him, but my vacations were sacrificed to Corporate America’s Bottom Line.


173 posted on 11/08/2015 4:54:10 AM PST by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyrannis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 166 | View Replies]

To: fatima
Deaths here reported in the paper appear to be primarily a bimodal distribution, one peak in the late teens to mid twenties, the remainder pretty much 70+. It seems the 50-early 60s has been picking up, with the death of three friends in that age group in the last year.

Two of the three were vets, 1 USN, 1 USMC, and had lived fairly hard lives, the other died of heart trouble. The younger crowd, however, seems to go either from suicide or car accidents (some possibility of suicide there, too). Schools here have been known to maintain their high ratings by practically kicking out students who are having trouble, and that doesn't help the kids any. Parents with problems get even good kids off to a rough start, and sometimes that ends badly.

Yes, heroin (I thought we finally got rid of that crap in the 60/70s) is making a comeback, as if Meth wasn't enough of a people/life/family wrecker.

Add in an educational establishment and legal system which tell children that things that are contrary to nature are sacrosanct behaviour, and no wonder kids are depressed.

They know when things are contrary to nature--part of adolescence is becoming acutely aware of natural drives.

Even employers don't have the courage to stand up and say things which are wrong are wrong, and the few who do get slaughtered in the legal system because of the cowardice of the rest.

So the kids feel abandoned by their elders, especially their parents generation, and in some cases they could not be more right.

The people who should be fighting for a more sane world for their children are taking their kids to the doctor and getting them pills instead of teaching them coping skills and telling them to stick, at their core, to their beliefs, no matter what they must say to survive.

We have told our children to avoid the antidepressant out if at all possible, that finding a way to deal with life without a pill is to be preferred if at all possible. Our family is pretty close knit, and that helps, but still it can be an uphill battle.

174 posted on 11/08/2015 5:28:38 AM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 171 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe

I was thinking of so many more when I woke up.Your right the kids have no one to talk to.The local Judge would send Teens for community service to us.We used to have so much fun with them.Two of the girls tried to commit suicide.Both because of the home situation.


175 posted on 11/08/2015 6:22:11 AM PST by fatima (Free Hugs Today :))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 174 | View Replies]

To: BobL

Like to see rates for middle aged blacks, hispanics and asians too.


176 posted on 11/08/2015 7:01:39 AM PST by CPT Clay (Hillary: Julius and Ethal Rosenberg were electrocuted for selling classified info.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: baltiless

Ask your Dr about taking coenzyme Q10 - 60 to 100 Mgs three times a day.

Hibiscus tea and dark chocolate.

Spirulina, a super food helper that everyone should take - 5 grams/day
will lower your blood pressure.

So will just a tad of exercise.

Don’t give up.


177 posted on 11/08/2015 8:16:23 AM PST by MarMema
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 107 | View Replies]

To: Art in Idaho

Nice post.


178 posted on 11/08/2015 8:17:39 AM PST by MarMema
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 118 | View Replies]

To: Art in Idaho

All of that might be good advice, except for one thing:

There is no god.


179 posted on 11/09/2015 4:25:30 AM PST by Old Sarge
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 118 | View Replies]

To: Theodore R.

Just wanted to follow up with you, and say that I got a new job. Development Engineering Manager with a large defense contractor.

Took 6 months of pounding the pavement, but I did it.


180 posted on 11/23/2015 5:47:49 PM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 142 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160161-180 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson