Vernonia Freedom—Page 3
Thursday, January 15,1981
Changing health habits reflected in latest national statistics
THE NATION’S HEALTH:
HEALTH STATUS
AND ITS DETERMINANTS
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second
in u series of fifteen articles exploring
“The Nation's Health. “ In this article
Dr. Lester Brew low, Dean of the School
of Public Health at the University of
California, Los Angeles, discusses the
factors that affect our health.
This
series, written for COURSES BY
NEWSPAPER, a program of University
Extension, University of California, San
Diego, was funded by a grand from the
National Endowment for the
Humanities.
is now' approaching that of nations with
the best records. Mortality from cor
onary heart disease, which had been
steadily increasing for decades and was
causing 30 percent of all deaths in 1965,
health has been popularly overrated.
Whether people smoke cigarettes,
drink alcohol excessively, eat poorly,
obtain insufficient exercise, and sleep in
adequately are profoundly involved in
Even brief reflection on the history of
disease and health tends to substantiate
the importance of the way people live.
As the Industrial Revolution got
underway, exhausting hours and condi-
COLLEGE COURSES BY NEWSPAPER
Parttw°
Nation’s A Health
BY LESTER BRESLOW
Americans can begin feeling proud of
their health record again. They can feel
especially proud because their own
changes in lifestyle are apparently large
ly responsible for major improvements
in their health.
During the 1950s and into the 1960s,
little progress in improving health was
made in this country. The infant death
has declined 25 percent since that time.
Thc life-expectancy ol those born in
1979 had jumped more than three years
over that ol 1965, whereas it had not
really increased during the prior decade.
What accounts for these remarkable
advances?
what diseases affect them and when they
die. Current medical care can do little to
overcome the effects of such habits long-
continued.
A study in California, for example,
indicated that men at age 45 who were
tioris of work, malnutrition, and crowd-
ed housing made tuberculosis a leading
cause of death. Now rare in the United
States, tuberculosis is still common in
the developing nations.
Young men who worked as chimney
sweeps in the early factory days suffered
cancer of the scrotum from the soot to
which they were exposed. Two centuries
later, uranium-ore miners and asbestos
workers developed lung cancer from
their occupational exposures, as did men
and women cigarette smokers.
On a more healthful note, one-fourth
of the people in the world -- the Chinese
-- recently adopted stricter sexual mores
and thereby have virtually eliminated
veneral disease. And Sweden sharply
cut its automobilp accident rate by strict
ly enforcing rules against driving while
under the influence of alcohol.
SOCIAL AND
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY
Geoffrey Moss—political illustrator syndicated with the Washington Post Writers Group
rate in the United States remained high,
while it was declining in several other
countries. Middle-aged American men
were experiencing higher and higher
death rates, especially from coronary
heart disease, when deaths among
similarly-aged men in northern Euro
pean countries remained relatively low.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, however,
and continuing through the 1970s,
American’s health record improved
dramatically. Infant deaths have fallen
to about one-half the 1965 level; our rate
( •i’wht
/UMi 'i
R, ci i>h •» th,
HABITS AND HEALTH
We don’t fully understand the
reasons.
It appears, though, that
changes in what people do in their daily
lives have played the major role, with
environmental measures • and better
medical care contributing some to the
improvements.
Americans, along with people in other
industrialized nations, have tended in re-
cent^ears to attribute their health status
largely to what physicians do.* Wonder
drugs and miracle operations do save
many from death, but their influence on
following six or seven good common
health habits had a life expectancy of 78
years, whereas men the same age who
were observing only three or fewer of the
habits had a life expectancy of only 67
years — 11 years less. The seven habits
associated with longer life were:
1.
. 2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
No cigarette smoking
Drinking moderately, if at all
Maintaining normal weight
Sleeping seven-eight hours
Exercising at least moderately
Eating breakfast
No eating between meals
Thus the conditions in which people
. live determine to a considerable extent
their patterns of health, disease, and
death. Some of the conditions are well-
known, some yet to be discovered. Cer
tain conditions, such as air pollution,
are imposed on people generally.
Others, such as cigarette smoking, arc
subject on individual control.
However, even personal habits in
which individual control is possible are
largely influenced by the milieu in which
one lives. Whether a person smokes
cigarettes or not depends upon their
availability, whether those around him
smoke, the degree to which his educa
tion allows him to understand their
harmfulness, and the pressure of adver
tising. (Addiction also apparently plays
some part in the habit.)
Government policy, too, can affect
our habits. For example, the Unted
States goes to great length to prevent the
importation of heroin. Yet it now push
ed the export of cigarettes on developing
nations, where smoking is destined to
cause much more damage than heroin
does in our own country.
Now as in the past, as individuals and
as a society, wc determine to a great cx-
tcht* our chances for a long life relatively
free of disease.
Moreover, the
dichotomy of personal responsibility
versus social action for health, expressed
by some people, is a false one. The two
arc closely intertwined.
People who
drink too much alcohol, and especially
those who suffer fatal disease from the
habit, arc not to be “blamed.” Rather
their fate should stimulate social action
to avoid similar damage to others, for
example, by taxation to discourage ex
cessive consumption and by offering ser
vices to assist alcoholics in overcoming
their problem.
Attention to personal behavior and to
physical, social and environmental in-
K fluences on health, should not, however,
be taken to detract from the value of
modern medicine.
Vaccines against
continued on page 7