According to the CDC, people in the US who were born in 1950 (all races combined) are estimated to live about 68.2 years (men 65.6, women 71.1). People born in 1960 are estimated to live about 69.7 years (men 66.6, women 73.1).(See CDC: Health, United States 2006, Table 27 for more information.)
Those are averages. The course of your life and the choices you make can affect how long you live. A recent study suggests that having diabetes can shave off quite a few years from those averages.
We know that people with diabetes have an increased risk for heart disease and that most will die from a heart attack.
Researchers reporting in the Archives of Internal Medicine last month reinforced this knowledge in their analysis of participants of the Framingham Heart Study.1 They found that men and women in this population who had diabetes more than doubled their risk for developing cardiovascular disease (CVD).
However, the leading cause of death in this country for all people is heart disease. And these researchers found that both diabetics and nondiabetics live about the same number of years with heart disease.
So, does having diabetes cause people to die any sooner than if they didn't have the disease? These researchers say yes, an average of 8 years sooner:
"Diabetic men and women 50 years and older lived on average 7.5 and 8.2 years less than their nondiabetic equivalents."Also,
"The differences in life expectancy free of CVD [for diabetic men and women 50 years and older] were 7.8 and 8.4 years, respectively."This is because people with diabetes get CVD earlier than those without diabetes.
A few more findings (keep in mind that people with diabetes in this group tended to be older than those without diabetes):
- There were more men with diabetes than women.
- There were fewer smokers among diabetics. (If smoking increases the risk for developing diabetes, can you speculate why this was found?)
- Among those with diabetes, twice as many had a family history of the disease.
- Systolic blood pressure was higher among diabetics (149 mm Hg vs. 137 mm Hg).
- Body Mass Index (BMI) was higher among diabetics (27.5 vs. 26.0).
"These findings underscore the importance of diabetes prevention for the promotion of health aging."
