Life expectancy in the UK and the rest of Europe is on the rise, despite fears over the impact of obesity, according to population expert Professor David Leon, who based his conclusion on an analysis of trends from the past 40 years. He said that despite concern that health problems arising from obesity would affect life expectancy in high-income countries, there is no evidence of this to date. Professor Leon said that deaths from cardiovascular disease in the UK have seen "some of the largest and most rapid falls of any Western European country, partly due to improvements in treatment as well as reductions in smoking and other risk factors." But he admitted it may to be too soon to see the impact of increasing obesity rates: "We are yet to see the impact of a generation of people who have been obese from childhood through to adulthood. We can't predict how that will affect life expectancy figures in the future."
He said type-2 diabetes was occurring more in teenagers due to obesity, but that this could not immediately be translated into mortality rates. Europeans were also living longer than people in the US, he noted. In 2007, the US was at the same level for life expectancy as the lowest of any Western European country (Portugal for males and Denmark for females). And the life expectancy rate there for women has been increasing at a much slower pace than Western Europe since the 1980s.
In 2007, life expectancy in the US was 78 years in 2007, compared with 80 years in the UK. The latest figures from 2009 show that life expectancy in the UK is 82.6 years for women and 78.4 years for men.
http://www.thenewsonline.es
