Middle-aged English “healthier than Americans”

Comparisons between middle-aged English and Americans have revealed that US citizens are significantly less healthy than their British counterparts.

By contrasting data from health surveys carried out between 1999 and 2003 researchers from University College London uncovered the true extent of the difference in health between the two groups, both aged between 55 and 64.

While high blood pressure was ten per cent more likely in middle-aged US citizens, heart disease was 50 per cent higher and diabetes was nearly twice as likely, the study showed.

“You don’t expect the health of middle-aged people in these two countries to be too different, but we found that the English are a lot healthier than the Americans,” commented one of the study’s authors, Professor James Smith.

“It’s not just a difference in how people characterise their own health? the biological measures confirm there is a difference.”

Attempts to attribute the disparity to obvious lifestyle habits such as smoking, lack of exercise and drinking failed, leading researchers to link the health gap with obesity levels ? a worrying association for British middle-aged men and women.

“This may mean that over time the gap between England and the United States will begin to close,” Professor James Banks of the UCL Department of Economics explained.

“It may be that England’s shorter history of obesity or differences in childhood experiences create an advantage with respect to middle-aged Americans.”

British obesity rates of seven per cent in 1980 are now converging with those of the US, having risen to 23 per cent compared to the US’ 31 per cent by 2003.

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