Life Expectancy by Country and in the World (2023) - Worldometer
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List of countries and dependencies in the world ranked by life expectancy at birth, both sexes, males and females. World Population Life Expectancy with historical chart
  • birdcat@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    Women live longer everywhere, but what’s crazy is the huge difference in the countries.

    I clicked through some and the smallest gap was less than two years (already forgot which one, clicked too fast), but in Vietnam the gap is 9.3 years. How come?

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      So I didn’t reply to you last night because I really wanted to look into this.

      Unortunately, I can’t find why, specifically, Vietnamese women live so much longer than the men. I did find two contrary articles, one that concludes Vietnamese women actually have less access to healthcare than men, and as a result, live 11 of their lifetime years sick, while Vietnamese men live eight of their lifetime years sick, leaving women with 68 healthy years and Vietnamese men with 62 healthy years.

      Those are the only Vietnamese specific statistics I found related to life expectancy between genders, but they are interesting, especially relative to that huge gap in base life expectancy.

      • birdcat@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        Hey, late reply, but since it seemed to interest you, I’d like to share some thoughts I had in the meantime. It’s mostly based on limited personal observations.

        Smoking just has to play a significant role in that. You super rarely see any women smoking, and I really mean super extremely rarely, in the whole country. But men of all ages (including some teenagers) smoke everywhere, constantly. With the drinking, it’s maybe a bit similar but way less extreme, cuz there is no stigma against women drinking (again, limited personal observation! might be different in other regions or small villages)

        But then it hit me: the biggest factor could be drugs like amphetamines; stuff that overworked factory workers use to stay awake, but also shop clerks, lorry and bus drivers etc. literally an endless list. Work time is generally WAY too long, people simply cannot earn enough to survive without “little helpers”. Drug use in this context is a real problem, government doesn’t hide it.

        I suspect that men tend to use that stuff much more than women.

        And I sure suspect that the use of amphetamines does not increase one’s life span. Interesting study; small but wonderfully selected sample group imo. Check the GPT-generated summary at the end.

        Anyway, thanks for your reply, but to be super honest, I didn’t really understood it 🙈, can you maybe send me the articles? Just if you still have them, not super important.

        Acceleration of cardiovascular-biological age by amphetamine exposure is a power function of chronological age

        Background:

        • People are using amphetamines more around the world.
        • Nobody has looked into whether amphetamines can make your cardiovascular system (heart and blood vessels) and overall body age faster.

        Methods:

        • They used a device called the SphygmoCor system to measure the pulse from the wrist of the participants.
        • They had 55 people who took amphetamines, 107 who smoked tobacco, 483 who didn’t smoke, and 68 who used methadone (another type of drug). So, 713 people in total took part from 2006 to 2011.
        • They tried to find out the “biological age” of the heart (how old the heart seems, compared to the person’s actual age).

        Results:

        • The ages of the participants were between about 30 and 40.
        • They made sure to control for age differences in their analysis.
        • Both male and female participants were equally represented in the groups.
        • Almost all (94%) of the amphetamine users had taken the drug in the past week.
        • They found that the “biological age” of the heart was not just increasing linearly (like a straight line) with the actual age. Instead, it increased faster, like a curve.
        • When they compared “biological age” with other factors like time, BMI (body weight related to height), and actual age, the curve-like relationship was even stronger.
        • Even after considering all other factors that can hurt the heart (like smoking, high blood pressure, etc.), amphetamine still made the heart age faster.

        Conclusions:

        • Taking amphetamines seems to make the heart (and perhaps the body) age faster than it should.
        • This aging effect increases even faster as one gets older, suggesting the drug could be accelerating the natural aging process.