It saddens me greatly to see posters of young men and women these days dying younger at the age of 20s, 30s, and 40s. And I ask a simple question: why? Could it be that the lord is greatly angry with us or there is something we are actually not doing right? We worship the Lord with all our heart as our churches are filled with people on Sundays and during occasions we buy waters; anointing oil and even stickers to get healing. Well, I decided to do a little bit of research to find out what exactly we are not doing right.
In a small Island called Okinawa, Japan they are known as centenarians, they leave 100 years and above. Doing research on this people has transformed my decision in life. I realised that this people have different perception about life in fact an Okinawan believe that at age of between 40-50 years they are children, at the age of 60-70 years they are adult and at the age of 90-100 when an age comes from Heaven to say it is time so let go tell the angel that it is too early because life is now beginning.
To them life begins at 100 years and not 40 years as we say it. Their offices, hotels, street are filled with green tea, they rely on fish, no meat as for pork out of their way and farmers market what they grow unlike some countries where farmers have different farms that they grow their crops to feed their families and the one that they market to generate money. Okinawans market is filled with cancer fighting foods, natural foods, no genetically grown foods.
They are not obese, they are slim. They walk more. Some believe that Okinawans longevity is based on genetics but the saddest aspect is that when they move out from their territories they lose their longevity implying that lifestyle is the key and the important one is their diet! Okinawans have total view about life : For instance, I watch a movie and the man said: Life is about 100% but 10% is what happens to you in the course of life and 90% is how you react to it so leave life at the 90% and not at the 10%. Another scenario is an Okinawan boxer at the age of 90 who fought a young man at the age of 35 years and won but as Naturopathic physicians we are more concerned as teachers rather than treating disease.
I have a television that gives me a signal every two hours of health alert: you are watching the TV for two hours now and if it continues the TV will go off automatically so I have been wondering so as I search I found some interesting revelations. I also look at impact of long sitting on our health as I realised that I began experiencing some waist pains for my long sitting habits. My father is not a health conscious person but when eventually he was rushed to the hospital in my absence he saw the revelation of high blood sugar of 28 and an enlarged prostate that I knew was brewing in him for a while but he refused.
But now with an integrated approach he is doing very fine. The five top premature deaths are cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and liver disease according to NHS choices www.nhs.uk/Livewell/…/The-top-five-causes-of-premature-death.aspx
Some studies also state three glasses of milk a day can lead to early death, warn scientists www.telegraph.co.uk › Health › Health News Oct 28, 2014.
The study’s lead author, Professor Karl Michaelsson, of Uppsala University in Sweden, said: “Our results may question the validity of recommendations to consume high amounts of milk to prevent fragility fractures. A higher consumption of milk in women and men is not accompanied by a lower risk of fracture and instead may be associated with a higher rate of death.”
The study author realised that those who drank three glasses of milk or more a day (680ml) were twice as likely to die early than those who consumed less than one.
Another study also links watching too much TV to early death and Dr. Mercola explained how this affects you. He starts that if you watch television for three or more hours a day, your risk of premature death is double than someone who watches only one hour or less, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The health risks of too much sedentary behaviour, including too much sitting, are now widely known.
An earlier study, published in 2009, also linked sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, showing how total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other prevalent chronic health problems, which explain why it could easily increase your risk of premature death.
What’s interesting about the current study, however, is that it didn’t compare television watching to other more active activities… it compared it to computer usage and driving time – two activities that also involve sitting.
Somewhat surprisingly, computer use and driving time were not associated with an increased risk of death the way television watching was, which begs the question, is TV damaging to your health in other ways beyond sitting?
He also talks about how TV impact Damage Your Health.
He said, while no link was found between using a computer and driving and premature death, for every two additional hours spent watching TV, a person’s risk of death from heart disease rose by 44 per cent and risk of death from cancer climbed by 21 per cent.
The researchers were skeptical, so they set out to examine other variables that might be driving up death rates linked to TV watching, like increased consumption of processed foods and sugary drinks (widely known to rise with television viewing), smoking, an unrelated serious illness, following (or not following) a Mediterranean diet, age, sex, and weight.
The results linking television time and premature death still held strong, which suggests television may be uniquely damaging. The study’s author suggested part of the problem may be the extremely sedentary nature of television watching. When you’re driving or working at a computer, your body moves (albeit minimally) and your mind is engaged, which are not the case when watching TV.
Although not addressed in the study, exposure to light at night, even from your television, can also interfere with your body’s circadian rhythm and hormone production, wreaking havoc on your health. So this may be yet another way television is associated with chronic disease.
Furthermore, watching TV actually has a major impact on your brain chemistry, and the longer you watch, the easier your brain slips into a receptive, passive mode, meaning that messages are streamed into your brain without any participation from you. Dr. Aric Sigman, a British psychologist, analyzed 35 different scientific studies on television and its effect on the viewer.
He found the damage comes not from the TV programs themselves, but from the vast amount of time kids, in particular, are spending watching television and computer screens. This activity produces an almost narcotic effect on your brain, actually numbing areas that would be stimulated by other activities, like reading. Dr. Sigman has identified 15 negative effects that he believes can be blamed on watching television, stating:
“Watching television, irrespective of the content, is increasingly associated with unfavourable biological and cognitive changes. These alterations occur at viewing levels far below the population norm.
Given the population’s sheer exposure time to this environmental factor it is more than puzzling to consider how little awareness and action has resulted.”
As other studies also link too sitting to premature death and Dr. Mercola also talks about how sitting and TV impact your health and according to him, TV Increases the Time You Spend Sitting in a Completely Relaxed State
Too much sitting, whether in front of a computer, in your car or watching television, should be avoided for optimal health. And it makes sense that TV watching may be the worst of the sitting offenders, drawing your body and mind into a completely sedentary, passive state. At least with driving and computer usage, the study’s author explained:
“You have tension in your muscles. You are moving little parts of your body, like your hands. You are not completely relaxed as you are when you are watching television.”
Instead of parking yourself in front of the TV at night, consider doing something else, or at the very least engage in some minor activity while the TV is on. The reason this is so critical for your health is that when you move, you increase the force of gravity on your body.
Anti-gravity environments speed up cellular deterioration; this we know from astronauts in outer space. Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, was in fact one of the primary doctors assigned to keep NASA astronauts from deteriorating in space.
In an anti-gravity situation, your body deteriorates at a far more rapid pace, and interestingly enough, sitting for an extended period of time simulates a low-gravity type environment for your body. The key is to disengage from this low anti-gravity situation as much as possible using intermittent movement.
The health damage of too much sitting is well established
There may be some differing health effects between sitting for different activities (television versus reading, for instance), but as these continue to be explored, know this: even if you are a fit athlete who exercises regularly, you may still endanger your health simply by sitting too much. For example, one 2012 analysis that looked at the findings from 18 studies found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least.
Besides increasing your risk of metabolic problems, researchers warn that the combination of sitting too much and exercising too little can more than double the risk of heart failure in men. Last year, a Swedish study also concluded that those who live a generally active life have better heart health and live longer than those who remain sedentary for most of the day. This held true even for those who didn’t engage in a regular exercise routine. The study revealed:
Those who reported overall higher levels of daily intermittent movement suffered fewer heart-related problems.
For every 100 of the sedentary people who experienced a heart attack or stroke, only 73 of the highly active group had such an event.
For every 100 of the least active who died, only 70 of the most active died.
Those who had high daily activity levels and engaged in a regular exercise program had the lowest risk profiles overall.
He therefore recommended what we are supposed to do.
Alternating movement activities while you watch TV
There are many reasons to limit the amount of television in your life, but when you do watch it, make it a point to get up every 15 minutes. Dr. Vernikos’ research demonstrated that the minimum number of times you need to interrupt your sitting in order to counteract its cardiovascular health risks is in the neighbourhood of 35 times per day. Her research clearly shows that sitting down and standing up repeatedly for 35 minutes does NOT have the same effect as standing up once, 35 times over the course of the entire day.
Dr. Mercola suggest you take a break to do one set of three exercises, anywhere from once every 15 minutes to once per hour. This is important not only during television watching but also during other types of screen time or while you’re doing desk work.
Technique #1: Standing Neck-Stretch: Hold for 20 seconds on each side.
Technique #2: Shoulder Blade Squeeze: Round your shoulders, then pull them back and pull down. Repeat for 20-30 seconds.
Technique #3: Standing Hip Stretch: Holding on to your desk, cross your left leg over your right thigh and “sit down” by bending your right leg. Repeat on the other side.
Technique #4: The Windmill: Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, then pivot your feet to the right. Push your hip out to the left. Raising your left arm skyward, and your right arm toward the floor, lower your body toward the floor while looking up, and then raise your torso back to standing position. Repeat on the other side.
Technique #5: Side Lunge: Starting with your feet together, take a medium step sideways, and bend down as if you’re about to sit. Use your arms for balance by reaching out in front of you. Return to starting position, and repeat 10-20 times. Repeat on the other side.
Technique #6: Desk Push-Up: Place hand a little wider than shoulder-width apart on your desk. Come up on your toes to make it easier to tip forward. Lower your chest to the edge of the desk, and push back up. Do 10 repetitions.
Technique #7: Squat to Chair: With your feet shoulder-width apart, sit down, reaching forward with your hands, and stand back up in quick succession. Do 15-20 repetitions.
Technique #8: Single Leg Dead Lift: Place your right hand on your desk, and place your weight on your right leg. Fold your torso forward, while simultaneously lifting your left leg backward. Do 10 repetitions on each side.
Technique #9: Mountain Climber: Get into a push-up position on the floor. Pull your right knee forward to touch your right wrist or arm, and then return to push-up position. Repeat on the other side. Try to pick up the pace, and do 20 quick repetitions. As he is not aware of how we can stay fit while sitting he recommends we can significantly decrease the health damage of too much sitting by regularly engaging in intermittent movement. Once you’ve mastered the beginner exercises above, try the 10 exercises that follow for an even greater challenge. Try to do at least one of these exercises every 15 minutes when you’re sitting according to Dr. Mercola
#1: Standing Hip Flexor Stretch
#2: Standing Calf Stretch
#3: Standing Inner Thigh Stretch
#4: Standing Back/Buttocks Stretch
#5: Kneeling Lunge Matrix
#6: Hip Flexor, Hamstring, and Quad Stretch
#7: Side Line Twisting Back Stretch
#8: Chest Stretch
#9: Back Butt Stretch
#10: Pole Stretch for the Back
Breaking free of TVnitis
Dr. Mercola advised Limiting television time can easily become a family affair, and you’ll be amazed at how much time you free up when you’re no longer addicted to its spell. The first step to cutting back is to remove the television from your bedroom, as one study found that having a TV in the bedroom increased viewing time by nearly nine hours a week. Next, change up your routine. Plan special activities for the times you would ordinarily be watching TV. If it’s during the day, do something active, like taking a walk, exercising, or working in your yard.
You can also try a new hobby, cook a meal, or go outside for a game of tag with your kids. If it’s later at night, engage in a quiet activity, like taking a bath or reading a book to help wind down from your day. If you must watch TV, remember to engage in intermittent movement throughout as described above. Another option is to ditch your TV entirely and opt for services like Netflix instead. This allows you to watch a carefully chosen film for a treat without getting sucked into TV overload (and as an added bonus, it is advertisement-free).
But I have a problem, why are so many elderly and young this days excessively unhealthy and reliant on drugs? Why we are not vital until old age like the Okinawans of Japan who work outdoors and live to a very old age and who have none of the awful health problems of most of our elderly?
Again, it goes back to the quality of our food and the cumulative result of poor food choices. Our bodies cannot discharge all the toxins quick enough and, as a result, we get problems as we age.
For men a growing number of them now get prostate diseases: enlarged prostate, prostate cancer, and prostatitis. These prostate problems are rare in cultures that eat traditional natural foods.
The medical business would have you believe that poor prostate health results from the fact that we live longer and menopause which is erroneous. In truth, accumulating toxins from our modern, devitalized “non-foods” are the cause.
Look at the story of the frog in a pot of water. It is said Heat it slowly and the frog stays until boiled to death! The Frog in a pot is a very popular story and you probably know about it. Still, if you don’t, it is about a frog that rests easy in a pot of water that is warmed slowly. Frogs normally won’t go into boiling water. They’ll jump out and keep themselves away from very hot water. But, if placed in a tub of water at normal temperature that is being heated slowly, according to the story, they don’t react and end up getting cooked in the boiling water.
The story is used as a metaphor to tell a warning point about life. The moral of the frog story goes something like this – Letting small and seemingly harmless wrongs slip, could kill (or be bad for you). It basically tells you to not be complacent about minor changes that usually seem harmless, but add up to something big/bad.
Can you eat your way to a century? I am not referring to test cricketers; I’m talking about the Japanese diet. Or the Sardinian diet. Or the Ikarian diet. Or any one of half a dozen regional, usually traditional, ways of eating that have been credited with keeping an improbable proportion of their populations alive beyond the age of 100.
One of the most important things about the Okinawa Centenarian Study is the fact that it is based on solid evidence. The most important evidence needed for any centenarian study is reliable age-verification data. Throughout Japan (including Okinawa prefecture), every city, town, and village records birth, marriage and death data (among other data) in a koseki (family register). This system was instituted throughout Japan in the 1870’s. The koseki is supplemented by a regular census undertaken every five years. Life tables calculated from this database show one of the world’s longest life expectancies and prevalence data show the world’s highest known concentration of centenarians for any country or state.
The Okinawans have a low risk of arteriosclerosis and stomach cancer, a very low risk of hormone-dependent cancers, such as breast and prostate cancer. They eat three servings of fish a week, on average … plenty of whole grains, vegetables and soy products too, more tofu and more konbu seaweed than anyone else in the world, as well as squid and octopus, which are rich in taurine – that could lower cholesterol and blood pressure.”
Okinawa’s indigenous vegetables were particularly interesting: their purple sweet potatoes are rich in flavonoids, carotenoids, vitamin E and lycopene, and the local bitter cucumbers, or “goya”, have been shown to lower blood sugar in diabetics. Like most of us, I am familiar with mainstream dietary advice – eat less sugar, salt and saturated fat, cut down on the cronuts and so on – but I much prefer the idea of discovering little-known shortcuts to longevity; I’m more of a “silver bullet” kind of guy. With this in mind, over a lunch of traditional goya chanpuru – bitter cucumber, stir-fried with tofu, egg and pork – in a restaurant that was little more than a tumbledown hut close to his campus, elements of the Okinawan diet such as Turmeric and jasmine tea,; both potentially ward off cancer. Needless to say, both now feature in my morning ritual.
Of course, your destiny as a potential centenarian will also be determined by your DNA, upbringing and temperament, as well as how physically active and sociable you are; the climate where you live; the standard of healthcare available; how relaxed you are about timekeeping; whether you take naps and are religious; wars, and so forth. Being born a girl helps: 85% of the world’s centenarians are female. But it is generally accepted that diet determines around 30% of how long we live. Some argue it can add as much as a decade to your life. So, the question then becomes, should we all switch to a diet of tofu, sweet potatoes and squid?
This year 2014 newspaper reported that one in three Ikarians make it past 90. Among the dietary factors cited for their Methuselean tendencies are herbal teas rich in antioxidants (including wild mint, good for digestion, and artemisia for blood circulation), gallons of olive oil, plenty of fresh vegetables and little meat or dairy. The US’s longest-lived community, the Seventh Day Adventists of Loma Linda, California, also eat a largely vegetarian diet, and the people of Costa Rica’s Nicoya peninsula – another of the world’s so-called “blue zones”, places identified by longevity researchers where people live to a notably riper age – apparently eat large quantities of beans.
It is surely no coincidence that Ikaria only got its first supermarket three years ago, while, in contrast to the centenarians, the generation of Okinawans born since the arrival of the US airbase and its accompanying fast-food outlets has demonstrably declining health.
For those of us who work in the health sector, maybe you might have realized the unusual manner in which many of Ghanaians have been dying younger in recent times. Others who have been following many funeral announcements in the various media would appreciate what I am talking about. Apart from the fact that modern Ghanaians now die younger, perhaps the other frightening development we face is that there are currently too many kinds of ‘incurable’ diseases which have come to stay with us today than it used to be more than 50 years ago, despite the so-called ‘advancement’ in medical research.
Why do so many children below age 10, wear glasses due to poor eye sight, when as a matter of fact our grandmothers and our forefathers could see perfectly well without wearing glasses? So I keep asking myself: what exactly is wrong with us in this current world? Why do we keep living with such illusions that our ‘healthcare’ systems are getting better in our modern times, when the opposite is rather the case?
Meanwhile a couple of years back, Ghanaians were living in good health. People were living much longer than today. In many cases, dying below the age of 80years in Ghana was considered to be “abomination” (unnatural) and many would usually express a shock upon receiving such news.
But today, about 70% of all deaths and funeral announcements here in Ghana have been dominated by people in their 30s and 40s or at best, very few in their 50s. Shockingly, nobody seems to be concerned about this dangerous development. From the streets of Accra, through Accra, Kumasi, Koforidua it is business as usual as if to say, seeing many of us die below age 50 is a normal thing. After all, we are always too busy, chasing more money that none of us has time to take a second look at this dangerous trend we’re currently living with.
Well, for me, this has been one of the major issues that has been troubling my mind almost every day and night for the past few years as l continue to wonder why many Ghanaians in our contemporary times are seriously dying younger than our forefathers did.
Luckily, I have been able to notice some of the reasons which I am willing to share with the Ghanaians. I believe that if these issues are taken serious, we could do something to change this unfortunate trend. Because I have leave in the village for sometimes with my late grandmother and we have being to farms for many times I realized that they leave long in the village called Amanhia in the eastern region but now they are also dying young than previously when I last visited them.
Many years ago, there were no fertilizers. In fact every food we ate was naturally well cultivated and well-prepared in the village. Food stuffs on the farms were allowed to grow naturally. For instance, yam was as sweet as the sugarcane. But today, the yam we eat has no taste. In the olden days in the village we did not spray our foodstuffs with those dangerous chemicals which modern farmers have been pouring on the crops every now and then now they are saying it is time for genetically modified, this is garbage! Because of food security and I ask what you mean by food security. Food security without considering the health implication of the citizens remembers the story of the frog I told you when we started don’t be deceive by this gimmick!
In the olden days, fruit or food on the market or at home had a real natural taste or you don’t agree with me?
Pineapples, pawpaw, and all the fruits at that time were naturally ripped on the farm before they were harvest for consumption. In fact, one could sense the smell of pineapple from a distance of 100 meters and beyond.
I remember vividly that in those days when a woman was preparing chicken soup for instance, everybody in the neighborhood could smell the aroma of that soup from a far distance. We could all sense that yes, indeed that woman in that house was preparing chicken soup. Most importantly, the taste of the soup was as wonderful as the aroma.
We ate local dishes in the village even sometime early fufu in the morning before we go to school or the farm with hot pepper in the soup we ate our yams and cocoyam with palm oil (red oil) and avocado. So you see that modern Ghanaians are missing good food like this and our modern women are part of the problem.
Our stew is no longer green like the olden days when my grandma used to do it. Even today kenkey and banku sellers wrap it with polythene bags, so the food doesn’t absorb the nutrients from the leaves which we used to wrap the kenkey but rather BPA are leached into the food we eat. Polythene itself is dangerous especially when heated together with the food.
Nowadays when our women boil rice, instead of them to cover the pot with a silver lid, they choose to use black polythene to cover the food. They claim the polythene bag absorbs the steam. But they don’t realize that the heat in the bag also releases some dangerous chemicals from the polythene into the rice. Our women have become ready-made women, pizza ladies!
Nowadays, our pineapples are all green even though we claim it is ripped. Today’s pawpaw, when they are ready for harvest, they are still green. Current pineapple, pawpaw and others has never been yellow before like used to be my grandma’s era.
Lot of things has changed overnight and this explains the reasons why there are currently too many diseases around. Our generation needs to change the nature of food we eat and our women must be more proactive now. The chemicals in the food is simply too much but you can’t see it with your eyes but remember the cumulative effect is very dangerous!
The most dangerous aspect of our food is that, apart from the fact that the food itself is of poor quality, we don’t eat early at all. We go to work and come back at 9pm. So even at 10pm we are still eating ‘fried rice’ and chicken. Oh, my God! It’s a pity. It is dangerous stop it!
In the village we eat before 5pm and even farming is god exercise as well and we walk also. We climbed the mountains. The good thing was that this was some form of exercise. Believe me; we did a lot of body exercise out of this. Men were riding bicycles to work every day. But today we so called modern ones are lazy because of cars. We don’t walk any distance. We don’t climb any mountains and all we do today is jump on the cars and before we blink twice we have hopped down at our destination and straight to our air-condition rooms. We don’t use our bodies any longer and this is not too good. That is why many of us often collapse just like that. It is something we must examine carefully.
The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), says most victims of road crashes in the country constitute the most productive and economically important workforce aged from 15 to 45 years.
There is also problem with our health system that needs to be address between the herbal practitioners and the conventional doctors. There lots of false claims of cancers and other treatment cure and those claiming that herbal medicines are safe and therefore no side effects which are erroneous and most of this factors influence the patient’s decision for seeking right treatment information. We need multi -disciplinary approach towards the health system in the country.
An interesting article I came through during my research also talks about why Ghanaians are dying at younger age in abroad. According to the article available at Ghanaians Dying Prematurely in Hamburg – News – Peace FM news.peacefmonline.com › Social › 201409 Sep 27, 2014.by Desmond John Beddy/TopAfric Media Network.
The article starts that, the rate at which Ghanaians are dying prematurely in Hamburg -Germany is alarming and it is time authorities begin to ask questions and provide answers. Life expectancy has improved tremendously in Germany over the years. So I taught it is only Ghanaians in the country that are dying younger not knowing it is a universal occurrence among Ghanaians irrespective of wherever they are.
In 2012 the life expectancy in Germany increased to about 81.00 years. That for women was at 83.30 years and for men 78.60 years. The article states that If statistics available to TopAfric is correct, the Ghana community has buried over 24 people as at September 2014, and the average age was just around 45 years. A third of these numbers were found dead in their apartments. On a particular day two were buried.
The irony is that Ghanaians are dying more than all other Black -/Africans in Hamburg put together. Yes the wages of life is death, but when Ghanaians find themselves in a country with better health infrastructures then they should live longer.
Ghanaians in Hamburg are definitely doing something wrong because even in Ghana, where the rate of avoidable death (drinking and driving, bad roads, no road signs, poor medication, bribery at hospitals or unavailability of medical care) is high the folks are living longer.
Life expectancy in Ghana as at 2012 is about 61 years, so why this high rate of death in Germany. Why the community awaits the results from the authorities to guide the people as to what is wrong and what can be done better. The following unscientific assumptions are making the air waves. There is this weird speculation that the “Alster River” dislikes this black clothing’s of Ghanaians, the people are therefore disregarding the gods of the river. “The gods are not to blame”.
Ghanaians in Hamburg love burials and funerals above everything; they are seen every week organizing funerals of relatives that have passed away far in Ghana. First the “One Week” then the “Funerals”.
What you love most is what shall kill you!
There are times the cemetery worker asked if a prominent person or a star is dead. One jokingly said this is a confirmation of the high rate of unemployment amongst the Ghana community.
It would be in the interest of the community to discourage all imported funerals and mobilize the people only when one of the inhabitants dies in Hamburg.
The traumatic lifestyle; high divorce rate, inability to cope with the structured German routine, the bureaucracy, the bad eating habits –eating heavy “fufu” at mid nights, disregard for good health, could be a contributing factor..
Husbands and wives building separate mansions through their menial job, to impress family members back home. Unfortunately 90% do not even sleep in these homes before the lucky ones join the colleagues at “Hamburg -Friedhof Ohlsdorf (Kapelle 10) “the biggest cemetery in the World.
One insanity is changing trains and busses on weekends from funerals and parties to another, sadly incorrectly dressed during the winter season. It is time the Ghana Union and the Chiefs stamp their authority, coordinate all social activities, ban one week funerals and imported funerals.
Whilst we all undertake weekly sporting activities, we encourage the Ghana Embassy in Berlin and the Ghana Union in Hamburg to seek from the German authorities the causes of these premature deaths and make public the findings, -names anonymous.
With all things being equal Ghanaians in Germany can live to be 81 years the article stated!
Research by Rhoda et al 2009 published in the Minnesota Medicine compared Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Premature Mortality. The study authors summarizes the results of a study examining whether the relationship between race and premature mortality varied by socioeconomic status among men and women who are black or white and between the ages of 25 and 64 years. Using a population-based study design, the study authors tested the hypothesis that the association between race and mortality would differ by socioeconomic status as measured by neighborhood poverty and educational status. They found that the odds of dying prematurely were greater for black men and women who lived in less-affluent neighborhoods than for white men and women who lived in similar neighborhoods. Racial differences were most striking, however, for both black women and white women who lived in more affluent neighborhoods. Their results suggest that socioeconomic status does moderate the effects of race on premature mortality. Strategies to reduce racial disparities in premature mortality in Minnesota must include developing more coordinated health, social, and economic policies and delivering health messages that resonate with younger, more affluent African-American women.
Health disparities between blacks and whites have been well-documented in the United States. For example, blacks in New York’s Harlem, central Detroit, the south side of Chicago, and Los Angeles’ Watts have about the same probability of dying by age 45 as whites throughout the entire country do by age 65.1
Socioeconomic status is an important variable in understanding differences in premature mortality rates between blacks and whites in this country. Socioeconomic status is defined by a range of factors that influence an individual’s social position (eg, education and income).2 Indeed, studies have shown that socioeconomic status is strongly correlated with race and can be an even stronger predictor of premature mortality than race.2-5 However, both race and socioeconomic status are important factors in understanding differences in premature mortality.
To shed light on the causes of premature mortality among blacks and whites, the study authors designed a study using data from the Minnesota Department of Health and the U.S. Census. Their hypothesis was that the association between race and premature death would be affected by socioeconomic status.
They concluded their study found that the relationship between race and premature mortality was affected by neighborhood poverty; thus, race and socioeconomic status are both important factors in determining premature mortality. They suggested that strategies to reduce racial disparities in terms of premature mortality in Minnesota must include developing more coordinated health, social, and economic policies and delivering more health messages that resonate with younger, more affluent African-American women.
According to a fact sheet distributed by the leading civil rights group in the United States, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), racism in the health care system is contributing to the premature death of African Americans.
The life expectancy for black men in the US is 66.1 years; for white males it is 73.9 years. The life expectancy for black women is 73.9 years compared to white females’ life expectancy of 79.7 years.
Why are black people dying so much younger than whites? Some racists claim it is genetic; others say it is African Americans’ lack of family values. The truth is, it is racism.
Caya Beth Lewis, NAACP national health coordinator, in the cover letter to the fact sheet, summarised the harsh statistics: “African Americans are 50 per cent more likely to die from heart disease, double the 25 per cent gap that existed in 1979; five times more likely to die from heart and kidney disease related to hypertension, as opposed to three times more likely in 1979; and 50 per cent more likely to die from breast cancer, up from relative parity in 1979″. She added, “African-American men have the same life expectancy as a resident of Bangladesh”.
Research shows that African Americans receive inferior heath care even if they have the same resources and health insurance as whites. Black cancer patients, for example, are less likely to receive pain medication in nursing homes. Black patients are less likely to be recommended for organ transplants. Black lung cancer patients are less likely to receive needed surgery.
A Harvard University study of 2200 Medicare (the government-subsidized health care for the elderly) patients in more than 500 hospitals found that African Americans received a lower quality of care when hospitalised for pneumonia and heart failure. The results were particularly telling because the care involved had nothing to do with patient preference.
Of course, all workers tend to receive inferior health care compared to the wealthy. But, across class lines, health care for African Americans is far worse.
The fact that the US lacks a national health care system compounds the problems. There are 45 million (out of a population of 270 million) US people without health care coverage. Approximately 20% of all blacks lack health insurance, nearly twice the percentage of uninsured whites.
The number of US people in poverty has risen in absolute numbers during the past seven years of economic “boom”. This means people with jobs cannot afford health care.
Fewer and fewer companies provide fully paid health coverage. In most cases, workers have to pay a relatively modest $20 per month for their families to be covered, and as high as $400 per month for full coverage. If your income is barely above the official poverty level, it can’t be done.
A recent study by the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University notes that there are more than 13 million US children living in poverty. This is 3 million more than in 1979. The hardest hit groups are former welfare recipients who have lost benefits under the Clinton administration. Here in California, children under the age of 18 living in poverty were 14.4% in 1980; today it is 23.3%.
Health care and poverty go hand and hand. Families with children in poverty tend to be the ones without access to health care. They also tend to be the ones with the lowest paying jobs and who live in the most run-down neighborhoods.
It is no surprise that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the US health care system ranks 37th in the world — behind Third World countries like Morocco and Oman despite spending more per capita on health than any country on the WHO’s list.
Ten per cent of the US population receives the best health care on the planet; the middle 80% gets mediocre care, and the bottom 5-10%, according to the WHO, “have health conditions as bad as sub-Saharan Africa”. Those at the bottom are overwhelmingly people of color, especially African Americans.
Institutional racism doubles the burden for African Americans. Blacks continue to live in poverty at a greater rate than whites, have the worse jobs and thus have the least amount of health care coverage.
What’s the solution? The NAACP calls for universal health insurance. It supports a patient bill of rights. Lewis states, “We are working at all levels to preserve affirmative action to put more African Americans into medical and nursing schools and back into their communities to serve”.
These are worthy goals, but it will require the support of broader society, especially the labor movement and its organizations, to win them.
The Okinawans show us that living a healthy lifestyle will not only help us live longer, but will also help us live disease-free. Lifestyle changes can add healthy years to your life, making you feel better now and when you are 110.
By Dr. Raphael Nyarkotey Obu:ND(TAP00396)
Integrative Oncologist
MSc Prostate Cancer
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Men’s Health Foundation Ghana
Tel : 0541090045
mail: oburalph30@yahoo.co.uk