First last week it was reported that Canada is not as obese as the United States. Now researchers have announced that the English spend less on healthcare and are healthier overall than Americans according to the American Journal of Epidemiology. However, both countries were cut from the same cloth as it were, so why the huge discrepancy?
Melissa L. Martinson, Office of Population Research, Princeton University comments:
“A systematic assessment of cross-country differences in health by age group and type of condition provides necessary context for learning about why older residents of England suffer fewer chronic health conditions than their counterparts in the US.”
Comparisons by age group indicate that most cross-country differences in health conditions and markers of disease at young ages are as large as those at older ages in terms of obesity, low HDL cholesterol, high cholesterol ratio, high C-reactive protein, hypertension (for females), diabetes, asthma, heart attack or angina (for females), and stroke (for females).
In some reprieve, in males heart attack or angina is higher in the United States only at younger ages, and hypertension is higher in England than in the United States at young ages. Differences between the two countries are statistically significant for every condition except hypertension.
Although a larger share of Americans are uninsured or under insured compared to populations in England or other European countries, even groups with good access to health insurance experienced worse health than people in England.
The research continues:
“Why health status differs so dramatically in these two countries, which share much in terms of history and culture, is an unresolved puzzle. Given our finding of health differences between the US and England at young ages, a promising focus of future research, one that could help to elucidate the causes of poor health across the life course, is on health differences between countries at the earliest ages.”
The obese Canadian percentage is about 10% less than their southern neighbors, The United States. Less than a quarter of Canadian adults (24.1%) are obese, compared to more than a third (34.4%) of U.S. adults.
Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a first of its kind detailed report comparing the two nations and the numbers are staggering. The researchers found that among Canadian men, 24.3% are considered obese, compared with 32.6% of the American population.
The gap was even wider among women. Twenty four percent of Canadian women were obese between 2007 and 2009, compared with 36.2% of women in the United States. The prevalence of obesity among men has increased over the past two decades by about 10 percentage points in Canada and 12 percentage points in the U.S. The percentage changes among women were eight and 10, respectively.
The United States has higher age-specific mortality for every age group (except for those 65 or older) compared to the English. The allocation of health care resources may play a role. Despite the greater use of health care technology in the United States, Americans receive less preventive health care than their English counterparts.
Acute hospital visits are also shorter in the United States, potentially resulting in missed opportunities for follow-up. It is also possible that the cross-country differences in social or physical environmental conditions or lifestyle play a role according to the study.
Ethnic melting pot make-ups may be an interesting factor. The American non-white population is comprised mainly of Hispanics and blacks, who are statistically more likely to become obese than white Americans and have a higher sodium and glucose intake. It is known that being obese leads to increased risk of heart attack and health complications.
Sources: The American Journal of Epidemiology and
Written by Sy Kraft, B.A.