Why Europeans Live Longer Than Americans

[Guest Kurt]

Car crashes are among the leading causes of death that cause the average American lifespan to be shorter than those of other developed nations, a news study finds. Image Source: Scott Olson/Getty Images

There’s no way around it: Americans just don’t live as long as those in other developed nations.

A new study, lead by Andrew Fenelon of the CDC and published in The Journal of the American Medical Association has found that the average American lifespan (76.4 and 81.2 years for men and women, respectively) is 2.2 years shorter than that of several European countries and Japan, among others.

“The idea that Americans live several years shorter than we would expect them to, given the level of development, is sort of already known,” Fenelon said, “but every time I come across that number it seems staggering that we get two fewer years of life just for living here.”

The chief culprits behind Americans’ shorter lifespans? Sadly, unsurprisingly, that list is topped by drug poisonings, gun-related fatalities, and motor vehicle crashes.

Read more at CNN.

 

The Reasons Behind The Surging U.S. Suicide Rate

Image Source: The Washington Post

As we’re sadly reminded each time there’s a mass shooting in America, the country has a dire homicide problem. But what too few may realize is that the country’s suicide problem is perhaps even more troubling.

According to new numbers just released by the National Center for Health Statistics, there are more than two suicides for every homicide in America — and the country’s suicide rate increased by 24 percent between 1999 and 2014, reaching a high of 13 suicides per 100,000 people.

Within that overall increase, the new report reveals that middle-aged white people and women are committing suicides at especially high rates, and that more and more suicides involve suffocation.

Explaining this alarming trend is no easy task, but one of the biggest factors in play seems to be the economic downturn that began near the end of the last decade.

For more, head to The Washington Post.

New Study Links Loneliness To Increased Risk Of Heart Disease And Stroke

Image Source: Pixabay

Poets, musicians and writers have long riffed on the pains of loneliness and heartbreak, and a new study adds a bit of scientific legitimacy to them. Recently, a University of York team sifted through 23 studies on loneliness that involved nearly 200,000 people and found that loneliness was linked to a 29 percent increased risk of corny heart disease and a 32 percent greater risk of having a stroke, Time reported.

What’s behind that? According to Nicole Valtorta, who led the research team, it has to do with the ways loneliness affects lifestyle choices, the immune system and sense of self. “Isolated or lonely people would be more likely not to be physically active, to smoke, to not go see their doctor, to be less likely to eat well and to have higher rates of obesity,” Valtorta said.

Read more about the study here

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Researchers Figure Out How (And Where, Exactly) You Lose Your Train Of Thought

Image Source: Pixabay

It happens far too often: Halfway through a sentence at a meeting or on a date, your thoughts suddenly evaporate, leaving you — and your listener — in a state of confusion. While we might not be able to retrieve our words when our train of thoughts disband, a team of researchers have figured out where they go when they leave us.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego had volunteers put on an electrode cap and “take on a computer-based memory task” which was interrupted sporadically by random sounds, NBC Newsreported. Researchers then compared the participants’ performance before and after the tone, and found that the more the subthalamic nucleus (a part of the brain which helps people reflexively stop what they are doing in response to a given event) was engaged by the sound, the more likely the participants were to make mistakes — such as lose their train of thought.

“We’ve shown that unexpected, or surprising, events recruit the same brain system we use to actively stop our actions, which, in turn, appears to influence the degree to which such surprising events affect our ongoing trains of thought,” said cognitive neurologist Jan Wessel, who worked on the study and who is now at the University of Iowa.