18 September, 2009

UK Health: the risks

The latest horror shock from the medical fraternity is a survey of the fate of some 19,000 civil servants, aged 40-69, set up in the late 60s. The researchers concentrated on smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol, those being the high cardiovascular risk factors, and found that the main cardiovascular risks were, yes, smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol.

The subjects were followed up some 40 years later by which some 13,501 had died.

I should have thought that the remarkable thing about the survey was that 5,500 of these smoking, low exercising, cholesterol ingesting heroes were still alive aged between 80 and 109, comfortably past the average life expectancy.

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