Baby Boomers sicker and frailer than previous generations

BlueBelle

allira thanks that’s me thrifty, respectful, unassuming and loyal 😀

And we're very quiet too!

I am on the cusp of the baby boomers/generation X. I am somewhat sceptical of these findings. There have always been outliers in every generation for one reason or another, both for good or bad. My grandparents worked hard, but were elderly by fifty, old by sixty - they made themselves that way. All had false teeth at the earliest opportunity. One grandfather died before he was seventy, the other at 82. My grandmothers lived to 88 and 90 respectively. All were overweight. My dad died just short of his 78th birthday, but my mum is still very fit and healthy at 82. I don’t think anyone has mentioned smoking yet, which was rife throughout most of the twentieth century. Thankfully, far fewer people smoke nowadays, although l know l, as a lifelong asthmatic, suffered from second hand smoke when I was younger. A large part of the problem with the NHS is that when it was set up in 1948, it was based on the population of the time, which was around a fifth smaller than that of today and had a much lower life expectancy. There were far fewer treatments available than there are today, too, and they were far more rudimentary in comparison, too. A good example is the treatment for asthma, which has been revolutionised in my lifetime. When I was a child, there was hardly any treatment for it and what there was was pretty ineffective. Now l rarely need my blue inhaler (and I had my first blue inhaler when I was fifteen in 1980) because the preventative inhaler is so good - it also contains a long acting reliever. Vaccines mean that diseases which were once common and all too often fatal are mostly a distant memory. My grandfather told me that he had scarlet fever when he was seven, which would have been around 1920. He was allowed to stay at home rather than being sent to a fever hospital and was in the same room for three weeks. After he had recovered, everything in the room was fumigated and destroyed. As for obesity, which is a serious health problem, there are many reasons for it and it is far more complex than “eat less, move more.” UPF is only part of the problem. Many of us have medical conditions, where weight gain is a constant issue. Again, there are more of us living with these conditions for longer because the medications allow us to. Many medications themselves can cause weight gain. Many people are living far longer than their forebears, but many are not living better. Dementia is the big scourge of our time and the reason there are so many more people who have it is because we are living longer and the medications are enabling this. Catch 22.

I'm not particularly healthy, but I have lived 13 years longer than both my father and my grandfather who both only just made it to retirement.

allira thanks that’s me thrifty, respectful, unassuming and loyal 😀

Poverty plays the biggest part in health inequality regardless of your birth decade.

Bluebelle

The silent generation (age 77-94) is often characterised as thrifty, respectful, unassuming, and loyal. Baby boomers (age 58-76) are portrayed as demanding, self-assured, independent, and competitive

Allira

BlueBelle

So according to mr Google a Baby boomer is someone born between 1946 and 1964
So as I was born before 1946 as you were too I believe Monica what are we?

We're the Silent Generation Bluebelle
We should be seen and not heard. 😂🤫

We were described as 'War babies'. The description was in use throughout our childhoods and into the 1960s.

The term was extended in use to cover anyone born before the war who was still a child in 1945.

BlueBelle

So according to mr Google a Baby boomer is someone born between 1946 and 1964
So as I was born before 1946 as you were too I believe Monica what are we?

We're the Silent Generation Bluebelle
We should be seen and not heard. 😂🤫

I’m reading the research and your comments, but haven’t reached a conclusion. I was born in 1947, had regular 3 meals/day. Cereal for breakfast,sandwich &/fruit for lunch and meat & veg for dinner (supper). We only had pudding on Sunday, after our roast, which was probably apple pie & custard. There were no crisps. My Dad (born 1910) used to bring a few sweets home as a treat on Friday. We didn’t eat between meals and walked everywhere. However, my lovely Dad was always of light to average build and stopped smoking in his late 60s (probably too late 🥲), and did not drink alcohol much. My Mum, born in 1914, didn’t drink or smoke and lived until she was 89, although with complications after a car accident. I’m now 77 and weigh 8 stone. I cook from scratch, with the occasional fish ‘n chips and lunch or dinner out. My only lapse, I feel, is my love of wine.🤷🏻‍♀️🥂 I exercise, garden walk our dog, volunteer.

So according to mr Google a Baby boomer is someone born between 1946 and 1964
So as I was born before 1946 as you were too I believe Monica what are we?

The guy who set up this study is Professor George Ploubidis. He is the Principal Investigator for the 1958 National Child Development Cohort (NCDS) which includes me and tens of thousands of others.
My current health status is different from that of every other person in this study, just as my parents' health status was different from that of my contemporaries' parents.
When you put all the data the study has collected into the melting pot, you see trends and changes, but no more than you would expect with the advancement in medical science. For example, by the age of 44, 2 in 5 of us were taking some form of prescribed medication, some of which was not even available to our parents' generation. That's why you can't measure like for like and draw definitive conclusions.

Thank you for the link MOnica

Indigo8

Allira

Anecdotes are not proof.
Research is not proof.

Even statistics are not absolute proof but are more reliable than anecdotes.

There are too many variables. If another pandemic were to hit then life expectancy could/would go down again.
If breakthroughs are discovered in medicines, life expectancy could go up.

Nothing is certain.

I absolutely agree Allira.

I am now three years older than my mum was when she died and DH is nine years older than his dad was when he died.

What does this prove? Absolutely nothing.

You are of course, quite right - except that is not the point of the research.

What the research is looking at is the state of health of two different alive and kicking groups of people, one group born before and during the war and one born afterwards. Many in the older group are still alive (I am one).

When the doctors look at the medical records of these two groups of people the younger group are fatter, weaker and sicker than the older group compared age for age.

Here is a link to a more authoratative report on this research project www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/national/24633554.baby-boomers-living-longer-but-poorer-health-previous-generations/ it includes refernces and details of the report, which has been published in the Journal ^Gerentology' or you could look at this one dentistry.co.uk/2024/10/07/baby-boomers-live-longer-but-are-less-healthy-study-finds/ , whch includes details of the sample ssize.

I agree, even statistics are not absolute proof. They can't be because no two journeys along the same path are alike. Like in a forest of thousands of trees, no two leaves are the same. Different times, different circumstances, different people.

Grandad died at 72 but that was smoking, eating fat bacon and drinking rough cider, dad made it to 85 yrs, I will follow suit, maybe a few yrs more.
As long as I can enjoy life it’s fine, when I stop doing that please switch me off !.

Witzend

IMO anyone’s who’s visited the US since at least the 70s will have seen how junk food available just about everywhere, and very often massive portions, can’t have failed to notice the link with extreme obesity.

On the first morning we very first visited, early 70s, we went to a 24 hour breakfast place. A very fat boy at a nearby table was tucking into an enormous plateful of everything ‘breakfast’ you could think of - including a huge pile of pancakes with a lump of butter the size of a tennis ball on top.

At the time, you rarely saw extremely fat people in the U.K. Can’t say the same now, alas.

Someone posted a video on Facebook of people outside one of our village pubs celebrating some local event and nearly everyone was overweight. I remember years ago looking at how obese people in America were and thinking that we always seem to follow them and hoped we wouldn’t follow them obesity wise, but we have done.

Allira

Anecdotes are not proof.
Research is not proof.

Even statistics are not absolute proof but are more reliable than anecdotes.

There are too many variables. If another pandemic were to hit then life expectancy could/would go down again.
If breakthroughs are discovered in medicines, life expectancy could go up.

Nothing is certain.

I absolutely agree Allira.

I am now three years older than my mum was when she died and DH is nine years older than his dad was when he died.

What does this prove? Absolutely nothing.

I was born in 1949...am I a Baby boomer?

Anecdotes are not proof.
Research is not proof.

Even statistics are not absolute proof but are more reliable than anecdotes.

There are too many variables. If another pandemic were to hit then life expectancy could/would go down again.
If breakthroughs are discovered in medicines, life expectancy could go up.

Nothing is certain.

Pantglas2

I agree with you NannyJan - my Dad is 90 and still chops his own logs, grows vegetables, walks to the pub, cooks all his own food from scratch and his weekly whole meal loaf comes from local bakery.

He’s never smoked or been overweight and has gotten over a cancer scare and a few falls in the last few years.

I watched Paddy McGuiness/Chris Harris programme on longevity on the Greek island Ikaria where the secret appeared to be keep doing what you’ve always done, or you won’t be able to do what you’ve always done!

Our next door neighbour is 93 and still very active. He walks round the block every day and eats lots of fruit. He also catches the bus into town several times a week and has coffee with his cronies.

His motto is "Use it or lose it".

He still reads avidly and plays classical music on his piano. I love chatting to him.

M0nica

The research was not about generations going a long way back, nanna8. Just a comparison between baby Boomers and the generation born before or during the war. and, possible the one born between 1900-1920.

Many of the pre war/war generation are still alive. using purely anecdotal experience, my father, one of 11, born 1910-1929. 4 made it fairly healthily into their 90s, one is still living at 97, and the majority of the rest lived into their late 80s and, again were quite healthy until close to their deaths.

We can all quote anecdotal evidence and yes, we had two family members who lived to 99 and over 100 - both ate quite unhealthily if the claims that animal fats and sugar are bad for us are true.

They were not actually blood relatives (and not related to each other either). A friend who always ate very healthily, never smoked and drank very little except for an occasional glass of good wine, died suddenly in her 60s.

Genetics plays a large part in health and longevity.

M0nica

Bluebelle just because your family are the exception to the rules does not invalidate good scientific research. We are talking averages here across the whole population, some people will be 10 stone overweight, some 1 stone underweight. Some live entirely on fresh organic food. Some live on nothing but cheap takeaways, but the average is, what the Oxford Uni and NHS reearch says.

One factor which I think affects the pre Boomers, in other words the War baby and childhood generation, of which I am one, is that rationing meant everybody had the same level of food and that was a healthy well balanced diet.

For many poorer families, it was the first time they had sufficient food and a well balanced diet. As well as that childhood nutrition was made a priority and children got extra milk, and vitamins - the cod liver oil and bottles of orange cordial that was dished out at clinics. This is when school milk was introduced.

I think my generation received optimum nutrition in childhood and that has affected our life time health to our advantage. So any generation coming behind us, the Boomers etc, who did not receive this scientific nutrition and 'benifitted' from the expansion of ultra processed and highly sweetened foods and the freedom for everyone to buy as much as they wanted without consideration of nutrition has had its inevitable effects.

Well, I am not going to argue with the Office for National Statistics which states the recent dip in life expectancy is due to the pandemic and that it will rise again over the next half century.

Over the next 50 years, period life expectancy at birth in England and Wales is projected to increase by approximately 6.6 years for males and 5.5 years for females.

Babs03

Surely some of this is down to the demolition of the NHS, the previous generation had cradle to the grave medical attention, free prescriptions at any age and GPs who were on hand to make home visits at any hour.
These days older people are routinely dismissed and simply given meds, told ‘is just your age’. Many I know don’t even bother going to the GP anymore but go to the chemist instead or look up their symptoms on google. I imagine this means many older people are sitting on potentially fatal illnesses until it is too late.

Perhaps we did get a prompter service but the medicines and procedures available to past generations were limited compared to what is available today.

I remember being given some "magic tablets" by the GP when he called round when I had tonsillitis. They were huge and called M&B tablets; I can still see him producing them from his doctor's bag.

One thing which will be damaging to the future health of today's children is the lack of NHS dentists. It is a national crisis.

It’s not a simple comparison previous generations died earlier because of poorer health care, despite more exercise/physical work, most had adequate nutrition despite rationing.
We - baby boomers have had it easier, less physical work, cheaper food in relation to hours worked and much better health care. Lack of exercise is the cause of many health problems we have, younger generations are even worse, many more obese children and young adults, I do fear for their future.

Both my grandmothers, born very late 1800s, lived into their late 80s. Both of their husbands died in their 60s. OTOH one great-grandfather (the only one I ever had) died only when I was 14 - he was 96.