Britons living for longer but face ill-health

MILLIONS of Britons can expect to live for longer but will see their old age crippled by back pain, migraines and hearing loss, research suggests.

On average men born today will live to 79 while women will reach 83, yet illness and injury will rob most of a fully healthy life.

Analysis shows men will live 69 years in good health while women will spend 71 years free of problems.

Back pain, migraines and hearing loss are the top causes of disability, according to the Annual Global Burden of Disease study, the world’s largest scientific collaboration on population health.

Meanwhile, the top five causes of premature death in the UK are heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and Alzheimer’s.

Professor John Newton, director of health improvement at Public Health England, said: “This is yet another reminder that while we’re living longer much of that extra time is spent in ill-health.

“It underlines the importance of preventing the conditions that keep people out of work and put their long -term health in jeopardy, like musculoskeletal problems, poor hearing and mental ill-health.

“Our priority is to help people, including during the crucial early years of life and in middle age, to give them the best chance of a long and healthy later life.”

Research published in The Lancet also reveals one of the greatest health challenges of our time is obesity.

High body mass is the fourth largest contributor to the loss of healthy life, after high blood pressure, smoking and high blood sugar.

NHS research published earlier this year laid bare the health time bomb facing the UK with 39 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds overweight or obese up from 27 per cent in 1993.

It means nearly three million young adults are now at risk of developing what experts have called “a cacophony” of devastating diseases, from diabetes to cancer.

Increasingly sedentary lifestyles, addiction to mobile phones and social media, lack of exercise and unhealthy diets are blamed.

A quarter of young women now have a waist of 34½in, compared with a tenth of young women with the measurement in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, four times as many young men have a waist measuring 40 or more inches as in 1993. One in six now have excessive girth.

The disturbing statistics came from the annual Health Survey for England which involves measuring 8,000 adults and 2,000 children every year.