HBO, CNN to air Gupta shows on stress, long lives

ATLANTA — CNN chief medical correspondent and practicing neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta is a man who lives such a busy life that it makes sense he has back-toback projects coming out that address 1) stress and 2) extending life.

The first project, coming out Monday on HBO, is a documentary called “One Nation Under Stress.” He explores why, in recent years, working-class whites are dying young at increasing rates, depressing Americans’ life expectancy. This is a trend that began in the mid-2010s and has not abated.

Americans in the 1960s had some of the longest life spans on Earth, he noted. Now among developed countries, the United States is scraping bottom.

“Every other developed country has increased life expectancy and decreased mortality except for one: ours,” Gupta said.

The documentary tackles many familiar reasons: a melange of income inequality, the fraying social fabric, despair, lack of control and dashed expectations.

The documentary opens in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (population: 14,000 or so and shrinking), where the forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht is seen looking over bodies of people who died well before old age. He noted that more than half the bodies he sees are the result of drugrelated deaths.

Gupta points out the economic decline of the Rust Belt, where much of the health declines have occurred, and wonders why blacks continue to see improvements in life expectancy, although they still live 3 years

less than whites.

“For AfricanAmericans, it’s a chronic state of stress,” said his colleague Charles E. Moore, chief of surgery of otolaryngology at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. “For a certain white population, it’s a new issue, and possibly that’s what’s causing that decline. The white working class have not seen that systematic type of oppression.”

He noted a 12-year life expectancy gap between residents of the poorest and richest zip codes in Atlanta.

On the flip side, Gupta’s latest CNN series, “Chasing Life,” which will debut April 13, takes him to six foreign countries to look at how subcultures are able to live longer.

“I recognize people in the United States and its medical system are very provincial about our health care,” Gupta said. “If it’s not made in America, it can’t possibly work.”

That’s not true. He visited six countries — including India, Japan and Bolivia, where he ended up visiting an indigenous tribe that has no signs of heart disease, dementia or diabetes. Their life expectancy isn’t higher because they tend to die of trauma: snake bites or childbirth. But they usually live quality lives until the end.

Indeed, he heard this line in Japan: “You want to live your life like an incandescent light. Shine brightly, then go out. You do not want to go like a fluorescent light with a lot of flickering and steady dimming.”