Completing This Unexpected Activity Helps You Live Longer – Health Digest

According to a 2015 study published in PLOS ONE, the magnitude of death because of low education is similar to that of death attributable to people who are current rather than former smokers. Cardiovascular disease was one of the main causes of death among the participants born in 1925, 1935, and 1945. Data from more than a million people was analyzed from the years 1986 to 2006. The researchers found that 145,243 deaths could have been prevented in the 2010 population if the subjects had completed a GED or high school degree and 110,068 deaths could have been prevented if the subjects had earned their bachelor’s degree. 

“Our results suggest that policies and interventions that improve educational attainment could substantially improve survival in the U.S. population, especially given widening educational disparities,” explained Patrick Krueger, author of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus (via Science Daily). 

Homicide and AIDS were linked with the most years of potential life lost (YPLL), and cancer and cardiovascular disease were found to be the most common causes of death in a 2020 Yale-led study published in the American Journal of Public Health. “These deaths are occurring in working-age people, often with children, before the age of 60,” shared Dr. Brita Roy, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine and corresponding author of the paper.