Is the Typical American Fat?

Two out of every 3 American adults are now overweight (35.8%) or obese (27.6%) based on their BMI. While most American adults report being physically active in the past month, most of us do not eat our recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

The Typical American's Health

Jennifer, our Typical American, is a non-smoker but does like a wee drink every now and then.

More of the Typical American's Health

Jennifer, our Typical American, proves to be fairly good at making healthy choices in terms of oral health, seat belts, and pap tests.

Americans Die of Different Things at Different Ages

Most Americans will live into old age and finally die of heart disease.  Jennifer, our Typical American, will likely live into her mid-70s.  Americans die of different things at different ages.  So, if a child dies in the US before the age of one, the leading cause of death is a birth defect.  From the age of 1 until we hit the age of 44, motor vehicle accidents and other unintentional injuries are the leading killers.  From 45 to 64, it's cancer.  And after age 65 heart disease rises to become the #1 killer of Americans.

The Typical American's Death

Something's gonna get ya.  In the case of Jennifer, our Typical American, it will be heart disease.  Heart disease is the leading killer among Americans followed by cancer, respiratory disease, stroke, and unintentional injuries.  The CDC's WISQARS database provides these statistics.

Gestational Diabetes

The percentage of American adults who have ever been diagnosed with gestational diabetes is relatively low, but there are some significant differences between states.  Some states with relatively high gestational diabetes numbers (CA for instance) are below average in the percentage of adults with Type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes in America

As Americans have grown fatter, the percentage of adults with diabetes has also risen.  Diabetes involves the inability of the body to process sugars derived from the foods we eat.  Type 1 (AKA childhood diabetes) is inborn where a child's body lacks the ability to produce enough insulin.  Type 2 (AKA adult onset diabetes) usually involves obesity where a steady diet of sugar, carbohydrates and other such foods have burnt out the body's ability to produce enough insulin and/or created a condition where the body's cells have developed resistance to insulin.

Another kind of diabetes develops among some pregnant women -gestational diabetes.  Diabetes is an inflammatory disease and some recent studies point the possibility that Alzheimer's disease is actually Type 3 diabetes.

In more than a fifth of states -12 to be exact- the percentage of diabetic adults has now risen to more than 10%.

Fat in America

Happy New Year!  The start of a new year is often also the start of a new diet or health plan for many Americans.  The holidays have come and gone and left many with a few extra pounds.  So I thought today would be a good day to look at what else -obesity data!

Measuring obesity is somewhat complicated.  Because it is a relatively easy measure to gather, most survey data -including the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) data- use people's height and weight to calculate their Body Mass Index (BMI).  It is far from a perfect measure.  If you really are "big boned" as the country saying goes or are muscular, you may have a higher BMI but not be overweight. Or, you might come from an ethnicity of smaller framed people and rate as underweight when you are actually a healthy weight.  Still, for most people, the BMI is a relatively accurate measure of obesity.

The CDC breaks overweight people into the categories of Overweight (see above) and Obese (see below). Overweight people have a BMI of 25 to 29.9.  Obese people have a BMI of 30 or higher.  Being overweight puts you at risk for a shorter life, heart disease, diabetes, knee problems, and even psychological issues related to stigma against the overweight.

You'll notice that some states have relatively high percentages of people who are overweight but not that high of percentages of people who are obese.  Arizona stands out with this pattern.  Mississippi -which leads the country in the highest percentage of overweight and obese adults- has a relatively low percentage of people who are overweight in part because so many adults have transitioned into the obese category.

Even while obesity has risen across the country, a general pattern has emerged where the western states and northern tier states are relatively thinner than the South.

Toothless in Tennessee

As part of my continuing series on health data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS), I thought I'd look at seniors who are missing all their teeth.  While this may seem a humorous topic, having poor oral health can open the door for bacteria and shave around 7 years off your life.

This map breaks the data by standard deviations from the mean/average.  So the pale, gray/white states' seniors are average -for the USA- in the percentage who are toothless.  The purple states have higher percentages of toothless seniors with WV, TN, MS, and KY having the worst data on senior oral health.

My friend Lee B. from Clinton, CT, used to tell me that people in Connecticut had great teeth.  Apparently she is right because the Nutmeg State and Hawaii have the most older Americans with their choppers.

Non-Smokers

To follow up on yesterday's post about which states have had the most success in adults quitting smoking, here is another map looking at differences between states in terms of non-smokers.  Utah by far leads the pack in regards to the highest number of adults who have never smoked.  The majority of adults in 48 of the 50 states have never smoked (see yesterday's post for which two states have more adults who have smoked than adults who have never smoked).

Where Have Smoking Cessation Programs Had the Biggest Impact?

In this continuing series on health data, let's look today at smoking.

The CDC lists smoking as the #1 preventable cause of early death.  Around 40% of people who smoke will eventually develop some type of health problem related to smoking.  Thus, smoking cessation and prevention programs for decades have -successfully I might add- greatly reduced the number of Americans to smoke.

In looking at data from the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) of adult health behaviors, I was curious if there were any regional differences showing where smoking cessation programs have had the biggest impact.  And it appears the answer is YES! -specifically in New England and Arizona which so the biggest percentages of people who have quit smoking.  

Let's look at the maps individually:

In every state except two, most adults have never smoked.  Only in Kentucky and West Virginia do the number of current or former smoker exceed 50% (52% each actually).  I have kept the legend values the same on these 4 maps, however, for comparison purposes.

By 2010 the number of adults who smoke daily in every state is below 1 in 5 -except in West Virginia where daily smokers exceed 20% of the population.





Interestingly, most American adults who smoke also smoke daily.  Less than 10% of American adults report they smoke but only a few days a week.

This last map shows the key differences.  People in Utah are the least likely to ever smoke.  Thus, Utah also has the lowest percentage of former smokers -because fewer people ever started smoking.  In most of the rest of the country, the percentage of former smokers is somewhere between 20-30% of the adult population.  The key exceptions are VT, NH, ME, and AZ where a larger percentage of the population has stopped smoking.  All four of these states actually had higher percentages of adults who have smoked or currently smoke but have had more success in adults quitting.

Honour Thy Father and Mother

I found statistics on elder abuse by state difficult to find.  I eventually turned to the CDC's WISQARS database on violent deaths.  The above map shows the crude violent intentional death rate per 100,000 population of seniors in 2010.  In other words, this maps shows the crude rate for suicides and homicides of seniors by state for 2010.  I did not only map the homicides because there were too few numbers for most states to compute a rate.

The above map looks at the mean rate of violent senior deaths and then looks at states' whose rate is unusually high or low -by several standard deviations.  As you can see, Nevada has an unusually high senior violent death rate.  Massachusetts has a relatively low rate.  While I did not map the violent homicide rate for seniors, I did look at it.  For the states with enough killings to compute a rate, Nevada again had the worst (highest) rate of murders of its seniors.  In general, seniors are more likely to die from violence in the West and least likely to die of intentional violence in the North/Midwest.  The South is about in the middle.