Life Expectancy

[Kirkcaldy]

I was talking to a Turkish friend and he was telling me the average life expectancy for Turkish people is much lower than people in the UK. I thought with their healthy diet and good climate they would live much longer than us.
Does anyone know if this is right.

[Scunner]

Yes I understand it is right - smoking rates, poor vehicle safety, not wearing seat belts are just a few reasons, there are plenty unfortunately.

[Scunner]

According to Wikipedia, the UK stands in a quite impressive joint 20th place in life expectancy by country. There's quite a scroll down to find Turkey - joint 98th place with Paraguay. Your average Brit can expect to live to a ripe old 79.4 years - for your average Turkish person around 10% less at 71.8 years - less than Palestine, Lebanon and Armenia.

[KKOB]

You also have to remember that most expats and visitors to Turkey only see the western, more affluent, side of the country. Very few venture into the harsher, less well-off, south-east where life expectancy significantly lowers the national average.

[nichola]

quote:Originally posted by Scunner

Yes I understand it is right - smoking rates, poor vehicle safety, not wearing seat belts are just a few reasons, there are plenty unfortunately.

poverty and lack of access to free health care plays a part too

[cenk]

It maybe true for small places. But I dont think there is difference between London and Istanbul about stressfull life.

[emekliyim]

Take a walk past any cemetry and look at the the dates inscribed on the tomb stones.  You'll be surprised how many in the Fethiye area seem to die in their fifties!

[NIGCOUSKAZ]

I've been to the cemetry's near Kemer... and I think some of the enngraver's may have not have been employed after their engravings.  I've seen people live to over 300 years old....

[ovaciksarah]

You only have to look at the foreign side of the cemetry at top of hill in Ovacik and see most people died in their fifties and that,s just the British

[johntaylor49]

Well, this is not too unusual. Many Brits that do well retire young in the Sun, but, as our Psyche is more attuned to many years of work in a dank, grey environment we tend to forget that we are not just on Holiday. That leads to too much exposure to the Sun, excessive Alchohol consumption and if you smoke heavier smoking, excessive high fats in the diet etc. This in turns leads to poor health and early death.

I lived as an expatriate for many years in the Sun, I was surrounded by Northern Europeans, particularly Brits, that drank and smoked and ate to excess, I ballooned to 16 Stone, coughed all the time, drank the equivalent of a 4 bottles of Scotch a week  --- very easy to do!

Fortunately I was given some pretty strong warnings by the old body and cut down drastically.

Great fun, but a short life!