Middle-aged white men are dying from obesity and opioids.
A new study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found that drug-related deaths among America’s middle-aged guys shot up 25-fold between 1980 and 2014.
This new report refutes previous claims that “despair deaths” — suicide and alcohol — are on the rise among white Americans who are faced with dwindling economic opportunities.
“We find little empirical support for the pain- and distress-based explanations for rising mortality in the US white population,” lead author Ryan Masters, an assistant professor of sociology at University of Colorado, Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science, writes in a press release. “Instead, recent mortality increases have likely been shaped by the US opiate epidemic.”
Metabolic diseases such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes are also big risk factors.
“When it comes to mortality, we are just starting to see the real health consequences of the obesity epidemic,” Masters says.