The Hispanic Paradox

[monk222]

When I picked up the Express-News from off the lawn this morning, I see they are touting the headline: “Government Stats Indicate Hispanics Live Longer”. I looked up the article on the computer:

Weighing in on a long-simmering controversy, federal health officials Wednesday confirmed that U.S. Hispanics live longer, on average, than most other Americans.

...

The report supports the idea of the so-called Hispanic paradox — that Hispanics have lower death rates despite an overabundance of social and health disadvantages.

I was going to say: I thought it just felt longer.

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

There are two major factors that influence the death rate in populations within developed countries. One of them is smoking, and the other is obesity. The former is pretty simple: the more smokers there are in a group, the higher the death rate. The latter is complicated by genetic factors; to put it as simply as possible, obesity doesn't kill you on its own, as smoking does. It raises your risk of getting certain conditions which may kill you, but your underlying risk of getting those conditions is also influenced a lot by genetics. Also, people's individual tendencies to become obese or not to do so are themselves partly controlled by the genes.

I imagine Hispanics don't particularly smoke any more or less than any other racial group, so now I'm interested to know:

1. Is obesity less prevalent among Hispanics than among other races, or is it about the same?

2. If it's less prevalent, is that because of dietary considerations or because Hispanics are just less likely to become obese due to their genes? (I know enough about America not to count poverty as a factor. Over here, obesity rates rise as you go down the socioeconomic classes, but I understand that in America it's much more evenly distributed, which is a nice way of saying rich people are as likely to be obese as poor people... correct me if I'm wrong there.)

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

America is indeed a very fatty country - rich, poor, white, colored. And obesity is definitely among the "overabundance of social and health disadvantages", especially has it manifests in diabetes. I remember from old discussions that it has been thought that Indians are particularly ill-suited genetically to the rich, heavily processed foods of modern life, making the problem worse. Judging from this article, one of the main factors for longjevity seems to be the harder work they do - you just cannot beat exercise!