Young Australian men dying at twice the rate of women

FAT, drunk and taking more risks - young men are dying at twice the rate of women and are more likely to be hospitalised with an injury.

And the solution to improving their lifespan is simply to get married, according to two new reports on the health of the Aussie bloke.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare research shows males born in 2009-2011 can expect to live to the age of 79.7, nearly five years less than female babies born the same year (84.2 years).


The reason men are more likely to die is risk and lifestyle related, with young males three times more likely to die in a transport accident or from suicide than females.

The reports show males are also more likely to die from sudden infant death syndrome, congenital illness and drowning.

In 2010-11 there were more than 99,000 hospitalisations for injuries among males aged 0-24 and men were twice as likely to die from these injuries as females.

Half the men aged 17 to 24 are also obese or overweight.

While they were less likely than females to smoke, young men were more likely to drink weekly than women and two in five males aged 14 to 19 are at risk of injury resulting from excessive alcohol consumption.

And although more women of the same age have the sexually transmissible disease chlamydia, it was also the most commonly notified infectious disease among young males in 2011.

There were 17,741 cases of chlamydia in males aged 0-24 in 2012.

For men aged 25 and over the picture does not improve.

Three in four men in this age group were overweight or obese.

One in ten men aged between 50-69 were at risk of injury from excessive alcohol consumption on a daily basis.

To protect their health the report hints that men need to get married and keep a job. Married males have lower mortality rates compared with those who never married (8.1 compared with 12.8 deaths per 1,000).

And men who are employed are less likely to rate their health as fair or poor (11%) than unemployed males (37%) or males not in the labour force (41%).

Australian Medical Association president Dr Steve Hambleton said the glorification of alcohol and its heavy marketing via sporting heroes was partly to blame for male health problems.

"As a society we need to think about our attitudes to public drunkenness," he said.

The nation's obesity epidemic had to be tackled through better food labelling and young males needed to work on reducing their screen time and increasing their activity levels, he said.

The reason that partnering up was a positive for men's health was that "you have two people thinking about your health, not one," he said.

YOUNG MEN

*49% males aged 17-24 are overweight or obese

*43% males aged 14-19 at risk of injury from excessive alcohol consumption

*chlamydia most common notifiable disease in males aged 0-24 - 17,741 cases in 2012

*males aged 0-24 die at nearly twice the rate for females same age

*males aged 1-24 three times more likely to die in a land transport accident than women

*males aged 0-24 more likely to die from injury than women

OLDER MEN

*75% men aged over 25 overweight or obese

*1 in 10 men aged 50-59 and 60-69 at risk of injury from excessive alcohol consumption

*Men aged over 25 four times more likely to contract syphilis or gonorrhoea than females

*Men aged 50 have life expectancy 3.6 years lower than women

*Married men less likely to die than never married

news.com.au 31 July 2013

NO government cares for the health of its canon fodder.

If YOU do not look after yourself, on one else will.