The baby-boom generation may have invented aerobics, turned tennis into a lifestyle and propelled dozens of diet and medical books up bestseller lists. But the sum isn't as healthy as all of those parts.
Recent news indicates that 73 per cent of Canadians 45 to 64 years old are overweight or obese, making extra poundage the biggest health threat in the land. As boomers hit their 60s, heart-disease rates will probably start spiking. Some experts even worry that this age group might not live as long as their parents, reversing a century of trends.
“It's the first generation that may not have the same life expectancy as previous generations,” says Toronto cardiologist Beth Abramson, a spokeswoman for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
Similar concerns surfaced in the foundation's latest Report Card on Health, published in February and titled, Is 60 the New 70? It says about 1.3 million (21 per cent) of Canadians aged 45 to 59 have been diagnosed with heart disease, stroke or high blood pressure, even though improved medical care has reduced mortality rates in that age group.
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Those figures seem bound to rise, given last week's Statistics Canada release of the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey, which showed that most middle-aged Canadians are overweight or obese (conditions defined by a body mass index of over 25 or 30, respectively).
“It's almost a puzzle, because baby boomers should know better. They are an educated generation,” Dr. Abramson says. “Perhaps it's a ‘do as I say, not as I do' mentality that comes back to some of the psychological aspects of being a baby boomer. It's almost an environment of excess.”
Boomers have made some gains. For one thing, they are smoking less. The CCHS report indicated that 26.8 per cent of those 35 to 44 smoke, as do 22.3 per cent of those 45 to 64 — down, in the latter group, from 29 per cent a decade ago. Yet that cohort still smokes much more than current seniors, only 10.5 per cent of whom continue to puff.
A recent Globe and Mail/Strategic Counsel poll found that 57 per cent of people aged 40 to 59 claim to exercise three or more times a week. But the CCHS report is gloomier. In it, about 50 per cent of boomers and seniors alike admitted that they were inactive. For boomers, that's up from 43 per cent a decade ago.
For obesity experts, it's time to sound the alarm when a patient hits a BMI over 25. “By the time you reach 30 BMI, you find one or more cases of co-morbidity, illnesses that have already crept in, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes,” says David Lau, an obesity expert at the University of Calgary.
“It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the time to consider health issues is when the person is overweight, not when the person in obese.”
That's the idea behind much of the work done at private medical clinics such as Toronto's Medcan, where 70 per cent of the clientele is made up of baby boomers aged 45 to 55. For the most part, medical director James Aw says he is steering patients to preventive nutrition and exercise coaching.
“On the younger side of the baby boom, their real age is catching up with them. At 40, unless you make changes, you'll feel older. They want to be heli-skiing with their grandchildren at 80.
“But they've got a lot on their plate, and they fall back on the pleasure principle. When it comes to anti-aging, some people would rather do cosmetic surgery.”
Many experts point out that obesity and inactivity have as much to do with social policy, urban planning and marketing as they do with personal choice. In that regard, boomers might be uniquely poised to fix this mess.
“Boomers are at the prime of their careers — they're the employers, they're the leaders in the media, they tend to be the politicians. They tend to be the key leaders in communities. If we can motivate boomers, they are a key part of the community solution,” says Russ Kisby, the former director of Participaction, which marketed healthier lifestyles to Canadians until 2001.
Andrew Wister, a social demographer and gerontologist, and the author of the 2005 book Baby Boomer Health Dynamics, says Canadians should also be demanding some charismatic leadership in the face of the billion-dollar fast-food industry and its “unfair playing field.”
It's not just about getting boomers healthy as they hit the age of 60, he says. “You have to look at these as family issues, because everyone is eating out of the same fridge.”
Or drive-thru, as the case may be.
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