The Role of Stress, Suicide, and Drug Overdoses in Declining Life Expectancy

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins Detroit Today to talk about why U.S. life expectancy continues to drop.

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Life expectancy in the United States used to be the highest on the planet. That was back in the 1960s. Now, the U.S. ranks at the bottom of the list of developed countries.

This is startling — not just because this decline happened relatively quickly — but also because we pay more for healthcare per capita than anywhere else.

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta chalks this change up to substance abuse, suicide and overall poor health.

So what can we do?

In his upcoming series “Chasing Life,” Gupta travels the world to find out what other countries are doing right and how we might be able to bring some of those lessons back to America.

Gupta talks with Detroit Today’s Jake Neher about the new series on CNN, his HBO special called “One Nation Under Stress” and about the lifestyle choices we are making that are contributing to drops in life expectancy across the country. 

Click on the audio player above to hear that conversation.

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  • Detroit Today
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