Such is the future of the British population and that in Canada too.
The UK prognosticators now say:
Newly retired men in the UK can expect to live more than two years longer than those who finished work a decade earlier. But they also face almost an extra year of ill health.
Women currently aged 65 are predicted to live around 19 months more than those the same age a decade earlier but they will also spend almost four months longer in poor health.
And many of these longer-living Brits and Canadians will have most of their teeth, will have medication-induced dry mouth, and perhaps as many as half will have root caries.
Indeed, root caries could become one of the most common components of ill health as the life span expands. And one of the most influential on overall health.
In the current scheme of dental services, the maxims of root caries are:
- the patient rarely gets just one root caries. It is a chronic condition which appears repeatedly throughout the mouth.
- the patient’s chances of needing either a root canal or an extraction of a tooth affected by root caries, are very high.
In other words, the scheme is designed for repeat treatment rather than prevention. Good for dentistry, bad for the aging population and its ability to pay for dental services.
By: Ross Perry
SOURCED: Praterns In Prevention – http://partnersinprevention.ca/longer-life-in-retirement-but-more-ill-health/
