New Zealand produces nine centenarians per 100,000, just 0.009% of our population, and it cannot be accounted for by our unfortunately reduced life expectancy of New Zealand’s combined 25% Maori and Pasifika peoples.
According to the Population Division of the United Nations, Australia produces 32 and Canada 33 centenarians per 100,000.
Malaysia has overtaken Japan with a staggering 135, of which 75% are ethnic Chinese.
Japan follows with 46. Portugal, France, Israel and Thailand produce about 35-48; the United States and South Africa about 31, the United Kingdom 23.
From 1870 to 1940, New Zealanders had the longest life expectancy globally, but nowadays whether we compare ourselves to our Five Eyes or Sanzaar partners, our proportion of centenarians is dismal for a first world country.
We have a lower rate than Turkey and Peru.
Even Scotland, regarded as the sick man of Europe, produces centenarians at twice the rate of New Zealand, despite Kiwis eating their Mars bars raw, rather than deep fried.
In a related aspect, New Zealand is an outlier in the right direction.
Associate Prof Yoram Barack, of the psychological medicine department of the University of Otago, found 50% of our centenarians are classified ‘‘super agers’’.
These have no medical conditions, are on no medications and live in the community.
This is the highest rate known globally.
Among New Zealand centenarians, an analysis was performed of 45 variables compared to other elderly non centenarian controls. Surprisingly, only two of these had an influence on longevity: not smoking and social connectiveness — having three or more social interactions per week outside the family.
These two figures — 0.009% and 50% — are not independent.
They have a clear link, and it is this: if you are an elderly person living in New Zealand and you have health conditions, you do not become a centenarian as readily as in our overseas counterparts.
Why does New Zealand underperform? The cause is obviously polyfactorial.
It includes the transtasman GDP per capita income gap, and is a reflection of the quality of New Zealand’s health service, particularly primary healthcare.
I believe many New Zealand doctors are reluctant prescribers. I have experienced this personally with respect to (cholesterol lowering) statins and anti-hypertensive, from which I have ultimately benefitted.
Also, as a result of possibly conservatism, complacency or un-enlightenment, hypertension is commonly under treated.
Normal healthy systolic blood pressure is 120mm mercury, or less, and levels above this predispose to several common causes of death, and both Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.
One hundred and twenty millimetres of mercury translates to a hydrostatic pressure of 1632mm, thus this level is safe and poses no increased risk of fainting.
Since anti-hypertensives first became available in 1947, they have improved dramatically.
Side effects are now rare, and as most of these are now off patent, they are inexpensive.
When two United Kingdom doctors devised the concept of a ‘‘polypill’’, a theoretical mass medication to reduce mortality, unsurprisingly three of its five components were anti-hypertensives and another was a statin.
I firmly believe doctors and patients need to take more advantage of available life changing medications, used in conjunction with aerobic exercise, a healthy diet.
Blood pressure measuring devices are inexpensive, easy to use and accurate enough, so every home should have one.
■Ian Breeze is a retired surgeon.
