Learning for life: The higher the level of education, the lower the risk of dying

Comprehensive survey show health benefits of education

“Effects of education on adult mortality: A global systematic review and meta-analysis”  (The Lancet Public Health, 2024) provides the most comprehensive evidence to date of the reduction in all-cause mortality associated with each year of schooling.  The study was conducted by the Centre for Global Health  Inequalities Research (CHAIN),  in collaboration with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). CREDIT eurohealthnet.eu

Education saves lives regardless of age, sex, location, and social and demographic backgrounds. That’s according to the latest and largest study of its kind published today in The Lancet Public Health.

Researchers have known that those who reach higher levels of schooling live longer than others, but they didn’t know to what extent until now. What they found was that the risk of death drops by two per cent with every additional year of education. That means those who completed six years of primary school had a lower risk of death by an average of 13 per cent. After graduating from secondary school, the risk of dying was cut by nearly 25 per cent, and 18 years of education lowered the risk by 34 per cent.

Researchers also compared the effects of education to other risk factors such as eating a healthy diet, smoking, and drinking too much alcohol, and they found the health outcome to be similar. For example, the benefit of 18 years of education can be compared to that of eating the ideal amount of vegetables, as opposed to not eating vegetables at all. Not going to school at all is as bad for you as drinking five or more alcoholic drinks per day or smoking ten cigarettes a day for 10 years.

“Education is important in its own right, not just for its benefits on health, but now being able to quantify the magnitude of this benefit is a significant development,” said Dr. Terje Andreas Eikemo, co-author and head of Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

While the benefits of education are greatest for young people, those older than 50 and even 70 years still benefit from the protective effects of education.

Researchers found no significant difference in the effects of education between countries that have reached different stages of development. This means that more years of education is just as effective in rich countries as in poor countries.

“We need to increase social investments to enable access to better and more education around the globe to stop the persistent inequalities that are costing lives,” said Mirza Balaj, co-lead author and postdoctoral fellow at NTNU’s Department of Sociology and Political Science. “More education leads to better employment and higher income, better access to healthcare, and helps us take care of our own health. Highly educated people also tend to develop a larger set of social and psychological resources that contribute to their health and the length of their lives.”

Each year of  education  reduces all-cause  mortality risk

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Compared to zero years of education, completing six years of education (roughly primary school level in most areas) was associated with a 13.1% reduction in all-cause mortality risk when controlling for age, sex, and marital status.  This value increased to 24.5% after 12 years and 34.3% after 18 years of education. This translates to an average 1.9% reduction per year of education across the 18 years. 

“Closing the education gap means closing the mortality gap, and we need to interrupt the cycle of poverty and preventable deaths with the help of international commitment,” said Claire Henson, co-lead author and researcher at Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. “In order to reduce inequalities in mortality, it’s important to invest in areas that promote people’s opportunities to get an education. This can have a positive effect on population health in all countries.”

The study identified data from 59 countries and included over 10,000 data points collected from over 600 published articles. Most of the studies reviewed for this study were from high-income settings, highlighting the need for more research in low- and middle-income countries, particularly from sub-Saharan and north Africa where data are scarce.

“Our focus now should be on regions of the world where we know access to schooling is low, and where there is also limited research on education as a determinant of health,” said Dr. Emmanuela Gakidou, co-author and professor at IHME.

“Projections of mortality and causes of death, 2015 and 2030” – life expectancy in the next 14 years.


The World Health Organization has recently published “Projections of mortality and causes of death, 2015 and 2030”. The report provides information about all deaths in 2015 by cause and has made some predictions for 20130. Thus giving us impression of how global health will develop over the next 14 years. Also featured is data showing how life expectancy will change between now and 2030.

It also looks at which diseases are the worst killers. And which medical conditions are slowly being eradicated.

Our friends at Medigo have put together a rather interesting and useful infographic. So what do you think? Are things really getting better? Have your say in the comments section below.




MEDIGO – Mortality and Causes of Death. 2015 and 2030: a comparison




Some amazing facts about the Brain

Brain health

Brain health

So what do you know know about the human brain?

How many of these facts did you know?

I was pretty amazed! So check out this amazing infographic video!


¼ Patients Fear Side-Effects So Much They Stop Taking Their Medicine


Confusing ‘Patient Information Leaflets’, poor GP-Patient relationships and a lack of understanding into how medicines work leads to many stopping their treatment.

Medical Compliance

Medical Compliance

• 73% of British adults have been prescribed medication in the last year, and almost half in the last month alone.
• This week is National Medication Adherence Week (16th- 23rd October) which aims to highlight the serious national impact that failing to properly take medication has.




• The full scale of the issue was revealed in 2013 by a landmark investigation – the first large-scale study into the issue in the UK – called the Aston Medication Adherence Study. The results showed that around a quarter to a third of the patients were non-adherent to their medication.
• Reasons for failing to take medication range from a fear of side-effects to the nearly two thirds who simply forget their prescription programme. 1 in 5 stopped taking their medication as they did not feel ill and thought they did not need it – failing to understand how and why medicine works.

PatientTalk.Org interviewed Paul O’Hanlon,a  Medical Adherence Expert, to find out more.

PatientTalk.Org – So Paul first question, what is compliance and what is the issue?

O’Hanlon – Compliance is about a patient who has been prescribed a course of medicine over a few days, over a many months or maybe for the rest of their lives, it’s about them taking that medicine at the right time of day every day of the week they are meant to take.

PatientTalk.Org – Ok and what are the costs to the NHS and to the health of the nation?

O’Hanlon – Well what we have found when we started to look at compliance or we use the term medicine adherence we find that a significant proportion so up to 50% of patients are actually not taking their medicines correctly and this has two big consequences. First is that the actual consequence of the waste of those medicines which we estimate at about 300 million pounds a year just in wasted medicine but there is an even bigger issue and this is the human impact, the fact that by these patients not taking their medicines correctly it impacts their health, impacts on their long term conditions and that has a  further cost to the NHS to additional G.P visits, additional hospital visits, hospital interventions , off almost 500 million a year in people’s health.

PatientTalk.Org – Ok and which conditions are most impacted?

O’Hanlon – The most important ones that we are focusing on are the long term conditions such as blood pressure, high cholesterol , diabetes of which as the population is ageing we are living with more and more of these conditions so it’s a growing problem.

PatientTalk.Org – Ok and has it any effect on the anti-biotic resistance?

O’Hanlon – Well not taking a full course of anti-biotics as prescribed has a part to play in the increase of anti-biotic resistance, that’s not really key to the area that we are focusing on, were focusing more on patients with long term conditions who are on medicines for many many months if not years or till the end of their life’s, that’s the adherence we are really focusing on.

PatientTalk.Org – Ok and what are the chances of adverse events in reality for the average patient?




O’Hanlon – Oh quite significant, I mean the occasional missed dose is not going to do much harm but when a person does have a chronic illness, let’s say diabetes where the control of the sugar and blood is very important, if they are not controlling that blood sugar there can be many long term complications one of which can be a significant reduction in blood circulation in the limbs and at the moment we are seeing up a hundred amputations a week in the NHS as a result of poor medication adherence in diabetes so the consequences can be huge.

PatientTalk.Org – Ok and how better compliance be achieved?

O’Hanlon – Well the starting point is if a patient has any doubts about what they are doing with their medicines and feels they are not managing them as well as they could  then go talk to the pharmacist , the pharmacist has a number of solutions it could be something as simple as providing a medication adherence pack this could , this is pack that sorts the patients medication out for them for the week and just makes sure that its simpler, there are many new technologies emerging or it just be the fact that the patients’ needs to understand what their medicines are for so its starting point to say go and talk to your pharmacist they are experts on medicines and they can really help.

PatientTalk.Org – Ok and can G.P’s do anything to help?

O’Hanlon – Certainly, G.P’s, nurses, pharmacists we all have a part to play and I suppose this is one of the big parts of this campaign, not only are we wanting to raise awareness of medication nonadherence in patients, this is also a shout out to the health professionals, to government, to the NHS, we really need to start putting our heads together and finding some real fixes to this problems so it’s not just G.P’s it’s the whole healthcare community.

Men and women attempt to reverse aging process – read our FAQ about dermal fillers.


Dr Zack Ally

Dr Zack Ally

New survey reveals Britons seek anti-aging treatments to stay competitive in work, reward themselves and maintain youthfulness.

Nearly a third of UK adults have had aesthetic treatment for a change in job or career, according to new research released today underlining that youthfulness still equates to success in work for many people.

Survey results also highlighted that 1 in 5 women in the UK have dermal fillers to turn the clock back and retain their beauty while surprisingly, almost 40% of respondents, aged 25-44, said they would have aesthetic treatment if their partner wanted them to.

Until now, 90% of all aesthetic procedures have been carried out on women; however Intraline’s research found that UK men are threatening to buck the trend with 25% of survey respondents having dermal fillers to reward themselves.


Weddings were identified as a key milestone with 1 in 25 women undergoing treatment to look their best on their big day and 10% having a procedure for a significant birthday.

To find out more about dermal fillers we interview Dr Zack Ally a pioneering physician who is CEO and Founder of Derma Medical, a state of the art aesthetic training provider for doctors.

PatientTalk.Org – Firstly, what is a dermal filler and how do they work?

Dr Zack Ally – So, dermal fillers are injections of hyaluronic acids which is something that our body naturally produces and as we age we tend to lose hyaluronic acids and as a result of that our faces start to loose volume and descend. By injecting volume back into the skin you can essentially take back years and lift up the face. You can do quite a lot with dermal fillers, you can anchor, you can mould, you can shape, you can lift and you can create a very natural look appearance with dermal fillers.

PatientTalk.Org – And are there any dangers involved with dermal fillers?

So with any procedure there are always complications, but there are also ways of minimising that as well. The dangers of injecting are going outside the territories of injections, although areas which we call landmarks or safe zones. You can obviously inject in to areas nearby, there are certain structures within the face that we tend to avoid, vessels and injection depth. So you can actually avoid that by sticking to landmarks, so generally speaking the procedure can be quite safe if it’s done properly and as a training company our aim really is to teach people the landmarks of how to inject safely, how much to be using, where to be using the product and exactly what you’re using. By ticking all those boxes you tend to be quite safe in distribution and the look you intend to achieve with it.

PatientTalk.Org – If somebody wanted to get dermal fillers, who provides them and how is the profession regulated?

Dr Zack Ally – The industry is not the best regulated at the moment. In terms of getting dermal fillers
Intraline manufacture dermal fillers, they manufacture very natural looking dermal fillers as well,

Leslie Ash

Leslie Ash

which have a density enough to create good volume, with retaining a natural look. You can get them directly from the company itself Intraline and directly through speaking to the manufacturers such as ourselves and the product, the company providers as well. Most of the delegates that train in our companies tend to have access directly to these dermal fillers through our training days and in terms of our regulation, people that are trained in dermal fillers receive certification, making sure they can administer them safely. Once they have received their certification and got insured in dermal fillers, they are able to practice independently afterwards.

PatientTalk.Org – Are there any medical benefits as opposed to just cosmetic benefits?

Dr Zack Ally – With dermal fillers not so much medical, it’s more cosmetic but with some of the other aesthetic treatments that are offered in the industry somethings are actually medical. With neurotoxins elegant Botox or other forms of Botox that can be used for excessive sweating, they can be used for people who have got bruxism, which is a painful jaw when they bit or grind their teeth. They can also be used for medical reasons in effect, back in the day when they were used more often for this purpose, people that have high tone in their muscles or people that have problems with their bladder, or people that have squints and all these indications for Botox really were for the eye itself and all the muscular structures in the area which cause excessive movement, so Botox will work by relaxing that movement and minimising the tension in the muscle.

PatientTalk.Org –Why are they becoming more common for cosmetic reasons? Why are men using them?

Dr Zack Ally – So, in this day and age for many people it’s important for people to look good and feel good and people that do look good and feel good often tend to perform better in their day to day lives. The industry as you quite rightly say, you are seeing lot more men take the treatments and because it’s available it’s minimally invasive, it’s quite simple to do in terms of administering the procedure and in terms of safety you know it’s safe to inject these cosmetic injectables. Lots of the time these products are actually reversible they are not permanent and even when they do occur you can minimise a top up. The benefit of dermal fillers and Botox above surgical treatments are the fact that, again it’s cheaper to do and also you can achieve the same results with less interventional operative time. With men in particular you are seeing a significant increase in demand because, I think men care more now days about their appearance and are not afraid to take that to the next step, something that seemed to be more of a feminine treatment is now being taken a lot more by men. In fact 25 percent of our respondents have shown that there is a 25% increase in men’s use for Botox and fillers.

PatientTalk.Org – What is Hyaluronic acid and how does it work and what is the value to the user?

Dr Zack Ally – So as I mentioned earlier Hyaluronic acid is the component of dermal fillers, it’s something that our body naturally produces and we can actually replenish that but introducing a dermal filler into the skin which is the deeper component of the skin to add that volume back.

PatientTalk.Org – And last and final question could you just tell us the research and methodically and how was the sample constructed?

Dr Zack Ally – The sample was part of the UK media launch that Intraline conducted into consumer market research lead by a company called opinion matters to assess the attitude people have towards cosmetic treatments within the UK . We had 2000 people above the age of 25 ask questions about the industry and what they would like to do and how they see it and generally speaking overall results showed that nearly a third of UK population would choose to have those treatments for a change in their career or their job which underlays really the youthfulness still acquaints to success in the workplace for many people. Of that population 1 in 5 women who shown in the UK to request dermal fillers to turn back the clock and maintain a youthful look and retain their beauty and as we said earlier lots of men see a increase in demand for the products as well because of its availability and what’s being offered these days we are seeing a lot more people request Botox and Dermal fillers and companies such as ours help train practitioners to perform these procedures safely and effectively and I think it’s about getting the awareness out there and that is what is being seen and received on their end.