Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Rock Stars die younger than general population

Is anyone really surprised by this statistic?

Basically there was a study at Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University that examined the lives of over 1000 musicians from between 1956 and 2005, of which, there was about a 10% mortality rate.

Of course, given the excesses of that lifestyle which includes drug and alcohol use and abuse and promiscuous sexual conduct, the litany of mental problems as a group they generally possess, access to more dangerous forms of recreation and in general, the sheer amount of traveling they do both on the road and in the skies, that kind of mortality rate seems like it is to be expected. In all, researchers discovered that rock stars have a 70% higher premature mortality rate than the general population.

All the above factors sometimes create a perfect storm in the first five years of fame for artists, as that is the time when they are most likely to die, increasing the likelihood of premature death to an astonishing 240% above the general population.

The study also found that a lack of health insurance later in some of these artists' careers and the increased frequency of reunion tours was also shortening the lives of musicians.

Now, I wonder if someone is going to do a study indicating if playing Guitar Hero to excess is also a cause of premature mortality. I mean, someone probably had a heart attack playing that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be so much more fun if they'd be prone to slide into a few years of dementia before they die... But then, Dutch research published this week showed that smokers are more prone to dementia, so I guess they are in there *grin*

MC said...

Well, I think they are demented by nature.