Health statistics: what the data actually shows

What is the average life expectancy?

In the US, 77.5 years at birth in 2022, and that's after a fall the country hasn't fully recovered from. Life expectancy dropped from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.4 in 2021, the lowest since 1996 and one of the steepest short-term falls since the Second World War, before climbing back part of the way in the CDC's 2022 figures.

Women outlive men by 5.4 years: 80.2 against 74.8 at birth in 2022. The gap grew during the pandemic, partly because more men died of COVID-19 and partly because the overdose deaths of the same years fell so heavily on men.

Against other rich countries the US does badly. Japan leads at 84.3 years, and Australia (83.2), Germany (81.1) and the United Kingdom (81.0) are all several years ahead of America. The life expectancy calculator gives a projection for your own age and health, and the biological age calculator shows how much of that is in your hands.

How much sleep does the average person get?

Just under seven hours, and falling. Gallup has asked Americans about sleep for more than twenty years, and the average has slipped from 7 hours 9 minutes in 2004 to about 6 hours 54 minutes now, which puts the whole population just below the 7 to 9 hours the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends for adults.

The CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System finds 35% of American adults regularly sleeping less than seven hours. Short sleep goes with higher rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and weaker immune function, and after a decade of public health campaigns the share of adults getting enough hasn't moved.

Age changes the picture. Adults of 18 to 24 average nearer 7.5 hours and those of 45 to 54 about 6.5, while the over-65s report shorter nights and more daytime naps, which makes them hard to compare with anyone else. The sleep debt calculator measures what you're getting against what you personally need rather than against a single national number.

What is a normal resting heart rate?

Anywhere from 60 to 100 beats a minute, by the American Heart Association's definition, and that width is the point: it covers a very varied population. Fit people and athletes routinely sit below 60, which has a medical name, bradycardia, and is entirely normal in a fit person with no symptoms.

The actual American average, from NHANES and the big epidemiological studies, is between 72 and 78 beats a minute, near the middle of the range. In fit people it tends to drift down with age as the heart gets more efficient, and in sedentary people it tends to drift up as the rest of the cardiovascular system wears.

Persistently above 100 is tachycardia and worth a doctor's look. There's growing evidence that the lower half of the normal range, 60 to 70, goes with lower long-term cardiovascular mortality than 80 to 100, so "normal" isn't all one thing. The resting heart rate calculator gives your percentile, and the fitness age calculator puts it in the wider fitness picture.

What is normal blood pressure?

Below 120 over 80, and by that definition nearly half of American adults don't have it. In 2017 the American Heart Association lowered the line for hypertension from 140/90 to 130/80, which overnight made about 31 million more Americans hypertensive and took the prevalence to 47% of adults. The people didn't change; the line did.

The 2017 categories run: normal below 120/80, elevated at 120 to 129 systolic with diastolic under 80, Stage 1 hypertension at 130 to 139 over 80 to 89, and Stage 2 at 140 or above over 90 or above. Above 180/120 is a crisis and needs immediate care. Most people with high blood pressure feel nothing, which is why it gets called a silent condition and why it goes untreated.

Of the roughly 116 million American adults with hypertension, only about 24% have it under control with medication or lifestyle changes. The blood pressure calculator tells you which category your readings fall into and how many people share it.

What is the average BMI?

About 30.0, which is precisely the line between overweight and obese. That's the mean adult BMI in the CDC's NHANES survey for 2017 to 2020. Obesity now stands at 41.9% of American adults, up from 30.5% in 1999 to 2000, a rise of 37% in relative terms in two decades.

The full distribution runs: 27.4% of adults at a healthy or underweight BMI (below 25), 30.7% overweight (25 to 29.9) and 41.9% obese (30 or above), with severe obesity (BMI 40 or above) at about 9.2%. So a BMI of 24 puts you in the slimmest quarter of the country, which few people with a BMI of 24 realise.

Obesity is highest in middle age, 40 to 59, and differs a lot by race, ethnicity and state, ranging from about 24% to over 40% depending on where you look. The healthy weight calculator shows where your BMI sits in the population, the body fat percentage calculator gets past BMI's blindness to muscle, and for anyone on a GLP-1 drug the weight loss drug cost calculator compares monthly prices across the main UK and US providers.

What is a normal menstrual cycle?

Anything from 21 to 35 days, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The 28-day cycle everyone quotes is an average, not a standard, and most people don't have one. Cycles vary between people and, within one person, from month to month, and none of that on its own is a problem.

Bleeding for 3 to 7 days is normal. Cycle length also shifts across a lifetime: irregular in the first years after periods start and again in the run-up to menopause, most regular from the late twenties to the mid-thirties, then shorter and less predictable from the late thirties as ovarian reserve falls.

The very large datasets from tracking apps, Clue and the Apple Women's Health Study, back up the clinical guidance and add one finding of their own: cycle length varies more between two people than it does for one person over time, so your own history is a better guide than any average. Is my period normal compares your cycle data with the population, and the period calculator predicts your next dates from your own pattern.

What is the average age of menopause?

Fifty-one, in both the US and the UK. Menopause is dated to twelve months without a period, absent surgery or medical cause, and the NHS and the North American Menopause Society put the normal range at 45 to 55. Before 40 it's classed as premature ovarian insufficiency, which affects about 1% of women.

Perimenopause, the run-up, usually starts 4 to 8 years before the final period and brings irregular cycles, swinging hormones and the first hot flushes. A lot of women are in it from their mid-forties without anyone, including their doctor, naming what's happening.

Removing both ovaries brings menopause on at any age, and usually more abruptly than the natural version; chemotherapy and pelvic radiotherapy can do the same. The menopause stage calculator places you on the timeline, and the perimenopause quiz checks whether your symptoms fit the pattern.

How much caffeine does the average person consume?

About 200mg a day for the average American adult, which is two ordinary 8-ounce cups of brewed coffee, according to FDA and NHANES figures. Around 85% of adults have at least one caffeinated drink on any given day, which makes caffeine the most widely used psychoactive drug on earth. The FDA's ceiling for healthy adults is 400mg a day; above that come anxiety, poor sleep and a faster heart, and at very high doses, rarely, an irregular one.

How fast you clear it is mostly down to one liver enzyme, CYP1A2, and people differ a lot. Caffeine's half-life runs from 3 to 7 hours in most adults, shorter in heavy smokers and longer in pregnancy or on certain medicines. For a slow metaboliser a 3pm coffee is still working at bedtime, and it disturbs sleep even when you don't feel awake.

Intake peaks between 35 and 54 and is lower among 18 to 24 year olds. Coffee supplies about 64% of America's caffeine, then tea, soft drinks and energy drinks. The caffeine clearance calculator estimates how much is still in you at any hour from what you drank and when.

How common are digestive conditions?

Far more common than the number of diagnoses suggests. The Rome Foundation, which writes the diagnostic criteria for functional gut disorders, estimates that irritable bowel syndrome affects 10 to 15% of people worldwide, and only about 30% of them ever see a doctor about it. Most people with IBS are managing it on their own without a name for it.

Reflux disease troubles about 20% of people in Western countries at least weekly, which makes it one of the commonest diagnoses in general practice. Functional dyspepsia, chronic indigestion with nothing structural behind it, affects another 10 to 15%. Chronic constipation, fewer than three bowel movements a week with other symptoms, affects about 15% of adults. Coeliac disease, an autoimmune reaction to gluten, affects about 1%, and a good share of them don't know.

The symptoms overlap heavily between conditions, and many people with a functional gut disorder also live with anxiety or depression. Do I have IBS checks your symptoms against the IBS profile, and the bloating symptom checker maps a wider set of symptoms to the conditions they usually belong to.

What are average cancer survival rates?

About 68% of people diagnosed with cancer are alive five years later, across all types combined, up from 49% in the early 1970s, according to the National Cancer Institute's SEER programme. Earlier detection, better surgery, better chemotherapy, targeted drugs and immunotherapy all contributed. The figure is relative survival, meaning the chance of surviving five years compared with someone the same age who doesn't have cancer.

The average hides an enormous range. Thyroid cancer has a 98% five-year survival rate and early melanoma is nearly as good; pancreatic cancer (about 12%) and glioblastoma (about 7%) are still among the worst diagnoses in medicine. For most solid tumours, stage at diagnosis matters more than anything, with early localised disease surviving two to four times as often as disease that has spread. Around 5 to 10% of cancers come from inherited mutations; the rest come from environment, lifestyle and plain chance in dividing cells.

Both how often cancer strikes and how often people survive it vary with age, sex, race and place. The cancer survival rates page goes through the numbers cancer by cancer.

How common is vitamin deficiency?

Much more common than people assume, starting with vitamin D. NHANES puts about 42% of American adults below the deficiency line of 20 ng/mL of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and the share is higher still among people who get little sun, people with darker skin, older adults and people with obesity. Vitamin D matters for bones, immunity and the heart, so that's a deficiency with consequences at population scale.

Iron is the commonest deficiency in the world. In the US it affects about 10% of women of reproductive age and 15 to 20% of pregnant women, bringing fatigue, foggy thinking and anaemia, and in pregnancy a higher risk of a poor birth outcome. Men and women past menopause are far less often affected.

Vitamin B12 deficiency affects about 6% of American adults under 60 and as many as 20% of those over 60, because B12 comes almost entirely from animal foods, so vegetarians and vegans run short, and because older stomachs make less acid and absorb it less well. The vitamin deficiency quiz weighs your own risk, and the supplement safe dose checker shows how much is too much.