U.S. citizens spend around half their lives ingesting prescription drugs, with the number of people taking five or more drugs at the same time rising, according to recent research.
The Oct. 1 study, published in the journal Demography, looked at how many years Americans spend on taking prescription drugs. It looked at data from 15,000 households between 1996 and 2019. An analysis estimated that a newborn boy born in 2019 would have a life expectancy of 76.59 years, out of which he would take prescription drugs for 48 percent of his life, or 36.84 years. For newborn girls, life expectancy was calculated to be 81.72 years, out of which nearly 60 percent, or 47.54 years, would be spent taking prescription drugs.
