Fame comes with a price, proves a new study from the Kinghorn Cancer Centre in Sydney, Australia, which found that sports stars and celebrities die younger when compared to people in other professions, according to IB Times.
Australian researchers Richard Epstein and Catherine Epstein analyzed 1,000 obituaries from 2009-2011 and noted their gender, age, profession and the cause of death. Later, they divided the data in four categories based on their careers. Researchers combined sports, acting, singing and entertainment under performance category and writing, visual arts into creative. Similarly, business, military or politics formed as one category and professional, academics or religious was another.
On comparing the data based on the age of death and dividing into respective career category, researchers found that performers died at an average age of 77, while people falling under creative category died at 79. Mortality rate was slightly higher among the academic people at an average of 82 and people involved in business and politics lived to 83.
"Fame and achievement in performance-related careers may be earned at the cost of a shorter life expectancy," the researchers wrote in their study. "In such careers, smoking and other risk behaviours may be either causes of effects of success and/or early death."
Cancer was also a common cause of death among performers and creative workers than in academics or business and politics. Also, since smoking is common among performers, most deaths associated with lung cancer was among performers and least in academics.
In terms of gender, researchers found that 813 obituaries out of 1,000 were reportedly males.
By sorting out the data in terms of age, it was noticed that men lived slightly longer than women (80 and 78 respectively).
Although this analysis based study does not prove the facts, but gives new opportunities to study further, Epstein said.
Epstein further raised questions that may give answers to the findings of the study in the future. "Or that psychological and family pressures favouring unusually high public achievement lead to self-destructive tendencies throughout life? Or that risk-taking personality traits maximise one's chances of success, with the use of cigarettes, alcohol or illicit drugs improving one's performance output in the short term?"
The findings of the research were published Thursday in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine.
