Literacy tied to longer life! I just KNEW there was a way to offset all this booze I’ve been drinking. Roll out the barrel, my friend.

Older people who lack “health literacy” — that is, they cannot read and understand basic medical information — may be paying a high price. A new study finds that they appear to have a higher mortality rate than more-literate patients.

As the authors note, education levels have long appeared to play a role in longevity: one study found that people who did not graduate from high school lived an average of nine years less than graduates.

The explanation, researchers have suggested, may be that better education tends to result in better jobs, housing, food and health care.

But, writing in the July 23 Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers say that one particular characteristic of a poor education, low reading skills, may alone account for much of the problem. The study was led by Dr. David W. Baker of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

But what about reading interests…. That I’d like to see. For instance, do Harlequin and/or Mills & Boon junkies die sooner from lung disease incurred through life long Players Light smoking and hanging out in laundrettes where the air is filled with floating dryer fibres? Do chicklit readers die earlier of skin cancer brought on by addiction to cosmetics? Do Tom Clancy readers die, on average 20 years earlier due to hunting-related incidents? Do Dan Brown fans die earlier as the neural pathways in their brains atrophy from disuse? Do Thomas Pynchon readers die of a yet-to-be-named syndrome that seems to mimic a catatonia-like state of confused boredom? Interesting stuff.