Not smoking, regular exercise, maintaining normal weight,
and avoiding diabetes and high blood pressure seem to be the secrets of living
to age 90, researchers say.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 5 million
Americans are aged 85 and older, a number that will quadruple by 2050. As the
population grows older, doctors should encourage older Americans to exercise
and lead healthy lifestyles to cut health-care costs.
“Given the rising cost of health care, anything we can do to
try and reduce disease and disability in the older years and reduce the cost of
medical care is important,” Laurel Yates, a doctor of internal medicine at
Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston
said in her study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The researchers followed 2.357 men who were part of the
Physicians’ Health Study. The men were evaluated when they started the study at
about age 72 and were surveyed at least once a year for the next two decades.
Overall, 970 men survived to age 90 or beyond.
The research found that a healthy 70-year-old, who had never
smoked, had normal blood pressure and weight and exercised up to four times a
week had a 54 percent chance of living until 90.
Exercising and not smoking “can have great payoff not only
in terms of adding years to your life, but making those years be of good
function and less disease.”
Sedentary lifestyle reduced the chances of living to age 90 by
44 percent, high blood pressure by 36 percent, obesity by 26 percent and
smoking by 22 percent.
Having three of these risk factors significantly reduced the
chances of surviving to age 90 to 14 percent and having five risk factors
dropped the chance to just 4 percent.
The researchers also found that genes determine about 25
percent of the variation in lifespan. Therefore, 75 percent can be determined
by lifestyle.
“Smoking, diabetes, obesity and hypertension each are
predicted to reduce life expectancy by one to five years, while higher physical
activity may add up to five years,” the study said.
Being in a good shape could add as much as 10 years to a man’s
lifespan, the study found.
Yates’ study was completed by a second study belonging to Dellara F. Terry, MD,
MPH, of the Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center and
colleagues, who studied 523 women and 216 men aged 97 or older.
Dr. Terry split the participants into two groups based on
gender and the age they developed diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes,
high blood pressure, dementia, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
osteoporosis and Parkinson’s disease. The findings showed that almost one-third
of the survivors had developed these illnesses by age 85, but were not disabled
by them. The study also reports that men had better mental and physical
function than the female centenarians, which the researchers say is consistent
with other studies.
“One explanation for this may be that men must be in excellent health and/or
functionally independent to achieve such extreme old age. Women on the other
hand may be better physically and socially adept at living with chronic and
often disabling health conditions,” the authors write.
The studies did not find any connection between moderate alcohol
consumption and a longer life.
