Personal Health
Jump to full article: New York Times, 2008-08-26
Author: JANE E. BRODY
Intro: But there is increasing evidence that the societal burden of increased longevity need not be so drastic. Long-term studies have shown that how people live accounts for more than half the difference in how hale and hearty they will remain until very near the end. . . .
All of these examples speak to a concept proposed in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1980 by Dr. James F. Fries of Stanford University: that adult vigor can be extended well into the ninth decade of life, with illness and disability compressed into a period that shortly precedes death.
. . .
Dr. Hall’s comments were based on a 25-year study by Dr. Laurel B. Yates of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and her Boston colleagues of 2,357 men who were healthy at an average age of 72 when the study began. Of the 970 men who survived to at least age 90, the primary modifiable predictors of longevity were not smoking; preventing diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure; and exercising regularly.
“Compared with nonsurvivors, men with exceptional longevity had a healthier lifestyle, had a lower incidence of chronic diseases and were three to five years older at disease onset,” the Boston team reported in February in The Archives of Internal Medicine. “They had better late-life physical function and mental well-being. More than 68 percent rated their late-life health as excellent or very good, and less than 8 percent reported fair or poor health.”
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