Email a Friend
Print ArticleHealthy Aging Health Center
This article is from the WebMD News Archive
How to Age Well
Oct. 27, 2003 -- If you want a long and healthy life, you gotta have heart.
And that heart has to be healthy. Just avoiding outright heart disease isn't enough, according to a study by Anne B. Newman, MD, MPH, associate professor of geriatric medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh.
It was a simple study. Newman's team -- the Cardiovascular Health Study Group -- kept track of nearly 3,000 men and women age 65 and older. In the beginning, all were healthy. They had no major diseases and were in normal physical and mental shape.
Not quite half -- 48% -- were still healthy eight years later. They had no heart disease, no lung disease, no cancer, and no physical or mental decline.
What made them different than the other half? One thing stands out. Those who stayed healthy had perfectly healthy hearts. They didn't even have "subclinical" heart problems, the ones so minor they can only be detected by testing.
"Our study is a picture of what the future of older people could be like -- the ideal golden years -- if they keep heart disease risk factors in check," Newman says in a news release.
Counting Years Lost
Subclinical heart disease isn't inevitable. If you don't yet have it, you don't have to get it.
Why avoid it? These minor heart problems cut years from your life, Newman and colleagues calculate. For men, having subclinical heart disease was like being 6.5 years older. For women, it was like being 5.5 years older.
And you know what to do.
"Older healthy people can maintain better-than-average quality of life, with lower rates of physical and [mental] decline, when they refrain from smoking, lower their blood lipids, watch blood pressure, and avoid obesity through diet and exercise," Newman says.
The findings appear in the Oct. 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
del.icio.us
Do You Need an Annual Check Up?
Are annual checkups worth your time and money? Not everyone agrees.
Do Your Hands Reveal Your Age?
