This from the NY Times health section yesterday. Some of the stuff is obvious (don’t smoke, etc), but there’s enough new information, or twists on old stuff, to make it a worthwhile quick read.
Gentlemen, 5 Easy Steps to Living Long and Well – New York Times
“The take-home message,” said Dr. Laurel B. Yates, a geriatric specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was the lead author of the study, “is that an individual does have some control over his destiny in terms of what he can do to improve the probability that not only might he live a long time, but also have good health and good function in those older years.”
The study followed more than 2,300 healthy men for as long as a quarter-century. When it began, in 1981, the subjects’ average age was 72. The men responded to yearly questionnaires about changes in health and lifestyle, and researchers tested their mental and physical functioning. At the end of the study, which was published Feb. 11 in The Archives of Internal Medicine, 970 men had survived into their 90s.
There was no less chronic illness among survivors than among those who died before 90. But after controlling for other variables, smokers had double the risk of death before 90 compared with nonsmokers, those with diabetes increased their risk of death by 86 percent, obese men by 44 percent, and those with high blood pressure by 28 percent. Compared with men who never exercised, those who did reduced their risk of death by 20 percent to 30 percent, depending on how often and how vigorously they worked out.
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