Healthy aging common among seniors: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Contrary to what some may think, many adults can and do maintain good health into their late senior years, according to the results of a new study.

"Despite very serious illnesses that come with age, such as dementias, our study emphasizes that many Americans are aging well into their 80s and beyond and are enjoying healthy ''successful'' aging," study author Dr. Kathleen A. Welsh-Bohmer, of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, told Reuters Health.

The current findings are based on data from the Cache County Memory Study, involving nearly all of the adults in that Utah county who were 65 years of age or older at the 1995 start of the study.

Welsh-Bohmer, principal investigator of that study, and her colleagues examined the seniors'' aging along 10 dimensions of health: their self-reported overall health, living at home versus in an institution, vision and hearing, ability to perform activities of daily living, freedom from physical illness, mental status, mood, social support and participation, religious participation and spirituality, and their survival.

They found that most of the adults, even those aged 85 years and older, rated their overall health as "excellent" or "good," the investigators report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Nearly 90 percent or more of seniors in every age category lived at home and at least nine out of 10 seniors in every age group were free of depressive symptoms or otherwise considered to have a healthy mood.

Also, while about half of the oldest seniors had problems with their vision or hearing, more than 60 percent of 75- to 84-year old men and women reported having good or excellent vision and hearing.

In fact, the study findings indicate, 80 percent to 90 percent of the 65 to 74-year-old seniors were healthy according to each of the areas examined in the study.

In general, older seniors were less healthy than the 65 to 74 year olds. Still, over two-thirds of women aged 85 years or older and more than three-quarters of men of similar ages were independent in all activities of daily living. Further, while dementia was more common among the oldest study participants, nearly 80 percent of men aged 85 years or older and 78 percent of women of the same age had normal cognition.

Social support and religious participation were also common among the seniors.

Overall, however, the factors most associated with the seniors'' perceptions of being in good or excellent health were their vision, hearing and mood -- all of which "are potentially modifiable" and can be addressed via clinical and public health screenings, the researchers note.

"There are no guarantees for healthy aging," Welsh-Bohmer told Reuters Health. Yet, she explained, regular medical check-ups, proper diet and exercise, maintaining good social networks and getting adequate rest are several things that can help.

Noting that "how we fare health-wise in our later years is in part related to the genes we inherit and in part related to the many health and environmental factors we are exposed to over our lifetime," Welsh-Bohmer emphasized the importance of "modifying health habits."

"By attending to factors such as healthy diets and exercise, we reduce the risk of many chronic diseases, such as heart disease, some cancers, and diabetes and may also ensure better quality of life in our twilight years," she explained.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, February 2006.