31.08.12
Healthy lifestyles extends life expectancy in over 75s
Being active later in life can extend life expectancy by up to six years, a Swedish study has indicated. Academics at the Karolinska Institute analysed the lifestyles of 1,180 people over 75 for 18 years to ascertain how lifestyle can affect life expectancy.
The research, published on the British Medical Journal website, demonstrated that healthy men could live up to six years longer and healthy women could extend their lives by five years.
Being sedentary, overweight, smoking or drinking heavily can damage health and shorten life expectancy. Even after the age of 85, low risk lifestyles can prolong life by four years, researchers found.
Results showed that smokers died a year earlier, but people who quit in middle age were almost as long-lived as those who had never smoked. Swimming, walking and gymnastics increased life expectancy by around two years and people with a rich social circle lived a year and a half longer than those without.
ONS figures show that life expectancy in the UK is 78 years for men and 82 years for women.
The report’s authors said: “Our results suggest that encouraging favourable lifestyle behaviours even at advanced ages may enhance life expectancy.”
Professor of public health at King’s College London, Alan Maryon-Davis, commented: “These results should put an extra spring in the step of everyone in later life.
“They provide good evidence that even in your seventies it’s not too late to gain an extra few years to enjoy life by keeping active, living healthily and being involved in family and community.”
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