22, July 2016 News and Views: The editors Health Healthy After 90? Yes, it's a good life, says study July 21, 2016 | Health Editor ...

22, July 2016

News and Views: The editors Health

Healthy After 90? Yes, it's a good life, says study

July 21, 2016 | Health Editor

By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay reporter

Thursday, July 20, 2016 (HealthDay News) - What if you could live well into their 90s and still be healthy?

A new study suggests that it may be possible, especially if you have good genes.

"Chronic diseases are not an inevitable part of aging," said Dr. Sofiya Milman, assistant professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "A longer time for good health can accompany a long life and is an achievable goal."

Milman is one of the authors of the National Institutes of Health funded study US aging.

Americans are living longer than ever before. In 2014 reached the average life expectancy at birth nearly 79 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. A century earlier, it was only a little more than 54 years.

But the profits of "the deadline, the living people's health in good health, has not kept pace with longevity, the authors of the study. In contrast, the hope of a longer life has been associated with a greater disability.

Of course, some people beat the odds to survive to survive their average life expectancy in the vicinity of the limit of the length of human life, and spend a few years sick and disabled.

How did they do that?

Using data from two earlier studies, researchers from Albert Einstein and Boston University have examined whether people have suffered similar delays in the onset of disease and disability before death.

In one study, the genes of the longevity of the project were, including the Ashkenazi Jews who were aged 95 to live independently. For comparison, the study a group of Ashkenazi Jews comprised more young people without a family history of longevity.

The research team has also century-old study data New England attracted living in eight cities in the Boston area contain 100 years and in England, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. This also included people with no family history of exceptional durability for comparison.

Then the researchers the health of 439 people and 696 long life counterparts compared somewhat younger, 53-93 longevity genes health program long life of 1498 participants and 302 comparison of the participants, 49 89 years, it is the New England Centenarian Study is.

In both sets of comparisons, the researchers, the age of the people followed in the development of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and stroke. Alzheimer's disease was not considered because the genes of longevity project collect data, Milman said.

Surprisingly, long-term participants in each study experienced disease and disability in later life what. To a shorter duration of illness before death, compared to groups of young adults

Researchers evaluated disease-free survival years by the prevalence of each disease in the elderly compare. Take cancer, for example. Cancer prevalence of 20 percent for 65 to 80 years, the study authors said.

has been developed for people in the genes of the longevity of the project, the age at which 20 percent of the individual long-term had cancer, delayed at 96 for men and women. Twenty percent of their younger counterparts, but for men and 74 for women had to cancer at 78 years, the results showed.

For the people in the Centenarian Study the cancer has for 99 years to 97 years, and women does not reach more than 20 percent of men but 20 percent of their younger colleagues are affected by 67 for men and 74 for women.

"Many worry is that, yes, when, not bedridden na durable. And what they show is that it is not true. People who live live healthier," said Dr. Anne Newman, director of the Center for aging and public health at the University of Pittsburgh.

"His health was more capacity, and that the important part of it," Newman, professor and chair of Health Sciences of the population and Epidemiology said.

So what is their secret?

After Milman, "it is believed that genetic factors, the main reason to be. We have identified several genetic factors that appear to slow down skin aging and / or to protect against the disease."

Environmental factors - at least among the people and in the long run seem to be less important, he noted.

"Our centenarians who do not practice healthy behaviors, in particular: 60 percent of men and 30 percent of women were smokers, exercised less than half regularly, and about 50 percent were overweight or obese," Milman said.

The report was published online this month - one in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

More informations

For more information about a long life and good living of the National Institute on Aging.