Here’s a Welcome, Fact-Based Guide to Successful Aging

In a world that often seems short on facts and distressingly long on opinions, there’s nothing to beat a solid report from the Society of Actuaries, a group dedicated to fact worshippers!

A recent report from the SOA Research Institute provides a solid foundation for many of the common-sense lifestyle behaviors that most of us know we should pursue to live longer and healthier lives. The title is hardly clickbait — Maximizing Health Span: A Literature Review on the Impact of a Healthy Lifestyle on Retirement. And nearly half of the document is devoted to 346 research references.

The report’s review yields a distilled ranking of the things most likely to either kill older people or, equally important, rob their later years of enjoyment due to disabilities and steep health costs. The expression of these behavioral liabilities is labelled “health span,” which is defined as the difference between your remaining life span and the number of those years you spend in good health.

The culprits here won’t surprise you. “For both the pre- and post-retirement age groups,” the report says, “the five risk factors with the largest impacts on long and healthy lives are tobacco use, high body-mass index, high fasting plasma glucose, dietary risks, and high blood pressure.”

Getting a health span grade of zero would be a good thing, of course. A more clinical expression of this goal, which I obsessed over in my Medicare book, is “compressed morbidity” – to me, at least, a morbidly appealing concept.

Getting to zero is, however, a difficult journey and requires navigating a world of multiple medical challenges and complex inter-relationships that create their own risks. Not to worry, the SOA researchers note, “the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Studies from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (University of Washington) is a comprehensive model that organizes these complicated relationships.”

When the dust clears from all this fact-based number crunching, the report notes that “while life expectancy at age 65 in the United States has climbed to 19.6 years, healthy life expectancy lags at only 13.1 years, and adults at age 65 can expect to live only 6.47 additional years in good health, on average.”

Here are verbatim snippets from the report about the leading health challenges we face and the quality-of-life benefits from confronting them:

Tobacco Use

Smoking trends in the U.S. are encouraging – amongst U.S. individuals aged 65-69, daily smoking prevalence decreased from 13.7 percent in 2000 to 11.1 percent in 2015, mirroring the overall decline in smoking prevalence amongst the U.S. population. (Interestingly, dietary and smoking risks tend to improve with age, whilst the converse is seen with the other factors that shall be explored. Smoking cessation prior to age 40 leads to the greatest gains in life expectancy (individuals who quit smoking between ages 25 to 34 gain an average of 10 years relative to those who continue smoking); however, even as one approaches retirement age, individuals who stop smoking between ages 45 to 54 stand to gain 6 extra years of life relative to those who continue smoking.

Body Mass Index (BMI)

As of 2017-2018, approximately 42.4 percent of United States adults were obese, a figure that has seen startling increases from 30.5 percent since 1999-2000. The prevalence of obesity persists amongst older adults – amongst those aged 65 to 69, 33.9 percent were obese. This number has increased since 2000, when – according to GBD data, amongst U.S. adults aged 65 to 69 – 25.3 percent were obese. According to 2019 GBD data, almost 12 percent of deaths (a 22.9 percent increase since 1990) and 11.3 percent of years lived in disability (a 47.5 percent increase since 1990) amongst adults 70 years and older were attributable to high BMI.

Metabolic Risks (Fasting Plasma Glucose, Blood Pressure, Cholesterol)

Amongst U.S. adults 70 years and older, 39.5 percent of deaths (a 15.6 percent decrease since 1990) and 25.9 percent (a 15.9 percent increase since 1990) of years lived in disability were attributable to metabolic risks. (Geek alert!) This excess risk is measured against minimum exposure thresholds of 4.8-5.4 mmol/L for glucose, 110-115 mmHg for systolic blood pressure, and 0.7-1.3 mmol/L for LDL cholesterol.

Dietary Risks

Amongst U.S. adults 70 years and older, 14.8 percent of deaths (a 28.9 percent decrease since 1990) and 5.2 percent (an 18.4 percent increase since 1990) of years lived in disability were attributable to dietary risks.

With age, several associated nutritional changes may affect quality of life, which makes the provision of a healthy diet even more important. These include reduced thirst and decreased body water, which increase susceptibility to dehydration; age-related changes in nutrient needs, which can lead to vitamin deficiency or toxicity; changes in taste, vision and smell, which can lead to decreased enjoyment of food; broken bones; edentulous, or missing or false teeth, which can limit food choices; increased disease incidence, which can lead to changes in nutritional requirements; increased use of over-the-counter or prescription drugs, which can lead to changes in appetite, nutrient requirements and increases in possible drug-nutrient interactions.

Physical Activity

In older adults, physical activity is associated with improved performance of daily activities, prevention of falls, improved quality of life in those with arthritis, increased longevity, lower risk of cognitive decline, and an increased sense of purpose in life. Even light/mild activity has been shown to have positive effects on healthy aging in older adults.

Older adults should at least try to incorporate multicomponent physical activity that includes balance training as well as aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities. Most evidence supports a program of exercise with the following characteristics: three times per week of balance training and moderate-intensity muscle-strengthening activities for 30 minutes per session, with additional encouragement to participate in moderate-intensity walking activities two or more times per week for 30 minutes per session.

The report also includes other behaviors that can greatly effect longevity and successful aging. These include paying attention to health screenings and immunizations, social engagement activities, adequate sleep, vision and hearing care (to which I’d add dental care), continuing to look for and engage in purposeful pursuits, managing the six ADLs, or activities of daily living (mobility, eating, dressing, bathing, toileting, and continence), and successfully aging in place in a home with “age friendly” modifications to minimize falls and other senior unfriendly challenges.

There will NOT be a later quiz on these extensive data points. Or excessive rants to “do the right” things. The facts are, well, the facts. How you respond to them is your call.

In the meantime, please raise your glasses in a toast to compressed morbidity!