Long life, proper diet, and exercise

I found this new article, I wasnt sure where should I post it, so I posted it here. I hope you will find it intresting as much as i did.

Maintaining a healthy weight during the young adult years and staying physically active later in life may be the secret to longer life, a team of California researchers reported.

They found that elderly people who reported weighing the least at age 21 and those who regularly participated in physical exercise were more likely than their peers to live to see their ninetieth birthday.


Previous research has indicated that weight, body mass index -- a measure of weight in relation to height -- and exercise are associated with better health and a lower risk of death, but few studies have investigated whether this is also true for older adults -- those in their tenth decade of life.


"Our study extends findings of the benefits of exercise and healthy weight to late life," Drs. Maria M. Corrada and Annlia Paganini-Hill told Reuters Health in an e-mail interview. The researchers, both of the University of California, Irvine, conducted the study along with Dr. Claudia H. Kawas.


"These findings are exciting," Corrada and Paganini-Hill added, "because they suggest ways an individual can take control and extend his or her own life."


More than 10,000 adults who were 75 years old, on average, were surveyed and followed for more than 20 years. They answered questions about their height, weight, weight at age 21, body mass index and their level of outdoor exercise.


By the end of the study period, more than 6,700 study participants had died before reaching age 90, and 3,636 people had survived to age 90 or older.


Seniors who reported weighing the most at age 21 were more likely to die before age 90 than those who reported weighing less, study findings show. In fact, the risk of dying before age 90 increased with every five-pound increase in weight at 21 years of age.


"Being overweight in young adulthood is detrimental to survival to very old age," according to Corrada and Paganini-Hill.


Further, elderly men and women with the highest body mass indexes were more likely to die before age 90 than those with a lower body mass index, study findings indicate.


Adults who reported exercising at least 30 minutes each day, however, were 24 percent to 31 percent less likely to die before age 90 than their less active peers.


"Regular daily exercise during late adulthood is beneficial, improving survival to very old age," Corrada and Paganini-Hill said. They added that the benefits of regular exercise were not limited to just helping the seniors maintain a healthy weight.


"Although exercise is known to help maintain ideal weight," they said, "exercise increased the chance of survival beyond its effect on weight and body mass."


These findings remained true even when the researchers took into consideration the study participants' history of several health problems, including high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes and cancer -- diseases known to be prevalent among the elderly and associated with a higher risk of death -- according to Corrada and Paganini-Hill.


The seniors' use of vitamin supplements and other nutrition habits and health practices did not appear to greatly increase their chances of surviving to age 90, study findings show.


I'm not sure how many of us would like to live till 90, but hey its good info, just to prove some folks that diest and exercise is all part of life.