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LIFE EXPECTANCY: FACTS AND STUDIES
At the 1986 meeting of the American Psychological Association, George Kaplan reported on a large-scale life-expectancy study that has been going on since 1965 in Alameda County, California. Nine thousand residents of the county have been followed over the years to determine the effect that habits such as not smoking, controlling weight, and exercising regularly have on mortality. It had been thought that following these life-extending practices after middle age would have little effect on longevity, since the damage was probably already done. Not true! The life expectancy of the men who at age sixty followed all three healthful habits was eighty-two, seven years longer than that of the men who followed none. Even at age eighty there was a significant difference in longevity between the two groups - 1.5 years. And if a person changed any of these risk factors after age sixty, the mortality odds shifted too. In fact, it was never too late to partially reverse damage.
Following these simple habits also markedly affected life\'s quality, not just its length. The sixty-year-olds who did not smoke, exercised, and kept their weight within normal bounds were not only more likely to survive to their eighties but also much more likely to be healthy eighty-year-olds.
So there is no magic age when we can smoke or overdose on chocolates secure in the knowledge that it is too late anyway. But the results of this study are liberating in a more fundamental way. In later life people have more sway over their physical fate than was ever thought possible.
Even eighty is losing its once-sure standing as an old-age entry point. In a recent survey, one-fourth of the men and one-fifth of the women over eighty said they did not feel old. They were not assaulted by serious health problems or doubled over by aches and pains. One respondent in this large national survey puzzled: \"The calendar tells me I\'m old, but I still feel middle aged.\"3
What about being even older, over eighty-five? Surely the vast majority of people at this advanced age are beset by those physical problems that make us ask, \"But at what price?\" When University of Miami demographer Charles Longino looked at the incidence of severe physical disabilities among the 2,240,065 Americans over age eighty-five in the 1980 census, he found some startling facts. Only 47.8 percent had health problems that severely limited their ability to function. Most were living independently, not with their children or in a nursing home. Even in advanced old age the odds are less than fifty-fifty of having the infirmities that make life more a burden than a gift.4
The reason these odds seem so improbably low is that the older people who are severely disabled are the ones who stand out. Strolling through the city, our eye is drawn to the eighty- five-year-old in a wheelchair. We are oblivious to his contemporary vigorously striding by because he blends in with everyone else. Like any disaster, infirmity captures our attention. We then apply it to everyone because it fits our notions of what the late eighties and nineties have to be like.
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GENERAL HEALTH
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