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Healthy Aging

Article: Chakravarty, Eliza, F., Hubet, Helen B., Krishan, Eswar, Bruce, Bonnie, Lingala, Vijaya & Fries, James F. "Lifestyle Risk Factors Predict Disabilities and Death in Healthy Aging Adults." The American Journal of Medicine. 125.2, 190-197.

Article Summary: In this particular study that was originally published in the The American Journal of Medicine, 237 college graduates aged 60 years or more were followed annually between 1986-2005 by questionnaires that addressed health risk factors and history with mortality data being consulted by the National Death Index. Health risk factors related to the study included disabilities, being overweight, smoking and inactivity. The study had a purpose of extending the general agreed upon health conclusions that positive effects of maintenance of normal weight, routine exercise and non smoking are known for the short and intermediate effect to see how this translated into long term data for the middle aged. The results of the study found that seniors "with fewer behavioral risk factors during middle age" in turn had less disability and improved survival than those with more risk factors during middle age. This means that the same data available for other points in life related to healthy lifestyle habits translate into healthy aging from middle aged to senior living. Healthy lifestyle practices, therefore, are beneficial in the long term at any interval in the life cycle according to the research data generated by Chakravarty et al.

Article Analysis:

The results of the study demonstrate that the benefits of healthy lifestyle choices in middle age were sufficiently robust to be influential to positive health in seniors. As a result, even a person who lived a relatively unhealthy lifestyle prior to being Middle Aged could start practicing healthy lifestyle practices and have more benefits than those who do not. This people were more apt to live longer and have less disabilities. According to the research, the medium and high risk groups had higher disability than low risk groups (Chakravarty et al. 190). In contrast, low risk subjects had onset of moderate disability delayed 8.3 years compared with high risk subjects (190). In high risk groups, the morality rates were 384 per 10,000 while the lower risk groups were 247 per 10,000 persons thereby representing a statistically significant variance (190). For health care professionals and community health advocates, the benefits of healthy living at any age should be stressed to individuals who currently are not practicing healthy lifestyle habits. These groups should be encouraged to maintain normal weight, participate in routine exercise and remain smoke free. By doing so, they would be placing themselves in the low risk health risk group category that was demonstrated in the study. Even if the individuals being serviced moved from the high risk group to the medium risk group, this would be beneficial and have better long term health consequences than remaining in the high risk group.

One of the barriers that health care professionals may face when trying to encourage people to make positive lifestyle changes are cultural commonalities and lack of understanding regarding how to make such changes. Maintaining healthy weight and being more active requires knowledge of diet and exercise that may be contrary to general community practice or beyond the understanding of the individual who may never have engaged in such activities prior. Community health professionals will have to provide educational services to show people more healthy ways of living. In the case of smoking, community cessation courses may have to be offered to help people becoming lower risk.

Works Cited

Chakravarty, Eliza, F., Hubet, Helen B., Krishan, Eswar, Bruce, Bonnie, Lingala, Vijaya & Fries, James F. "Lifestyle Risk Factors Predict Disabilities and Death in Healthy Aging Adults." The American Journal of Medicine. 125.2, 190-197.