Sizable Mortality Risk Differences for Healthy versus Unhealthy Lifestyles in Later Life
Researchers here look at a sizable set of epidemiological data for people in their 70s, and note that the difference in outcomes between healthy and unhealthy lifestyles is sizable. This is much as one might expect from other studies of late life mortality and its relationship with lifestyle choices. It is certainly possible that the next few decades will see the advent of first generation age-slowing and rejuvenation therapies that will add a decade to human life span, but why make it harder to achieve additional years of good health?
Unhealthy lifestyle behaviours such as smoking, high alcohol consumption, poor diet, or low physical activity are associated with morbidity and mortality. Public health guidelines provide recommendations for adherence to these four factors, however, their relationship to the health of older people is less certain. This study involved 11,340 Australian participants (median age 73.9) from the Aspirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) study, followed for a median of 6.8 years. We investigated whether a point-based lifestyle score based on adherence to guidelines for a healthy diet, physical activity, non-smoking and moderate alcohol consumption was associated with subsequent all-cause and cause-specific mortality.
In multivariable adjusted models, compared to those in the unfavourable lifestyle group, individuals in the moderate lifestyle group (Hazard Ratio 0.73) and favourable lifestyle group (Hazard Ratio 0.68) had lower risk of all-cause mortality. A similar pattern was observed for cardiovascular related mortality and non-cancer/non-cardiovascular related mortality. There was no association of lifestyle with cancer-related mortality. In conclusion, reported adherence to a healthy lifestyle is associated with reduced risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Adherence to all four lifestyle factors resulted in the strongest protection.