THURSDAY, May 23, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Want to grow old gracefully?
Well, you probably can't do it alone. You'll also want to give your bad habits -- such as smoking and a sedentary lifestyle -- the boot, two new studies say.
The keys to successful aging are having positive relationships with your friends and family, getting regular exercise and quitting smoking, according to the studies published in the new issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
"Social relationships are associated with better physical and cognitive aging," says the author of the first study, Teresa Seeman, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine.
Seeman and her colleagues gathered information on the social relationships of nearly 1,200 men and women between the ages of 70 and 79 from the MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging. They also examined a group of about 100 people who were 58 or 59 and part of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.
The researchers measured blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar metabolism and hormone levels. All of these measures together comprise an individual's "allostatic load," Seeman says.
Allostatic load is a measure that tells scientists how our bodies have coped with the wear-and-tear of aging. The higher the allostatic load, the greater the risk for disease, Seeman explains.
As would be expected, the researchers found the older a person was, the higher the allostatic load score because it measures the body's response to aging.
However, men and women who had two or more close friends had a lower allostatic load score than those with two or fewer close friends. People who had critical spouses or children had slightly higher allostatic load scores, Seeman says.
"People who have more positive social interaction show healthier biological profiles," Seeman says. "It seems that having socially supportive interactions enables one to deal with stress with less wear and tear."
Dr. John Voytas, a geriatric specialist, agrees: "It's very important to surround yourself with people that you care about. It may mean more to healthy aging than anything else."
He says people who have strong support systems tend to feel they have a sense of purpose and a reason for being, which makes them more likely to follow their doctor's instructions on taking medications and proper diet.
In the second study, researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland studied 1,000 individuals between the ages of 72 and 98 for up to nine years. At the end of the study, 374 of the participants had died and 78 were too ill to continue.
By comparing those who had died or were ill to those who were still healthy, the researchers discovered the people who reported exercising the most were the ones most likely to still be alive and healthy at the study's end. People who smoked were more than twice as likely to have died.
Along with the expectation of a longer life, the regular exercisers had a better quality of life, with fewer physical limitations, more "positive emotions," and a "greater sense of meaning to life" than non-exercisers, the researchers found.
What To Do: This article from the Canadian Mental Health Association explains why social support is so important to emotional and physical well-being. And this article from Allina Hospitals and Clinics describes how social-support systems can help after a heart attack.
