It's never too late to get healthy — study
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Even after age 60, people can significantly reduce their risk of heart disease and diabetes by adopting healthier habits, a new study from the UK shows.“The present findings emphasise the benefits of lifestyle modification, including losing weight, increasing physical activity, stopping smoking, and avoiding a high-carbohydrate diet, in reducing the risk of the metabolic syndrome in older men,” report Dr. S. Goya Wannamethee of the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London and colleagues.
People with the metabolic syndrome have a constellation of risk factors including high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, impaired blood glucose metabolism, and high cholesterol. The syndrome, which is more common among older people, increases the likelihood that a person will go on to develop heart disease and diabetes.
To better understand how lifestyle changes might affect metabolic syndrome risk in older people, Wannamethee and colleagues looked at 3,051 men aged 60 to 79 participating in a long-term study of heart disease. All were free of diabetes and heart disease, but about one in four had the metabolic syndrome.
The researchers also found that a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet increased metabolic syndrome risk, largely due to reductions in levels of “good” HDL cholesterol and increases in harmful triglyceride levels.
While men who reported being active throughout the study period were at the lowest risk of metabolic syndrome, with a 27 percent lower risk than men who were sedentary, men who became active during the previous three years reduced their risk by 24 percent.
Among those who lost weight during the past two to four years, 12.4 percent had the metabolic syndrome, compared to 23.5 percent of those whose weight did not change and 32.2 percent of those who gained weight.
Even among men who were overweight or obese, those who had lost weight were at lower risk of the syndrome than those who hadn’t.
The researchers conclude that lifestyle changes made later in life have “considerable potential” for preventing the metabolic syndrome.