Life’s Simple 7, a program created by the American Heart Association, was designed to help promote heart health. So far, it has had great results. The program has been associated with a lower heart failure rate and better cardiac structure and functioning.
Right now, one in four middle aged adults that lives to the age of 85 will develop some sort of heart failure. This is unfortunate, and in many cases, could have been preventable if a better lifestyle was maintained earlier in life. Studies show that adhering to the AHA’s program starting in the middle aged years leads to much better health during the senior years. Life’s Simple 7 lists areas of concern, such as smoking, physical activity, diet, cholesterol, fasting serum glucose, blood pressure, and body mass index, and then gives recommendations for maximizing health around these factors.
By looking at people that are currently elderly, and evaluating how well subjects adhered to the Simple 7, researchers were able to piece together how closely these healthy practices led to good heart health later on. This is good information to have for those that are younger, but for many elderly folk, there’s not much that can now be done with this. Over 13,000 middle aged individuals were tracked starting in the mid 1980s. This study included both males and females in order to give an overview of the entire population. Almost 27 percent of these people had experienced heart failure by age 85, but if a healthy lifestyle as described by the Simple 7 was followed, the rate of heart failure dropped down to just 14 percent. That’s very good news for those of us that are beginning to think about our senior years and being as healthy as possible for the best years of our lives.
For those that are currently elderly, there’s no way to go back and change life decisions that have led to poor health. Better practices can be picked up, but the impact upon health will not be the same. This is why it’s so important that we live healthy lifestyles now and encourage our children to do the same. Not only does this ensure that we will have a high quality of life when we are older, it decreases the burdens on our family members when it comes to senior care. If you have an older loved one that needs senior care of some sort, you know that it is a stressful, potentially expensive, and very time consuming process. Making sure that the odds of us needing to have a caregiver ourselves are a little bit smaller in the future. Even with less expensive types of care, such as in-home care and assisted living, the cost of care can go up quickly. If we are able to, we should try to avoid putting our loved ones in this predicament.
One way that we can make life better for our elderly loved ones is to encourage them to live healthier lifestyles. We can’t send them back in time, but we can help them make changes now. They might not significantly improve their health, but it certainly can’t hurt. Offering assistance in other ways, such as through a high quality caregiver, can also help.
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