HHS HealthBeat (March 28, 2008)

Living long sick

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

If you’re healthy, you live longer – that’s obvious. But what Thomas Perls found was not so obvious. The researcher at Boston University School of Medicine examined data on people who live past 90, and says nearly one third had heart disease, stroke or diabetes 15 years or more.

Perls says the capacity to keep doing ordinary daily activities seemed to be the difference.

``If you somehow have the resilience that is allowing you to still function well, that’s great news and I wouldn’t base your survival just on the presence of disease.’’ (10 seconds)

Perls’ study doesn’t show how to create that resilience. He believes, though, that good health habits such as being physically active when they were younger probably helped.

The study in Archives of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: March, 27 2008