More people are living to a healthier old age with fewer disabilities and the trend is likely to continue, an expert in geriatric medicine said on Friday.
“For the majority of old people, life has never been so good. Things could get even better,” said Professor Raymond Tallis of the University of Manchester.
Life expectancy at birth has risen by 4.7 years for men and 3.5 years for women in the last two decades of the 20th century, he added, and the perception of the elderly as a burden to society is very different from the reality.
Many elderly people are in good health and enjoying a lifestyle that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago.
Evidence shows that the level of disability they are suffering is declining and the rate of that slow-down is accelerating, Tallis told the British Association science conference.
But he added that more can be done to postpone chronic, disabling diseases.
“An aged body is one that can’t withstand much in the way of illness so if you postpone chronic, disabling diseases you will live longer and die shorter. You will spend a longer time living and a shorter time dying,” he said.
So rather than suffering from ill health in the final eight or more years of life, medical experts hope to compress illness to a very short time span.
Simple lifestyle measures such as increased exercise, weight control, not smoking, a healthy diet and only moderate drinking can reduce the risk of age-related illnesses like cancer, stroke, heart disease and osteoporosis.
Doctors can also do more to minimize the odds of having a stroke and other age-related illnesses.
“If you could greatly diminish stroke than you have made a major assault on one of the big causes of disability in old age,” he said.
But half of the people with high blood pressure who are at risk of a stroke are not identified, half who are identified are not treated and half who are treated aren’t treated properly, according to Tallis.
“We have the means to reduce or postpone chronic, expensive, disabling diseases, in many cases with relatively cheap interventions,” he said.
People will still get old, and eventually die, but Tallis said the gap between the onset of disability and death will get shorter.