Growing Old and Staying Health. Correlations between Lifestyle and Well-being / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

We studied the correlations between lifestyle (a set of health-related practices sleeping hours, working hours, breakfast, eating between meals, salt, smoking, drinking, exercise, balance in diet) and the sense of well-being using by Neugarten's Life Satisfaction Index (LSI). For this purpose, a survey was made of middle aged and elderly residents in a town.<BR>Multivariate analysis to control the confounding factors of sex and gender revealed that the practices significantly related to the sense of well-being were diet, exercise and salt in take and that the health practices promoting LSI were balanced diet, regular exercise, restriction of salt and excessive drinking, but having poorly unbalanced diet and skipping breakfast deteriorated LSI.<BR>In males the practices promoting LSI were regular exercise, balanced diet, working long, restriction of salt, intake and working long. Lack of sleep and skipping breakfast deteriorated LSI.<BR>In females the practices promoting LSI were balanced diet, regular execise, restriction of salt, intake and drinking. But nutritionaly imbalanced diet and not eating between meals deteriorated LSI.<BR>Better lifestyle was correlated with high LSI irrespective of sex and gender. These results reveal that healthy lifestyle promotes subjective well-being and suggest that the health practiced deter the age-associated decline in health and the deterioration of bodily functions that typically accompany aging.