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After his retirement, Mr. Liu paid particular attention to health, and his motto is "a thousand dollars is hard to buy a thin old man", thinking that a thinner person is in good health.
About three months ago, Master Liu noticed a sudden drop in his weight, from 130 pounds to less than 100 pounds. He thought his weight control had worked, but then came a series of uncomfortable physical symptoms, and recently even swallowing saliva has become difficult.
When his family saw this, they took him to the hospital for an examination, which revealed a huge mass underneath his esophagus, which was subsequently diagnosed as esophageal cancer with lymphatic metastasis. As a result of his long-term controlled diet, Master Liu's body is severely malnourished and cannot tolerate surgical treatment, and can only be treated through palliative care to relieve his symptoms.
This result made Liu dumbfounded. Isn't it a good thing to be thin instead?

I. 20 years of CDC tracking study: older people live longer if they are fatter

I believe many people have heard the phrase "it's hard to buy a thin old man" and many others, like Mr. Liu, take it as a motto, but is it really true that the thinner the older people are, the better?
A 20-year prospective cohort study published in April 2022 by the CDC's Xiaoming Shi team in the authoritative journal Nature Aging suggests that older adults aged >80 years who are overweight or mildly obese may live longer.
The study looked at a total of more than 27,000 older adults aged >80 years living in China from 1998-2018, collecting data on subjects' body mass index (BMI), age at death, and cause.
The study found:
In response, the researchers concluded that there is an association with better nutritional status in overweight, mildly obese older adults, and that the benefits of better nutrition far outweigh the harms.
This study suggests that within the normal weight range, mild obesity may not be a bad thing for older adults without underlying conditions. On the contrary, being underweight may bring about "sarcopenia," which is more harmful.

Two, how do you measure your weight after age 60?

Wang Guoyi, director of the Beijing Food Association's Committee on Food and Health for the Elderly, said that older people who are fatter are more able to tolerate the physical exertion of disease. Older people who are too thin tend to have less muscle and bone mass in their bodies, which is more likely to cause a decline in immunity and strength, and the risk of falls, infections and death all rise.
So how do you measure how fat or thin you are after age 60?
The common international way to determine this is to use the BMI (body mass index), which is calculated as BMI = weight/height squared (international unit kg/m2).
According to the CDC survey study mentioned above, older adults live longer with a body mass index of around 24.0. To translate, a 60-year-old male with a height of 170 centimeters weighing about 70 kilograms would be most appropriate. For a 160 cm tall woman, a weight of about 62 kg is more appropriate.
Graphic source: Internet Weight comparison table
How can older adults who are not up to standard manage their weight in their daily lives?
People begin to lose muscle around age 40 and lose about 8% every 10 years until age 70. As muscle mass is lost, it can lead to the onset of osteoporosis, which is one of the major contributing factors to death in older adults.
For older adults, muscle gain is critical. The main means of muscle gain is exercise, and it is recommended to walk briskly for at least 30 to 40 minutes a day, during which you will feel a slight tedium and soreness in your leg muscles. You can also go to the gym for equipment and weight exercise to gain muscle if you have the conditions.
As older adults age, their digestive and absorption capacity decreases, making them more susceptible to malnutrition. It is recommended that older adults should increase their protein intake and eat more fish, shrimp, poultry and soy foods as appropriate. It is also important to increase the intake of vitamins, carotenoids, omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, selenium and other elements, and to eat more fruits and vegetables.

Three diseases are most likely to take the lives of the elderly after the age of 70

Many people lament that once they get older, their health starts to light up frequently, especially after middle age, when the incidence of various chronic diseases starts to rise, sometimes even affecting their ability to perform daily activities.
In 2022, the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology released the top three diseases of premature death among adults in China were cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory disease, of which cardiovascular disease accounted for 49.7%, nearly half of the value.
1. Cardiovascular disease
The main cause of cardiovascular disease is atherosclerosis. The presence of plaque in the arteries leads to blockage of blood vessels, and the normal transport channels of oxygen and blood are cut off, easily causing ischemia and hypoxia in downstream tissues and inducing heart attacks and strokes to occur.
In addition to atherosclerosis, the development of cardiovascular disease is associated with increasing age, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other factors.
2. Cancer
The specific reasons why older adults are prone to cancer are unclear, but some scholars believe it is related to the fact that cells take some time to get involved in enough oncogenic mutations and that older adults have decreased immunity and are more prone to mutations that are difficult to repair in a timely manner.
Elderly people are exposed to cancer-causing environments for longer periods of time than younger people, and the damage from unhealthy lifestyles accumulates and is likely to flare up in old age.
3. Respiratory diseases
Bronchitis, upper respiratory tract infections, and bronchial asthma are all respiratory diseases that are particularly likely to occur in winter, especially in older adults.
In cold weather, bronchial defenses are significantly reduced, which can easily cause contraction of bronchial smooth muscle and subsequently induce infection.
For older adults, it is not recommended to blindly pursue thinness, which is often not necessarily a good thing, but rather a manageable amount of weight is good for health.
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