Uncovering clues to a healthy retirement - and it’s not all lifestyle

Five modifiable risk factors present in a person's 50s that could indicate whether or not they will be fit and healthy into retirement and beyond have been uncovered by UCL scientists. While the aim of the study, published in  Lancet Public Health , was to look at modifiable behaviour and medical risk factors, the team also uncovered major differences in frailty depending on wealth, gender, marital status and ethnicity. By studying over 6,000 middle-aged adults in the Whitehall II study, the researchers, led by Professor Eric Brunner (UCL Population Health Sciences), were able to separate out someone's lifestyle, health issues, socioeconomic status, and even chemicals in their blood samples from people in their early 50s to see which had the greatest impact on their risk of becoming frail after the age of 69. Someone is defined as frail if they have three or more of the following: unexpected and sudden weight loss, exhaustion, muscle weakness, slowness when walking or low levels of activity. Frailty is the most common condition leading to death for the elderly who are not living in hospitals or nursing homes. The five modifiable risk factors in a person's 50s that most impacted on their chances of becoming frail in their 70s were how active a person was (inactive frail (6.2%) vs active frail (2.5-3.5%)), their BMI category (underweight frail (4.5%), normal weight frail (2.7%), overweight frail (3.4%), obese frail (7.9%)), whether or not someone smoked (smoker frail (5.4%), non-smoker frail (3.5%), ex-smoker frail (2.8%)), and two chemicals in the blood linked to inflammation (lowest levels of inflammatory chemicals and frail (0.9-1.5% frailty) vs highest levels and frail(3.