Healthy Living Tips

Older Adults’ Top 10 Health Concerns

Older Adults’ Top 10 Health Concerns

Living to see your 80th or even 90th birthday isn’t the rarity it once was. More Americans are living longer — on average, people who live to age 65 can expect to live 19 more years.

But for most of us, the goal isn’t simply to live as long as possible — it’s to extend what experts call our “health span,” which is the number of healthy and disease-free years that we live.

And that gets more difficult with each year that we age. In fact, aging is the major uncontrollable risk factor for chronic disease, says John Batsis, MD, geriatrician at UNC Health and associate professor at the UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Almost 80 percent of people ages 60 and older have two or more chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

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