WEDNESDAY, Nov. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Highlighting the importance of staying fit in old age, a French study has found that seniors who walk slowly are three times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than are fast walkers.

The researchers measured the walking speed of the participants -- 3,208 men and women, ages 65 to 85 -- and collected medical and demographic information on them at the start of the study. Follow-up exams were performed at regular intervals over the next five years.

After adjusting for a number of baseline characteristic, the researchers found that seniors with the slowest walking speed were 44 percent more likely to die than the fastest walkers. The slowest walkers also had a three-fold higher risk of cardiovascular death.

The increased risk of cardiovascular death was found in both women and men, in younger as well as older seniors and in those with low or usual physical activity levels.

There was no link between walking speed and risk of death from cancer.

"These findings show that assessment of motor performances in older people using simple measures such as walking speed can be performed easily and that the role of fitness in preserving life and function in older age is important," the researchers wrote.

The study was published online Nov. 10 in BMJ.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about physical activity for seniors.

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 11 (HealthDay News) -- A study of H1N1 swine flu in Mexico finds that while babies and people under the age of 40 are most likely to get sick, elderly people have the highest death rates.

The research, published online Nov. 11 in The Lancet, analyzed medical records of patients at clinics in the Mexican Institute for Social Security network, who became sick with flu-like illnesses between April 28 and July 31, 2009.

The researchers found 63,479 cases of flu-like illness. Of the 6,945 confirmed cases of H1N1 swine flu, about 1 percent (63 patients) died. Seven percent (475 patients) were admitted to the hospital and lived.

Of those aged 70 and older who got sick, 10.3 percent died. By contrast, 0.9 percent of those aged 20 to 29 died, the study authors noted.

The researchers found that the risk of infection fell by 35 percent in those who received vaccinations for seasonal flu. Chronic disease boosted the risk of death by six times.

Those who didn't go to the hospital within four days after developing symptoms boosted their risk of death by 20 percent for each extra day they delayed a hospital visit.

Pregnant women made up 6 percent of the deaths in Mexico. That rate is a bit lower than in the United States (8 percent) over the same time period.

"In Mexico, all pregnant workers were sent home during the peak of the pandemic, which probably accounts for this difference," Dr. Victor Borja-Aburto of the Mexican Institute for Social Security in Mexico City, and colleagues wrote.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on H1N1 swine flu.

TUESDAY, Nov. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Elderly people with weak muscles may be at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study.

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago followed 970 older adults (average age 80) who didn't have dementia at the start of the study. The participants underwent a number of evaluations, including tests of cognitive function and muscle strength.

During an average 3.6 years of follow-up, 138 (14.2 percent) of the participants developed Alzheimer's disease. Those with the highest levels of muscle strength at the start of the study were 61 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's than those with the weakest muscles, the researchers found.

The link between muscle strength and Alzheimer's remained even after the researchers accounted for other factors, such as body mass index and physical activity levels.

The researchers also found that weak muscles were associated with increased risk of mild cognitive impairment, the earliest sign of cognitive decline.

"Overall, these data show that greater muscle strength is associated with a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment and suggest that a common pathogenesis may underlie loss of muscle strength and cognition in aging," wrote study author Patricia A. Boyle and colleagues.

Although the reason for the association between muscle strength and Alzheimer's risk isn't known, the study authors noted that there are a number of possibilities. Damage to the mitochondria, which produce energy for cells, may contribute to loss of both muscle strength and cognitive function. A second possibility is that decreased strength could be caused by stroke or other central nervous system disorders that also may reveal subclinical Alzheimer's disease, they suggested.

The study appears in the November issue of the journal Archives of Neurology.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.

MONDAY, Nov. 9 (HealthDay News) -- The self-reported health of the newly retired improves so much that most feel eight years younger, a new European study suggests.

This happy news was true of most everyone except a small minority -- only 2 percent -- who had experienced "ideal" conditions in their working life, anyway.

"The results really say three things: That work puts an extra burden on the health of older workers, that the effects of this extra burden are largely relieved by retirement and, finally, that both the extra burden and the relief are larger when working conditions are poor," said Hugo Westerlund, lead author of a study published online Nov. 9 in The Lancet. "This indicates that there is a need to provide opportunities for older workers to decrease the demands in their work out of concern for their health and well-being."

But of course, added Westerlund, who is head of epidemiology at the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University in Sweden, "not all older workers suffer from poor perceived health. Many are indeed eminently healthy and fit for work. But sooner or later, everyone has to slow down because of old age catching up."

Last week, the same group of researchers reported that workers slept better after retirement than before. "Sleep improves at retirement, which suggests that sleeping could be a mediator between work and perception of poor health," Westerlund said.

This study looked at what the same 15,000 French workers, most of them men, had to say about their own health up to seven years pre-retirement and up to seven years post-retirement.

As participants got closer to retirement age, their perception of their own health declined, but went up again during the first year of retirement.

Those who reported being in poorer health declined from 19.2 percent in the year prior to retirement to 14.3 percent by the end of the first year after retiring. According to the researchers, that means post-retirement levels of poor health fell to levels last seen eight years previously.

The changes were seen in both men and women, across different occupations, and lasted through the first seven years of not punching the clock.

Workers who felt worse before retirement and had lower working conditions reported greater improvements as soon as they retired, the team found.

"Those who had low job satisfaction -- a lot of burden for little satisfaction -- those were the ones complaining of their health," said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. "People with more authority or better education, a better sense of control over what they were doing and less demand were much less likely to complain," he added.

"That's not really surprising," he said. "An old study of English civil-service workers in Britain found that those who felt they had a lot of responsibility but little control over their workplace were more likely to develop heart disease," he added. "You can work hard but if you feel like you're not at the mercy of a job, you still have the illusion of control. That's an important illusion to maintain."

A major question is whether these European findings apply to conditions in the United States.

"It's a little bit difficult to apply directly to our workforce but ... we can draw some conclusions about keeping a strong and healthy workforce through the life span," said Angie Hochhalter, assistant professor of internal medicine at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and research scientist in geriatrics at Scott & White in Temple, Texas.

"We know that we need strong health care but also mental services because, in [the study], those people with depression really saw a dramatic change after retirement," she explained.

"In addition to strong systems, there's also some degree of personal responsibility for trying to keep ourselves healthy -- managing stress from work and from home, healthy eating and physical activity, and staying involved with social support," Hochhalter added.

Workers in both the United States and Europe are likely to be affected similarly by poor working conditions, Westerlund added.

"It may well be that for many U.S. workers, retirement means a substantial increase in financial stress, which could counteract the positive effects of the removal of work stress at retirement, resulting in no improvement, or even a worsening, of perceived health," he added. "Additionally, as I understand it, a substantial number of Americans have to take up a new, and often less-qualified and more stressful job, after formal retirement to make ends meet. For them, it is difficult to imagine a positive effect [of retirement] on health."

More information

Learn more about healthy aging at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.