Category Archives: Middle age

Overweight adults with high blood pressure a third more likely to die early, study finds

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Up to 31% of global population estimated to have metabolic syndrome due to three or more unhealthy traits

Millions of middle-aged adults who are overweight with even slightly raised blood pressure, cholesterol or glucose levels are about a third more likely to die early, research suggests.

They also face a 35% higher risk of heart attacks or strokes and will experience them two years earlier than their peers. The stark findings are being presented at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, the world’s largest heart conference. They represent more evidence of the immediate dangers posed by the global obesity crisis.

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Skateboarding in middle age: ‘It helps me switch off’

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It’s good for mental health, a study found, but what’s it like being an older person at the skatepark?

Skateboarding in middle age can help people feel empowered and reduce the chance of mental health issues such as depression, according to a study.

Dr Paul O’Connor, 46, who published the research and is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Exeter, said he wanted to look at the phenomenon of ageing within a subculture.

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Wheel life with the ladies in the van

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Many middle-aged American women are selling up and shipping out, taking to the roads alone in their mobile homes

Sarah Gabriel found her life’s meaning in a small town in Kansas on a cold autumn morning in 2020. It was the hour before dawn in a Walmart car park and the 63-year-old rolled back the strip of floor underlay that serves as makeshift curtains on the windows of her 2008 Honda minivan to the awesome sight of a full moon looming above the spectral white of Walmart’s security lights.

“Here I was in Kansas, you know, like Dorothy, and the moon was doing her thing like I was doing my thing,” she recalls. “‘Hey Sarah,’ she seemed to say, ‘you’re in your seventh decade and now it’s time for your big adventure.’”

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