FRIDAY, Aug. 31 (HealthDay News) -- So how much of a benefit might you get from exercising, eating right and avoiding vices like smoking? New research from Sweden suggests that healthy living into old age can boost life spans by several years.

The study sought to determine how healthy living affects people aged 75 or older. The researchers, from the Karolinska Institute and Stockholm University, followed more than 1,800 people for 18 years, from 1987 to 2005, and kept tabs on their life choices, social networks and leisure activities, among other things.

Although 92 percent died during the study period, half lived to be more than 90 years old, according to the report published online Aug. 30 in the BMJ.

Women, people who were highly educated, those who had stronger social networks, took part in leisure activities and maintained healthy lifestyles were most likely to live longer, the investigators found.

Smokers died, on average, a year before nonsmokers. But those who quit earlier survived about as long as those who'd never smoked, study author Debora Rizzuto and colleagues pointed out in a journal news release.

People who exercised on a regular basis -- including swimming and walking -- lived two years longer on average than those who didn't. And those who had the healthiest lifestyles overall lived 5.4 years, on average, more than those with the unhealthiest lifestyles.

"Even among the oldest old (85 years or older) and people with chronic conditions, the median age at death was four years higher for those with a low-risk profile compared with those with a high-risk profile," the study authors wrote in the report.

More information

For details about healthy living, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

FRIDAY, Aug. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Baby Boomers are in the mood for shacking up, and not just for a little while: The percentage of older Americans who are living together has skyrocketed in recent years, and new research finds that those who cohabit are most likely to stay that way instead of splitting or getting married.

"Cohabitation is really taking hold across the generations. It is now a viable alternative to marriage, even to older adults," said Susan Brown, the study's lead author and co-director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Although the overall number of older people who are living together is still small compared to those who are single or married, it more than doubled in 10 years: About 2.75 million people over the age of 50 were cohabiting in the United States in 2010 compared to 1.2 million a decade earlier, according to the research. Among those aged 50 to 64, 12 percent of single people were living together in 2010, up from just 7 percent a decade earlier.

Brown and her colleagues sought to understand cohabitation in older adults, who as a group are avoiding marriage more than in the past. About a third of Baby Boomers -- born from 1946 to 1964 -- are unmarried today, compared to just 20 percent of people who were their age in 1980.

"There's been this rapid acceleration of being single, and more single people means more people at risk of cohabiting," Brown said. "We were just interested in figuring out the patterns of these unions."

The new study, which appears in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, used data from the 1998 to 2006 Health and Retirement Study and the 2000 and 2010 Current Population Surveys to track more than 3,700 older unmarried people and nearly 400 people who cohabited. The people were aged 51 to 75; a small number of same-sex relationships weren't included.

The findings suggest that people who live together have remarkably stable relationships, Brown said.

"They seem to be a long-term alternative to marriage," she said. "That's not at all what we see for younger people, for whom cohabitation is a stepping stone to marriage, a way to test out the relationship."

The study found that death is more likely to break up an older cohabiting couple than a relationship split or marriage. And among those who are single, their likelihood of cohabiting is equal to their likelihood of getting married.

Living together can have financial benefits for older people, Brown said. Widows or widowers don't have to give up their spouses' Social Security benefits if they don't get married, and unmarried people can avoid taking on the medical debts of their partners, she said.

Also, she said, "many women aren't interested in getting remarried later in life. They say, 'I took care of one man, and I'm not interested in taking care of another.'"

The study results reflect the findings of Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and author of "Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage."

"For young people, social factors such as economic and educational status are very big predictors of who marries and who cohabits," she said. In contrast, older people may lack an incentive to get married.

"They no longer are at the stage of life when they feel like they want or have to have a big wedding -- to please family, to announce their commitment to the world, to protect future children or to accumulate wedding gifts," Coontz said. "Second, there are some real disincentives for some: complicated finances, prior experience with the hassles of dissolving a marriage if something were to go wrong."

What about that old stigma of "living in sin"?

"The stigma has largely disappeared for most Americans, except for small pockets of people," Coontz said. "Older Americans may be more likely to disapprove of cohabitation in the abstract, but they also have fewer relatives alive to shock and offend. Possibly those two tendencies balance each other out."

More information

For background on divorce, try the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Mental deterioration occurs more quickly in women with Alzheimer's disease than in men with the devastating brain illness, a new study finds.

British researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 15 published studies of Alzheimer's patients and found that men consistently and significantly performed better than women in five tests of mental skills, even when they're at the same stage of the disease.

The investigators were surprised to find that even the verbal skills of women with Alzheimer's were worse than in men with the disease. This is different than among healthy people, where women have a distinct advantage over men in verbal skills.

Age, education levels and dementia severity did not explain the difference in mental decline between women and men, the authors noted.

The study appeared Aug. 24 in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.

"Unlike mental decline associated with normal aging, something about Alzheimer's specifically disadvantages women," study leader Keith Laws, a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire, said in a university news release.

"There has been some previous, but limited, evidence that females with Alzheimer's deteriorate faster than males in the earlier stages of the disease. And possible explanations are for a hormonal influence, possibly due to estrogen loss in women or perhaps a greater cognitive reserve in males which provides protection against the disease process. But further studies to examine sex differences with the disease are needed to provide greater clarity on these issues," Laws said.

Women are more likely than men to develop Alzheimer's and that difference increases with age, according to background information in the news release.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about Alzheimer's disease  .

TUESDAY, Aug. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Older women who want to keep off weight -- no small feat for many after menopause -- might consider four specific eating behaviors, according to new research.

"Losing weight and maintaining a weight loss is incredibly difficult," said Bethany Barone Gibbs, an assistant professor of health and physical activity at the University of Pittsburgh.

She looked at both short-term and long-term changes made by nearly 500 overweight or obese women, all in their late 50s.

She found specific eating habits linked with weight loss -- or no weight loss.

Long-term, those who decreased desserts, sugary beverages and cheeses and meats (which were grouped together) and increased fruits and vegetables did best.

The study is published in the September issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Barone Gibbs looked at two time points -- six months and four years. The behavior changes at the six-month mark linked with weight changes were not the same as those linked with weight control at the four-year mark.

At six months, eating fewer desserts, eating fewer fried foods, drinking fewer sugary beverages, eating more fish and eating out less were linked with more weight loss.

However, at the four-year mark, not all those behaviors were still linked with weight loss. This finding suggests that some behaviors aren't typically maintained long-term, she said.

For instance, the link between reducing fried foods and weight control dropped out at the four-year mark. "Maybe you can say no French fries for six months," she said, but not forever.

Long term, those who ate more fruits and vegetables and less meat and cheese were more likely to sustain weight loss.

The changes in diet and weight were small. "If you increased your fruits and vegetables by two servings a day [over whatever you ate before], that was associated with a three-pound weight loss at the end of four years," she said.

Decreasing sugary beverages by 16 ounces daily was also linked with about a three-pound loss after four years.

Those strategies that worked at the four-year mark seem worth adopting if women want to lose weight and maintain the loss, Barone Gibbs said.

She mined the data from an earlier study of women, activity and nutrition. In that original study, researchers evaluated how lifestyle interventions affected heart health.

Barone Gibbs took the information collected and determined which eating habits were linked with more weight loss.

In the earlier study, the 481 women were assigned at random to a lifestyle-change group or a health-education group. Those in the lifestyle-change group met with experts throughout the study and aimed to follow healthier habits, such as boosting fruits and vegetables. The health-education group was offered seminars on women's health, but not specifically weight-loss advice.

Barone Gibbs found an association between the eating habits and weight control, but the research did not prove cause and effect.

More than one-third of Americans are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among older women, natural declines in energy output -- that is, many become sedentary -- could make long-term weight loss more challenging, according to Barone Gibbs.

Some older women blame weight gain on a slower metabolism, but the process is more complicated than that. As people age, their amount of muscle declines and their amount of body fat rises, so they burn fewer calories.

It is ultimately not your metabolism speed that determines if you are too heavy, experts say, but the amount you eat and how much activity you get.

"This study provides a glimpse at why changes in eating patterns must be maintainable for weight loss to be sustainable," said Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis.

"The study supports the fact that diets don't work but small steps in behavior change can help with weight loss," Diekman said.

However, this study is not the final word on the subject, she said. "Since the study did not set out to establish cause and effect, more studies would be helpful," she said.

More information

To learn about weight and health, visit the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics  .