THURSDAY, Jan. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Despite the warnings that being overweight will kill you, a new Australian study finds that overweight adults over the age of 70 are less likely to die over a 10-year period than their normal-weight peers.

The study, published Jan. 28 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, conflicts with research that suggests that being overweight contributes to a long list of health problems, including heart disease.

"Our study suggests that those people who survive to age 70 in reasonable health have a different set of risks and benefits associated with the amount of body fat to younger people," lead researcher Leon Flicker, of the University of Western Australia, said in a news release from the journal's publisher.

Flicker and colleagues looked at a decade's worth of data regarding the health of more than 9,200 Australians aged 70 to 75 in 1996 when the study began. Australia is ranked as the third most obese country in the world after the United States and the United Kingdom, the study authors noted.

The study defined overweight and obesity levels based on body mass index, a measurement that takes weight and height into account. The four weight categories used in the study included underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese.

Those who were overweight -- a step below obese -- faced a 13 percent lower risk of death compared with those who were normal weight. But there was no benefit found for those who were obese, the study authors noted.

The researchers also found that being sedentary doubled the risk of death for women and raised it by one-quarter for men.

According to the study authors, it may be time to reevaluate the system that determines who is overweight and obese.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine provides information on obesity.

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Elderly people who are heavy drinkers are more likely to suffer memory and cognitive problems than mild-to-moderate drinkers, a new study shows.

Brazilian researchers examined drinking and memory/cognition in 1,145 volunteers aged 60 and older. The participants included 419 men and 726 women from different socioeconomic levels.

"We found that heavy alcohol use among the elderly people we investigated was high, at 8.2 percent, and affected principally men from low socioeconomic levels. However, the effects of heavy alcohol use on memory and other cognitive functions were more evident in women," study corresponding author Marcos Antonio Lopes, currently a visiting lecturer at Newcastle University in England, said in a news release.

The researchers also found that that participants who were mild-to-moderate drinkers, especially women, had lower rates of cognitive problems than nondrinkers.

The study is published online in advance of the April print issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"There is a scarcity of information about alcohol use and the elderly which needs to be resolved in order to construct a real diagnosis and promote proper health care for this population," Lopes said.

"This study shows that older people keep drinking along the life span," Jerson Laks, an associate professor of the State University of Rio de Janeiro and a researcher with the Brazilian National Committee for Research, said in the news release. "Taking into consideration that drinking may lead to falls and to cognitive impairment when heavy use is the case, this study creates important awareness about the issue."

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about seniors and alcohol.

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Boosting co-pays for doctor visits and other outpatient care reduces seniors' use of those services, but it also may have the unintended consequence of sharply increasing hospitalizations, a new study suggests.

That money-saving strategy could end up inflating overall health-care spending and put vulnerable elderly at risk of skimping on needed care, the study authors suggest in a paper published in the Jan. 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"From our perspective, it looks like increasing ambulatory-care co-payments for elderly patients is a counterproductive cost-containment strategy," said study author Dr. Amal N. Trivedi, an assistant professor of community health at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, R.I. "It's a lose-lose proposition for most health plans because our study suggests it results in more health-care spending, and it's likely to harm the health of enrollees."

The study, involving nearly 900,000 seniors in 36 Medicare managed-care plans, is one of the first large, national examinations of the consequences of raising seniors' co-payments for outpatient services, the authors said.

The new findings are consistent with research on cost-sharing for prescription drugs, which shows that failing to consider the value of the medication or a person's medical and economic status can harm health, the research team noted.

Marsha Gold, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research Inc. in Washington, D.C., said the effect on inpatient care shown in the study "seems a little high." But she agreed that appropriate use of health-care services is always a concern as cost-sharing goes up.

"When you're putting cost-sharing requirements on patients, you need to be aware of the different kinds of effects that it can have, both positive and negative," she said.

From a sample of 172 Medicare managed-care plans, Trivedi and colleagues identified 18 plans that raised outpatient co-payments between December 2001 and January 2006. Eighteen plans that made no changes in co-payments served as controls.

In Medicare plans that raised co-payments, the average amount seniors had to shell out nearly doubled, to $14.38 from $7.38 for primary care and to $22.05 from $12.66 for specialty care. In control plans, the average co-payment for primary and specialty care held steady at $8.33 and $11.38, respectively.

Medicare managed-care plans that increased co-payments had 19.8 fewer annual outpatient visits per 100 enrollees in the year after the increase, compared with plans that made no changes.

However, plans that hiked co-payments also had 2.2 additional annual hospital admissions and 13.4 more annual inpatient days per 100 enrollees, and the percentage of hospitalized enrolled increased by 0.7 percentage points.

Use of inpatient care was even greater for low-income and little-educated enrollees, blacks and seniors with hypertension, diabetes or a history of heart attack.

Trivedi said the concern is that people with these medical conditions may not be properly managed if higher co-payments are discouraging them from obtaining treatment in the outpatient setting.

"Our study suggests that health plans should refrain from increasing co-payments among the elderly and perhaps give some serious thought to reducing them, particularly for enrollees with chronic disease and low income," he said.

The authors estimate that a Medicare plan might save $7,150 per 100 enrollees in the short-term by boosting outpatient co-payments, but inpatient spending would swell by $24,000 per 100 enrollees in the year after the co-payment increase.

Gold urges seniors to get help understanding the various Medicare options available to them and weighing their total financial risk, including the premium and out-of-pocket cost-sharing. "It's worth stepping back and looking at the big picture," she said.

More information

Learn more about Medicare's health plan options at Medicare.gov.

MONDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Just in case the world needed more evidence on the matter, along come four new studies verifying that exercise is indeed good for you, even critical if you plan to survive to a vigorous, hardy and tough-boned old age.

All four studies appear in the Jan. 25 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"I like to see this laid out, but every bit of information [already] suggests that being active is the healthier way and being inactive is the abnormal, unhealthy way," said James O. Hill, professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado at Denver. "Exercise is better than any drug or anything else we have for aging. There's no downside. If this were a drug, it would be the safest, most effective drug in the universe."

The first study, based on data from the Nurses' Health Study in the United States, found that women who were more physically active during middle age were more likely to be "successful survivors" by the time they reach 70.

Even walking and other moderate-intensity exercises lowered the risk for chronic diseases, heart trouble and cognitive impairment, the study found. That's good news for women intimidated by activities such as tennis or running.

"In terms of magnitude, walking and other moderate activities were almost equivalent to the benefit gained from more vigorous physical activity," said study lead author Dr. Qi Sun, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, adding that this finding was somewhat surprising.

The second study, also focusing on women, found that those who participated in a higher intensity exercise program four days a week had stronger bones and less chance of falling than women who were in a "well-being" program that included relaxation, along with flexibility, endurance and balance.

The ramped-up exercise program did not, however, reduce the risk of heart disease, said the German researchers.

Another study out of Germany found more evidence that exercise -- either moderate or high-intensity -- reduced the risk of cognitive impairment in men and women over the age of 55 over a two-year follow-up period.

And, finally, researchers in British Columbia, Canada, reported that women who practiced resistance training either once or twice a week had improved cognitive skills, but only in the areas of attention and conflict resolution, compared to women who focused on balance and toning activities.

The resistance training, which included leg presses on a resistance machine, had the added benefit of strengthening the quadriceps.

Surprisingly, women performing resistance training also experienced reductions in brain volume, a phenomenon normally linked with poorer cognitive function. This paradox needs more study, the study authors said.

An accompanying commentary in the journal pointed out that pretty much all physical ailments in later life result at least partly from lack of physical activity.

Meanwhile, exercise has been shown to improve arthritis, osteoporosis, heart disease, lung disease, cancer and many more woes.

"The bottom line," said Sun, "is that, no matter what, if you can you should do some physical activity."

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more on exercise and physical activity.