CMAJ. 2014 Mar 4;186(4):E150-6. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.131155. Epub 2014 Jan 20.
Positive affective well-being (i.e., feelings of happiness and enjoyment) has been associated with longer survival and reduced incidence of serious illness. Our objective was to discover whether enjoyment of life also predicted a reduced risk of functional impairment over an 8-year period in a large population sample.
We carried out a prospective analysis involving 3199 men and women aged 60 years or older from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Enjoyment of life was assessed by questionnaire. Outcomes were impairment in 2 or more activities of daily living and changes in gait speed on a walking test. Covariates included sociodemographic factors, baseline health, depressive symptoms, impairment of mobility and health behaviours.
Two or more impaired activities of daily living developed among 4.4%, 11.7% and 16.8% of participants in the high, medium and low enjoyment-of-life tertiles, respectively. After adjustment for covariates, the odds of impaired activities of daily living developing were 1.83 (95% confidence interval 1.13-2.96) in the low compared with high tertile. Gait speed after 8 years was also related to baseline enjoyment of life after adjustment for gait speed and other covariates at baseline (p < 0.001). We obtained similar results when we limited analyses to participants younger than 70 years at baseline.
This is an observational study, so causal conclusions cannot be drawn. But our results provide evidence that reduced enjoyment of life may be related to the future disability and mobility of older people.
积极的情感幸福感（即幸福感和享受感）与更长的生存时间和减少严重疾病的发生有关。我们的目的是在一个大型人群样本中发现，生活乐趣是否也能预测 8 年内功能障碍的风险降低。
我们对年龄在 60 岁或以上的 3199 名男女进行了一项前瞻性分析，这些人来自英国老龄化纵向研究。通过问卷调查评估生活乐趣。结果是日常生活活动中 2 项或更多项受损和行走测试中行走速度的变化。协变量包括社会人口因素、基线健康、抑郁症状、移动能力受损和健康行为。
在高、中、低生活乐趣三分位组中，分别有 4.4%、11.7%和 16.8%的参与者出现 2 项或更多项日常生活活动受损。在调整协变量后，低生活乐趣三分位组发生日常生活活动受损的几率是高三分位组的 1.83（95%置信区间 1.13-2.96）。调整行走速度和其他基线协变量后，8 年后的行走速度也与基线生活乐趣相关（p<0.001）。当我们将分析仅限于基线时年龄小于 70 岁的参与者时，我们得到了类似的结果。
这是一项观察性研究，因此不能得出因果关系的结论。但我们的结果提供了证据，表明生活乐趣的减少可能与老年人未来的残疾和移动能力有关。
