The secret to a long life? Kiss your troubles away

Australians are living longer, but they also need to live well in old age. A greying nation has reached the tipping point.

Laurie Cooper, 94, and wife Bette, 90, keep fit and healthy playing bowls at Club Tweed on the NSW-Queensland border. Picture: Luke Marsden

Fit and full of fun in their 90s, ­Laurie and Bette Cooper are living the long lives that beckon for more Australians than ever.

But this counts for very little unless you can also live well in old age, the conundrum for the nation as life expectancy increases alongside a growing population.

The government’s Intergenerational Report this week offered a glimpse of what Australia will look like in 2063: bigger and greyer thanks to a five-year increase in life expectancy to 88.1, but with more elderly people facing more sick days during those bonus years.

Relatively fewer Australians will be working to foot the ballooning bill for health and welfare services as well as aged care.

Mr Cooper, 94, and his 90-year-old wife are at the tipping point where, statistically, the elderly endure more time sick than well. The watershed age is 92 for men and 90 for women, and from then on they can expect that more than half of their remaining days will be spent in ill-health, analysis by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows.

By the time Gen Z hits retirement age, the number of Australians aged 85 and over will have more than tripled, and the number of centenarians increased six-fold.

Stereotypes are made to be ­defied, of course, and both the Coopers profess to be in fine fettle. He plays lawn bowls twice a week at Club Tweed near their beachside home on the NSW-Queensland border while Ms Cooper sits out the ladies’ draw for now, nursing a sore knee.

She was turning out for competitive tennis well into her 70s and has represented the Gold Coast in bowls.

Their secret? “Live well and be happy, that’s the key,” Mr Cooper said. “I enjoyed my work, my family life, and I did things that I liked to do in my spare time. It all carries over.”

Ms Cooper said: “We’ve always made friends easily and I think there’s a lot of personality involved in having good health. If you get out and meet people, you will stay active.”

While Australian women continue to live longer than men on average – a newborn girl can look forward to a lifespan of 85.2 years against 81.3 for boys – the reverse applies in the so-called health-span, with men on average spending 88 per cent of their lives in good health and women 87 per cent.

The difference becomes more pronounced in old age. Longevity expert Perminder Sachdev, a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of NSW, said women could expect to live their last 12 years with some form of health-related impairment compared to nine years for men.

That could be a function of women living longer, he said, but it wasn’t the whole story when three times more men attained an age of 100 or over.

Professor Sachdev said natural selection could be in play for the fortunate few who lived to be centenarians.

“Because men, on average, die younger than women those who survive to become centenarians … tend to be more robust, they’re healthier … less frail,” he told The Weekend Australian. “And that may be a natural selection.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers releases the government's first Intergenerational Report in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Intergenerational Report released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Thursday charts the trajectory of an ageing population over the coming four decades and the challenge for governments to fund billions in additional services, while maintaining living standards. By 2063 the median age of Australians is projected to rise 4.6 years to 43 and nearly a quarter of the population will be aged over 65, up 6.1 per cent. This was largely a function of low fertility rates and rising life expectancy, the report said.

Critically, the share of the population of working age – 15-64 – will fall 3.5 points to 61.2 per cent. The good news is that strong immigration will continue to deliver for the nation, giving Australia a younger population than most other advanced economics.

The head of the Australian ­Institute of Health and Welfare’s burden of disease and mortality unit, Michelle Gourley, said the qualitative measure of health-­adjusted life expectancy – the number of years a person at a given age could expect to live in full health – had held steady over the past 20 years.

A 2022 study by the institute calculated that a woman of 65 could expect to live 73 per cent of her remaining life in full health, compared to an outcome of 75 per cent for a man that age. By 80, the split was down to 63 per cent for women and 67 per cent for men.

Come what may, Mr Cooper said he was determined to defend his hard-won title as the over-90s singles champion of Club Tweed in Tweed Heads, one of the country’s biggest lawn bowls clubs.

Fresh from a 20-end session on the greens, he said: “I had a gallbladder thing a fair while ago, but that’s the only real problem I’ve had … lucky really.”

The retired engineer gave the cigarettes away years ago, but still enjoys a nip of Scotch whisky. Ms Cooper, a lifelong non-smoker, said a glass of wine was her tipple.

“You have to have some fun,” she laughed.

Australia’s oldest living person, Catherina van der Linden, preparing this week to celebrate her 111th birthday.

Professor Sachdev, who conducted the Centenarian Study in Sydney of about 500 super-seniors aged 95-107, said genetic factors weighed heavily for those who achieved the milestone of turning 100. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates there are about 6000 living centenarians, headed by Adelaide woman Catherina van der Linden who was preparing this week to celebrate her 111th birthday on Saturday.

Professor Sachdev said researchers were zeroing in on two genes associated with human longevity: FOX03 and a variant of the CTEP gene that affects blood cholesterol levels.

Both seemed to slow the metabolic process, he said.