共用题干Retirement Brings Most a Big Health Boost
The self-reported health of the newly retired improves so much that most feel eight years younger,a new
European study suggests.
This happy news was true of almost everyone except a small minority一only 2 percent一who had experi-
enced"ideal"conditions in their working life,anyway.
"The results really say three things:that work puts an extra burden on the health of older workers,that
the effects of this extra burden are largely relieved by retirement and,finally,that both the extra burden and
the relief are larger when working conditions are poor,"said Hugo Westerlund,lead author of a study pub-
lished online Nov. 9 in The Lancet（柳叶刀）." This indicates that there is need to provide opportunities for
older workers to decrease the demands in their work out of concern for their health and well-being."
But of course,added Westerlund,who is head of epidemiology at the Stress Research Institute at
Stockholm University in Sweden,"not all older workers suffer from poor perceived health.Many are indeed
remarkably healthy and fit for work.But sooner or later,everyone has to slow down because of old age catch-
ing up."
Last week,the same group of researchers reported that workers slept better after retirement than before.
"Sleep improves at retirement,which suggests that sleeping could be a mediator between work and perception
of poor health,"Westerlund said.
This study looked at what the same 15,000 French workers,and most of them had to say about their own
health up to seven years pre-retirement and up to seven years post-retirement.
As participants got closer to retirement age,their perception of their own health declined,but went up
again during the first year of retirement.
Those who reported being in poorer health declined from 19.2 percent in the year prior to retirement to
14.3 percent by the end of the first year after retiring. According to the researchers,that means post-retire-
ment levels of poor health fell to levels last seen eight years previously.
The changes were seen in both men and women,across different occupations,and lasted through the first
seven years of not punching the clock.
Workers who felt worse before retirement and had lower working conditions reported greater improve-
ments as soon as they retired,the team found. The study analyzed the participants'perception of their own health in a certain period.A:RightB:WrongC:Not mentioned