Healthy Ageing Index and Healthy Lifestyle Index

Blog:  July 17, 2025

Source: http://www.aginghealthforum.com/

HEALTHY AGEING INDEX (HAI) AND HEALTHY LIFESTYLE INDEX

Two sides of the same coin

Age related functional decline is inevitable and ubiquitous. However, the great heterogeneity in the speed and magnitude of ageing is the result of a complex interplay of several variables which include but not limited to genetic, demographic (age, gender, ethnicity), socioeconomic (education, employment, marital status), lifestyle (diet, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, sleep, body mass index) and factors related to chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, cognitive impairment, pulmonary and urinary problems. Burgeoning population of elderly persons and the paramount importance of keeping them healthy has prompted many workers to construct different types of composite tools to measure the health-related quality of ageing and thereby able to favourably manipulate the trajectory of ageing by timely interventions

Healthy Ageing Index (HAI) is one of the popular and convenient scoring tools to assess the quality of ongoing ageing process of an individual and thus aids in the development of healthy ageing strategy. This index enables composite scoring of five physiological markers related to five chronic diseases referred to above (hypertension, diabetes, cognitive impairment, pulmonary and urinary problems). HAI scoring is able to detect abnormal markers if any, predict future related events and thus identify people heading for premature ageing as well as those who have the potential to remain healthy throughout their life. HAI can therefore alter the trajectory of ageing by offering timely intervention and thus contribute to personalized health care.

Five physiological markers are systolic blood pressure (SBP), blood sugar (BS), mini mental state examination (MMSE), forced vital capacity (FCV) and serum creatinine (SC). Based on their cut off values, each marker is scored ranging from 0 (least healthy) to 2 (healthiest) while score 1 indicating intermediate healthy. Maximum and minimum possible scores, being 10 and 0 respectively. Some workers use different cut offs but many use score 0 for SBP of above 143, score 1 for SBP of 126-143 and score 2 for SBP of less than 126 mmHg while score 0 for BS above 126, score 1 for BS 100-126 and score 2 for BS less than 100 mg%. In the same manner, cut offs have been assigned for MMSE, FCV and SC. (For details see: Fauzi NBM. BMC Geriatrics 24, 508, 2024 and Dieteren CM Prev Med. 139, 106193, 2020).

Healthy Lifestyle Index is another tool which likewise HAI also assesses and promotes well-being. While HAI assessment focusses on physiological factors and ageing individuals, HLI is based on behavioural lifestyle factors and individuals in general. HAI relates the health status of ageing individuals to various outcomes like disease free survival and quality of life while HLI reflects an individual’s overall adherence to a composite various lifestyle choices and relates the lifestyles to various health outcomes. Like HAI, HLI also gives timely public health and individualized interventions and thus contribute to personalized health care.

HLA can also be scored for its five lifestyle components namely, diet, physical activity, body mass index, smoking and alcohol with higher scores indicating healthier and lower scores indicating unhealthier status. (For details see: Viallon V. Scientific Rep-orts 14, Article 16330,