如何才能健康地退休

A colleague from the financial world recently announced on Facebook that he had retired to the woodsy north-east of the US and that he was looking forward to spending his days fishing and hiking in a sylvan landscape far from Wall Street.

一位金融圈的同仁最近在Facebook上宣布，他已退休，搬到了林木茂盛的美国东北部，期待着能在远离华尔街的森林风光中垂钓、徒步，消磨时光。

I, of course, wished him well, but I had to wonder what the medical record shows for people who have unplugged from their busy careers and left behind a mentally stimulating life.

当然，我希望他一切安好，但我想知道对那些突然离开繁忙的职业生涯并将那段激情燃烧岁月抛在身后的人来说，他们的医疗记录如何。

This is not an idle question: as the baby boomer generation ages, the number of people of retirement age in the US is projected to double from 36m in 2003 to 72m in 2030. Governments everywhere are debating whether and how far to raise the age of eligibility for state pensions because of the effect on the public purse.

这并不是一个毫无意义的问题：随着婴儿潮一代逐渐变老，美国退休年龄人口数量预计将从2003年的3600万翻倍至2030年的7200万。由于担心对公共财政的影响，世界各国政府都在讨论是否提高领取国家养老金资格的最低年龄，以及提高到多大年龄。

It turns out that health studies of retirement are a mixed bag. One study in 2012 that received a lot of attention came from the Harvard School of Public Health. It looked at 5,422 individuals in the US and found there was a 40 per cent increase in heart attacks and strokes among those who had retired, compared with those of a similar age still working.

事实证明，对人们退休后健康问题的研究结果是五花八门的。哈佛大学公共卫生学院(Harvard School of Public Health)2012年的一项研究引起了许多关注。该研究观察了5422名在美国生活的个人，发现与仍在工作的同龄人相比，退休人群心脏病发作和中风的比例高出40%。

Perhaps even more striking, the study found that most of the cardiovascular events happened in the year after retirement. When I contacted the lead researcher of the study, J Robin Moon, a sociologist now working on health systems in the Bronx, a poor borough of New York City, she said her statistical analysis might reflect “reverse causality”: in other words, people may have been forced to retire because they already had cardiovascular disease, not the other way around.

或许更令人吃惊的是，该研究发现，大多数心血管疾病发生在退休后一年。当我联系到该项研究的首席研究员、如今在布朗克斯（Bronx，纽约市的一个贫困区）从事卫生体系工作的社会学家J圠宾莫恩(J Robin Moon)时，她说自己的统计分析可能反映出一种“逆向因果关系”：换句话说，人们可能是被迫退休，因为他们已经患上心血管疾病，而非相反的关系。

Those who were only semi-retired — working part-time — had substantially less risk of a heart attack. So Ms Moon ponders whether the ill-health effects have something to do with the US way of retirement, where people enter a life “that is completely different from what you’re used to with so many changes, socially and economic”. 

处在半退休状态（有兼职工作）的人，心脏病发作的风险大大降低。所以，莫恩在想，退休后健康欠佳的情况是否与美国人退休的方式——人们进入另一种生活，“与他们此前习惯的完全不同而且伴随如此多……身体上、社会和经济变化”——有些关系。

In contrast, a number of studies in Europe have had results very different from the Harvard research. A multiyear study of the pension system in Germany found that retirement “has a positive effect on health, increasing the probability of reporting to be in satisfactory health and mental health” and even reducing the number of visits paid to the doctor.

相比之下，欧洲的许多研究得出了与哈佛的研究截然不同的结果。德国一项针对养老金制度的多年研究发现，退休“对健康有积极影响，提高了报告身心处于良好健康状态的概率”，甚至减少了看医生的次数。

Likewise, a study in France of 11,246 men and 2,858 women found that retirement was associated with a “substantial reduction in mental and physical fatigue and depressive symptoms”.

同样，法国一项对1.1246万名男性和2858名女性的研究发现，退休与“身心疲劳及抑郁症状的大幅减少”有关联。

Of course, poor health does not happen overnight, even though events such as heart attacks and strokes are usually recorded as sudden events. Volumes have been written comparing the typical French diet with its US counterpart, which often contains more sugar and less fresh fruit and vegetables.

当然，健康问题并不是一夜之间出现的，尽管心脏病发作和中风等状况通常被视为突发疾病。有很多关于法国和美国典型饮食结构的对比研究，后者往往包含更多的糖、较少的新鲜水果和蔬菜。

Another fascinating insight Ms Moon gleaned in an unpublished study was that people who are retired but have frequent contact with neighbours and friends tend to be healthier.

莫恩在一项未公布的研究中还发现了一个有趣现象：已经退休但经常与邻居、朋友接触的人身体通常更加健康。

If you can form social bonds and enjoy a smooth transition from full-time work to not working at all, the cardiovascular health effect was mediated. “Retirement is not the toxic factor, it’s the things that come with it,” she concludes.

如果你能建立自己的社会关系并实现从全职工作到完全退休的平稳过渡，将可以调和退休对心血管健康的影响。“退休并非有害因子，危害健康的是与之相伴而来的问题，”她总结说。