Exercise Program No Help for Some Seniors’ Hearts
A recent study out of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health found that “Starting moderate-intensity workouts a few times a week didn’t prevent cardiovascular events for sedentary, functionally-limited older adults.” However, these results:
shouldn’t discourage physicians or patients from efforts to establish a walking and weight training regimen, the researchers argued. Along with prior studies showing numerous benefits of exercise on the heart, primary results from [the trial] showed an 18% reduction in incidence of major mobility disability and possibly a cognitive advantage as well.
The study included 1,635 sedentary participants who were between the ages of 70 and 89 years and at high risk for mobility disability but still able to walk unaided. “It is possible that exercise needs to be started earlier in life to reduce heart attacks and strokes, or that even more exercise is needed,” said Anne Newman, MD, MPH, lead author of the study published in JAMA Cardiology.
Alzheimer’s Disease as an Adventure in Wonderland
In her memoir “Aliceheimer’s: Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass,” Dana Walrath uses drawings and stories to chronicle three years of caregiving for her mother, Alice, who was in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The experience turned out to be a magical trip down the rabbit hole of memory loss, an outcome that inspired Dr. Walrath, a medical anthropologist who taught at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and who also studied art and writing, to share their tale.
Read an interview with Dr. Walrath about the creation of this example of graphic medicine.
10 Months, 45 National Parks, 11 Rules
This article caught my eye because my husband and I have promised ourselves that we will travel now that we’ve retired—somtthing we did very little of earlier in life. Read here about how Jeremy Cronon managed to visit 45 of the 47 national parks in the contiguous Unived States in 10 months.
© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown
Retreading for Retirement 