Your muscles need to work.

When you were younger, running a marathon, jogging a 10K three times a week or playing tennis or squash may have been enough to give you a firm foundation for a healthy life. As you get older, the emphasis shifts from building the foundation to protecting the structure.

Don’t get me wrong. Aerobic activities are still important for strengthening the heart and lungs, keeping your weight down, managing you blood pressure and the other illnesses that face middle-aged and older people.

Without exercise, however, your muscle power fades with age. Actually your strength starts to decline in your 30s and it’s downhill from there. Between the ages of 50 and 70 your strength can decline by as much as 15 percent each decade and accelerate from there. It’s that decline that is responsible for the weaknesses and disabilities associated with old age.

There are aging experts who say you could substitute strength training on some days for aerobic exercise. I personally do aerobic exercise daily and add on at least 2 days of strength training and stretching often with a personal trainer. On days when I’m primarily doing aerobic exercise, I’ll also work out with weights for about 10 to 15 minutes, primarily with my upper body.

As a woman, and a petite one at that, I need strength building and maintenance more than men my age. First because I have less muscle mass than a man so whatever I muscle cells I lose will impact me more.

Secondly, strengthening my muscles fortifies the bones and women are at increased risk of osteoporosis. Risk of bone loss and fractures rise sharply in women during and after menopause. Strength training helps prevent bone loss because lifting weights stresses the bones as well as the muscles stimulating the cells.

As strength training workouts builds muscle you increase the proportion of muscle to fatty tissue. Because muscle cells burn calories faster than fat, the more muscle I add, the more I will boost my metabolic rate and burn more calories and burn them faster.

I am a firm believer that keeping up with the strength training just makes my life that much easier. I’m strong enough to lift chairs around, shovel and plow the snow, help carry boxes of books at a book sale and hang onto my grandchildren once I chase them down.

More on exercise for my next post.

To your healthy aging success,

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Health & Business Writing
Content Writing & Information Products

You may find the idea of exercising on a regular basis as completely unappealing. You have got to know by now, everything you’ve read, everything you’ve heard on TV, even your health care providers are telling you to exercise to lose weight and stay fit.

Study after study shows exercise to have huge benefits. Not is it only good for the body but it’s also good for your mind and spirit.

Earlier this month I wrote a post about why you should exercise. Since tht short time I’ve found a few more reasons why it’s so important for you.

My favorite is exercise boosts brain power, well into your later years. There are thought that it may even help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and a few other mental disorders. It’s no mystery how this happens. Exercise improves the way you transport oxygen to the brain. Increased levels of oxygen carrying blood cells in the brain increase you abiity to focus, to think, and to be alert. There have been studies, in fact, about the importance of physical activity and mental ability.

Exercise also improves your sex life. If you think about exercise to boost your blood flow because of the improvement of oxygen uptake it makes sense then that the ability to increase and control penile blood flow also increases.

Exercise can helps to prevent back problems
Certain exercises such as resistance work, yoga, Pilates and swimming all help to develop strong spinal muscles. This not only improves posture but it also means that you have less risk of developing temporary or chronic back problems.

You can eat more calories when you exercise.
I have a friend who jogs 6 miles 7 days a week so she can eat her half packet of M & Ms and not worry about gaining weight. Most of us should think of exercise as helping us NOT to GAIN weight. However, people who train for marathons and compete in major physical programs such as rowing or rock climbing will need to consume extra calories just to maintain their weight.

People who exercise regularly have fewer colds.
That is important to know during the winter cold season . I’m sure I mentioned it before but exercise does boost the immune system. People who exercise have a higher concentration of white blood cells than non-exercisers. White blood cells help to combat flue, colds and other airborne viruses.

Exercise is an important part of my life. When I’m on deadline and stressed I sometimes take a 20 minute fast walk in the neighborhood. That seems to clear my head and I’m able to get more done following the walk. Scheuling time for exercise isn’t easy but I will do it because it keeps me flexible and it makes me feel like I have some control over my body shape.

What about you. Do you exercise regularly?  What are your reasons for exercising? Anything like mine? Let’s put our own list together for exercising and see if we can arrive at a few unique reasons of our own.

To your healthy aging

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Health & Business Writer
http://ruthanbrodsky.com
http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

In my last post I just wrote about how and why to start an exercise routine. I haven’t changed my mind. However, no matter the volumes of articles and programs reminding us to increase our heart rate or our oxygen intake with exercise, there are times when it’s better to avoid exercise – at least temporarily.

1.    When you are ill.
Seriously consider not exercising when you are not well, even if it’s a bad cold. Strenuous exercise may put more strain on your immune system and prolong your illness. You also put yourself at higher risk for injury when you’re ill because it’s harder to concentrate, your balance could be off, and you could have trouble breathing with something as simple as a stuffy nose.

2.    You haven’t had enough recuperation time.
Whether you’re recovering from a strained muscle from lifting weights or from gall bladder surgery, starting to exercise too early is only asking for problems. You are likely to injure yourself again. When you do go back to the gym, forget your regular routine. Start slowly and only do 25 percent or 50 percent of your usual routine.

3.    Feeling tired and very stressed.
It’s your body telling you to take a break. Give yourself permission to have a day off and don’t mentally punish yourself for not going to the gym. Keep in mind that all around fitness is a combination of physical and mental or spiritual well-being. Even though exercise brings us that stress reducing endorphin high, sometimes it’s just good to relax.

4.    When you don’t have the right equipment.
If you’re getting shin splints when you jog it could be that the 6 month old shoes you wear, or at least the inner sole of the shoes. Also be careful about following the latest trend for exercise equipment. If you’re looking for equipment visit a good sports shop who have well trained staff to help you out.

5.    If you woke up with a hangover.
Forget about going to your early morning aerobic class. First of all alcohol dehydrates you so you need to drink lots of water. You also need to ask yourself if you’re still under the influence? And when did you eat last? Eating breakfast with a hangover may be the last thing you want to do which means you won’t have any energy for exercising.

Using common sense should be your guideline about when to not exercise. Be honest with yourself, however. If you decide to not exercise because you’re bored with your current routine, work out another type of routine and find someone to help you do that.  And keep in mind all those times you’ve said I just don’t feel like it but you exercised anyway and came away saying, I’m really glad I did that.

If you know of another good reason to not exercise, let us know. Type your answer in the comment box. Do you think the 6 reasons I’ve posted are good enough to stop exercising – at least for a while? Type your answers in the comment box.

To your success at healthy aging,
Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Health & Business Writer
Copywriter & Content Marketer
http://ruthanbrodsky.com
http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

If you are thinking about including exercising  as one of your goals for the New Year, think again. I don’t think there’s any reason to wait another 40 days. Given that the holidays are around the corner we would all be giving the greatest gift to ourselves if we started our exercise program now and kept it going  during the holidays.

We all know about the 12 days before Christmas. These are my 12 reasons to continue exercising, increase your exercising program, or just simply start one.

1.    Exercise improves the quality of your life.
There is much truth to the saying that exercise adds life to your years and years to your life. A well designed exercise program for you, regardless of age, will give you more energy to do the things you enjoy.

2.    Exercise improves your mood and relieves depression.
If you need to blow of steam after a stressful day, go exercise. Researchers found that those who are mildly depressed experience a positive mood swing by exercising 15-30 minutes at least every other day. Read the rest of this entry

Lifestyle factors are often a major cause of arterial stiffening and for the cell lining to dysfunction. To improve the suppleness of your arteries, your first step is to work in a daily routine of aerobic activity. Interestingly, aerobic exercise may have the largest positive impact. Several tests, including the 1993 Baltimore study, showed that older adults who do regular aerobic exercise have less arterial stiffness than those who don’t do anything aerobic.

On the other hand, once your arteries are stiff, regular aerobic exercise only helps slightly. Men improve more with aerobic activity than women, however. Right now no one is sure why that is.  Regardless of your age or gender, it’s a good idea to increase your aerobic activity.

Your next step is to reduce your salt or sodium intake because less salt in your diet will slow down the arteries becoming stiff. The same is true for consuming less high fat content foods. The research show that a few hours after you’ve eaten a high-fat meal, your artery looks just like the arteries of a person who has heart disease.

Your third step is to reduce the amount of fat you consume in your meals because the cells in the lining of your arteries become more dysfunctional because of the fat.

What you should be doing to improve the condition of your arteries is to consume more fruits and vegetables and more foods with omega-3 fats. It was also pointed out that the arteries of people  who gained weight also tended to  become stiff. When weight is loss the arteries in those same people become less stiff.

In other words if your arteries are staff and their lining is impaired you are setting yourself up for heart disease and dementia. To make your arteries more supple you should be:

• Getting regular aerobic exercise;

• Cutting back on sodium and saturated fat;

• Eating a diet packed with fruits and vegetables;

• Eating two servings of seafood a week;

• And exercising and watching calories to lose weight or avoid gaining excess belly fat.

Interestingly none of this is new information. We read these instructions in every health magazine and hear them in every cable interview of how to stay healthy. With all this information about arteries that stiffen, the repeated advice just becomes more important.

To your success at healthy aging.
Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Health & Business Writer

http://ruthanbrodsky.com

http://fromretirementtocarerchange.com

Have you ever had the stressful experience when you thought your daughter wasn’t disciplining her children – your grandchildren- very well but you couldn’t say anything without starting a family feud.  Or you’re about to get on the courts for the regional masters tennis semi finals and your stomach was making all sorts of noise?

It’s not your imagination. There is probably no system in your body that’s more responsive to how you’re thinking than your digestive tract. When you get sick, you tend to focus on the physical possibilities. Don’t ever forget that our emotions and stress can affect digestion in a major way.  Goethe, that great German writer, believed that your gut was the foundation of all human emotions.

The problem is that stress seems to make everything worse so that if you have any digestive problems they are going to be exaggerated. When stress activates the flight or fight response in your central nervous system, digestion can shut down because your central nervous system shuts down blood flow, affects the contractions of your digestive muscles, and decreases the secretions needed for digestion. Stress can further  interfere with digestion because it can cause inflammation of the gastrointestinal system which makes you more susceptible to infection.

In some cases, digestive symptoms are a response to stress. With Crohn’s disease, for instance, flare ups and relapses tend to take place with stressful life events. This doesn’t mean the cause is psychological or emotional but that stress can amplify the level of the illness.

You’ve probably heard of people in sports competition having diarrhea before they compete. What that and much research suggests is that responses to fear, anxiety and stress are directly wired to your gut. For instance, people with irritable bowel diseases and syndromes are usually impacted when stressed. Stress isn’t the only cause of their condition but it probably triggers the symptoms that tend to make their symptoms worse. After all, the term gut wrenching had to come from some where.

The best remedy, of course, is to figure out what you need to do to reduce your stress. Exercise, yoga, deep breathing exercises are always good techniques. There is no magic pill it’s up to you to recognize what’s happening and then do the techniques you learned that work to reduce your stress.

Two of my favorite stress relievers especially when it comes to work and writing are taking a quick 20 minute walk and/or washing my hair. Do you have any stress reducers that you’d like to share with us?  Maybe your technique will work for someone else.  Just write your  thought under comments and I’ll put your tips into a short report. Sound like an idea?

To your successful healthy aging,

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Business & Health Writer
Content Marketer
Http://ruthanbrodsky.com
http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

Plant foods are good for you. It’s because of the chemicals they produce called antioxidants.

Think of oxidation as rust. This rust is caused by free radicals or unstable oxygen atoms that attack your cells creating DNA damage which can lead to cancer. Just as the name suggests, antioxidants help protect your cells against oxidation by stabilizing free radicals.

Not all foods are created equal. The foods I wrote about in my last post and this list of foods are more antioxidant rich than most foods so they’ll boost the amount of the disease fighting chemicals you need floating around in your bloodstream. In other words these foods are an all natural preventive medicine.

Cabbage Cabbage is a major ingredient in European and Asian diets but much less so in the USA. If you’re dieting, one cup of chopped cabbage is only 22 calories and it’s full of valuable nutrients. Sulforaphane tops the list because it’s a chemical that increases your body’s production of enzymes that attack free radicals thus reducing your risk of cancer. Research at Stanford University claims that sulforaphane boots levels of these cancer fighting enzymes higher than any other chemical.

Pomegranate juice it’s taken some time but now you can find pomegranate  juice in every major grocery store. Israeli scientists discovered that 2 ounces of pomegranate juice daily for a year decreased the systolic or top number of blood pressure by 21 percent and improved blood flow to hearts. As a bonus, 4 ounces provides 50 percent of your vitamin C needs. When you do purchase the juice look for a brand with no added sugar.

Goji berries These raisin size chewy barriers are only found in specialty stores although they’ve been used for medicinal food in Tibet for over 1,700 years.  They have one of the highest ORAC ratings which is a method of rating antioxidant power.

Pumpkin seeds Pumpkin seeds are a great source for magnesium. Studies show that those with higher levels of magnesium in their blood have a 40 percent lower risk of early death than those with low rates of magnesium. You can find these at your grocery store, roasted, unroasted and with little or no salt.

Guava You can find this fruit in markets that have a large and diverse produce section. It’s a tropical fruit with a high concentration of lycopene. Lycopene is an antioxidant that fights prostate cancer. Guava also contains more potassium than you’ll find in a medium banana and it has about 9 grams of fiber per cup.   A very healthy fruit.

Fiber is good for you because it contains only 1.5 to 2.5 calories per gram while carbohydrates contain 4 calories per grams. Fiber rich foods also require more chewing and that means the slow passage of food through your digestive tract.

Introduce one of these foods into your diet each week. I am betting that at least one of them will become a stable in your diet and a regular  on your menu. If you remember, let me know which of these 10 super foods I’ve written about becomes your favorite. Cabbage is mine but I have to keep reminding myself to cook with it.

To your healthy aging,

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Health & Business Writer
Content Marketer
http://ruthanbrodsky.com
http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

These are super foods that probably never reach the inside of your shopping cart. I know there are a couple on this list that I’ve never seen. In my last post I wrote about what you needed to do to stay healthy as you got older. Basically it was eating right and staying active.

In this post I want to describe several super foods that will help you with good nutrition.

Beets. They are first on my list because I am seeing more ‘roasted beet’ salads on restaurant  menus.  I happen to like beats and that’s a good thing because they are outstanding sources of folate and betaine. These two nutrients work together to lower your blood levels of homocysteine, an inflammatory compound that can damage your arteries and increase your risk of heart disease.  I have never eaten the stems and leaves but others say they are good in salads or you can cook them as you cook spinach.

Purslane. This food has never been in my shopping cart either. I’m told you can find it at some Farmer’s Market and at some Whole Food stores. Interestingly, the FDA classifies purslane as a broad-leaved week but it’s a popular vegetable and herb in China, Mexico and Greece. It has the highest amount of omega-3 fats of any plant and has 10 to 20 times more melatonin, an antioxidant that may inhibit cancer growth, than any other. It’s eaten as a salad green.

Swiss chard.  I see this in my food market. It is slightly bitter and salty and native to the Mediterranean. It’s cooked as spinach. Cooked Swiss chard provides a huge amount of lutein and zeazanthin which are carotenoids. Carotenoids protect your retina from the damage of aging.

Cinnamon. I started taking cinnamon supplements about a year ago after I figured out I couldn’t get enough from graham crackers. Cinnamon helps control blood sugar which helps you maintain a healthy heart. There is also some conversation that cinnamon helps to reduce blood sugar levels in type-2 diabetes patients.

Dried plums or prunes. Restaurants serve them for breakfast. They are very sweet and usually linked to growing old and bathroom habits. I happen to really like them as I do enjoy almost all dried fruits. Prunes are especially healthy because they are very effective at combating a particular free radical that can damage to your cells. I like to eat them out of the bag or box but they are sticky so don’t drive while you eat them. Your steering wheel will be a mess.

More super foods for your healthy aging in my next post. In the meantime put these five on your shopping list.

Let me know if you have any good recipes for these. Write a note in the comments and I’ll email you for the recipe and share it with our readers.

To your healthy aging.
Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Health & Business Writer
Content Marketer
http://ruthanbrodsky.com
http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

Aging well is a science as well as an art carefully blended with a bunch of common sense. That’s my take on these later years. The more I think about it as the older I become, aging well is more than trying to look 10 or 15 or even 5 years younger than how you look.

Anti aging is all about wrinkle creams, Botox, fillers and plastic surgery. Read the rest of this entry

Sometimes  it is helpful for me just be aware that the holidays can make me stressful and sad despite the glitter and jingle and holiday spirit. My expectations aren’t something then that are impossible. And if I want to find reinforcement that I’m okay about the way I feel I bet I can tune in on a program of Dr. House around the holidays or watch one of the day time soap operas to find the televised fiction version of the same sad feeling.

As I wrote in my last post, I do have some strategies that help me get through this time so I can truly celebrate it with family and friends. This next strategy is mine. The others are ones that a friend and a reader suggested. Read the rest of this entry