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1. Don’t let age discourage you from reaching your physical and fitness potential. Check with your doctor, make a plan and take a gradual approach to implementing it.

2. Do aerobic exercise 30 minutes a day, five days a week. This means increasing your heart rate.

3. Even moderate-intensity exercise—such as brisk walking, light jogging, swimming, Pilates and yoga—is good.

4. If you don’t have 30 minutes to spare, exercising in short bouts of at least 10 minutes, three times a day, can also be beneficial—as long as you get your heart rate up.

5. If you do “vigorous-intensity” aerobics—running, fast walking, bicycling, tennis, an exercise class—then 20 minutes a day, three days a week, is acceptable.

6. Adults 65 and older (or those over 50 with chronic conditions or limited mobility) need the same amount of exercise as younger people, but the activity can be less intense.

7. Strength training complements aerobic training and can help older adults prevent age-related bone and muscle-mass loss. Twice a week, perform at least one strength-training set targeted to the body’s major muscle groups. One set equals eight to 10 separate exercises, each repeated 10 to 15 times.

8. Start strength training slowly, lifting perhaps five pounds for five repetitions. Build up progressively to heavier weights and 10 to 15 repetitions.

9. Do balance exercises to prevent falls and injuries.

10. Flexibility is important, too. Ten minutes of stretching twice a week, with each stretch held for 10 to 30 seconds, is recommende

Most sports medicine professionals also suggest warming up before stretching and exercising (for instance, swimming slow laps, then picking up the pace) and cooling down afterward.

Contact Pure Home Care Services at (586) 293-2457 today!  If you live in Macomb County or the surrounding area, we can help you care for your loved ones.

Study shows lifting weights just once a week helps keep your brain sharp

For older women, the type of exercise you do may be more important than how often you do it.

That’s the message of a surprising new study by Canadian researchers that found that women who started a once-a-week strength-training program were more likely to stick with it — and reap the physical and mental benefits — than those who started a twice-a-week program.

More importantly, older women who built muscle strength through biceps curls, leg lifts, squats and the like showed much greater improvement in mental focus and ability to make decisions and resolve conflicts than women who did only balance and toning exercises.

Published this month in theArchives of Internal Medicine, the study is a one-year follow-up of 155 women ages 65 to 75 who participated in an earlier strength-training exercise program in 2007-2008.

Weight training and the brain

The women in that program were randomly divided into once-weekly and twice-weekly regimens that used dumbbells, weight machines and free-form exercises like squats and lunges to build muscle strength. A control group performed twice-weekly balancing and toning exercises, but no weight lifting. At the end of the 12-month program, both the weight-training groups showed sharply improved mental focus. In the control group, mental function slightly declined.

A year later, researchers again tested the women to determine who had maintained their physical activity level as well as the mental boost they had gotten from exercising during the original program.

“We were very surprised to discover the group that sustained cognitive benefits was the once-weekly strength-training group rather than the twice-weekly training group,” says lead author Teresa Liu-Ambrose of the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia.

Is once a week enough?

Although the twice-weekly group was exercising less a year later, the once-weekly group was still active and showed a 15 percent improvement on their mental skills test as compared with the balance-and-toning group, the researchers found.

Liu-Ambrose believes it’s because the once-weekly group found it easier than the twice-weekly group to maintain the same level of physical activity of the original study. “Those who start a once-weekly strength-training program are more likely to stick with it,” she says.

In other words, while exercising more often may ideally be better for you, ultimately the best exercise program is one that you actually will keep doing.

Source: AARP.org

Contact Pure Home Care Services at (586) 293-2457 today!  If you live in Macomb County or the surrounding area, we can help you care for your loved ones.

Yoga has been practiced for more than 5,000 years, and currently, close to 11 million Americans are enjoying its health benefits.

According to Yoga Journal, 2.9 million Americans age 55 years or older regularly practice yoga for its health benefits, such as increased flexibility, lower blood pressure, easing of aches and pains, and improved balance. “In a culture that worships youth, yoga honors the aging process: Poses can be modified to every body type and level of ability, making classes accessible to anyone willing to step onto the mat,” the magazine reported.

An increasing body of research is showing how yoga can benefit aging adults. In a recent study at Indiana University, for example, older Veterans who had suffered strokes improved their balance and endurance after participating in twice-weekly yoga classes taught by a yoga therapist. An earlier study at the same university reported that older adults averaging 78 years of age improved muscle strength in the lower extremities and reduced their fear of falling after participating in twice-weekly hatha yoga classes during a 12-week period.

If you or your loved one want to find out more about yoga, the Yoga Journal website offers examples of therapeutic poses for elderly adults with conditions ranging from anxiety and back pain to fatigue, high blood pressure, mild depression and stress. An extensive list of free videos that demonstrate yoga exercises for seniors is also available in the Health section of eHow.com.

Source: Rightathome.net

If you would like more information about home care services in Sterling Heights, MI and surrounding areas, contact Pure Home Care Services at (568) 293-2457