News from the lab coat world that could aid your performance:
Hot workouts, cool results: You know this blazing hot, record-setting summer we just endured? The one when every workout seemed like it was taking place in an equatorial rain forest under a sunlamp? If you gutted out your summer workouts, you should be an animal in fall’s cooler weather.
Another reason you should go for a walk today: Putting in six to nine miles a week may help you remember that you left your keys in the freezer. This from a University of Pittsburgh study published in the journal Neurology that followed 300 seniors whose average age was 78 at the beginning of the study in 1989. Over time — about 13 years — one-third had developed “mild cognitive impairment or dementia.” But testing showed that more active walkers in the group had more gray matter and thus better cognitive skills. Thus, they were able to remember that after getting home from the grocery their hands were full as they pushed their way through the front door, climbed the stairs, entered the kitchen, shimmied the freezer door open with an elbow and put the ice cream in the freezer — along with the keys they were still clasping in their right hand.
Last week I heard an ominous observation on a British TV show. The context escapes me, but the phrase, intended as a benign descriptor, stuck. In referring to the United States, the narrator referred to us as “currently the most powerful nation in the world.”
From the research world comes more compelling evidence to be active …
Bike to work: It’s good for your heart
Remember when people didn’t have gym memberships, didn’t run 5Ks, didn’t sweat to the oldies — and not because they hadn’t been recorded yet? This would have been back when we walked to the factory where they had physically demanding jobs. When we were more concerned about how many $ our clothes cost, not how many Xs came before the L.
From the research world comes more incentive to stay active — or become so — as you age.
From the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University comes “preliminary evidence” that keeping your brain sharp can help you physically. Einstein researchers took a group of 20 “frail” seniors (age 70 or older who walk less than a meter per second) and divided them into two groups. Ten went about their normal routines, 10 participated in the MindFit brain fitness program: For 45 to 60 minutes a day, three days a week for eight weeks, they carried out tasks that honed their cognitive abilities: focusing, planning, organizing, problem solving. After eight weeks, the MindFit folks walked slightly faster, but their ability to walk and talk at the same time improved significantly.