Exercise & Fitness Archive

With its focus on body, mind, and breath, yoga shows promise for improving heart health.

A youthful attitude may lead to better eating and exercising habits.

The telltale sign is leg pain and fatigue that comes on with activity and goes away with rest.

Plenty of research shows that we tend to exhibit the health behaviors of people around us, and that partners can influence each other's behavior. The influence carries even more weight if an unhealthy partner is making a change for the better. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine Jan. 19, 2015, found that men and women were much more likely to make positive changes if their partners also changed their health behavior during the same period. The influence on a partner was significant: 67% of men took up physical activity if their wives did, but only 26% became active if their wives did not. The take-home message: get your partner on board if you both need to make healthy lifestyle changes.

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Even an hour's exercise a day won't protect you from an earlier death, if you spend most of the rest of your day sitting. That's the verdict of Canadian researchers who pored over data from 47 studies on the effects of sedentary behavior. When they combined the results of all the studies, the researchers found that regardless of their levels of physical activity otherwise, people who sat for long periods had an increased risk of developing a host of diseases. People who sat the longest had a 24% greater risk of dying, an 18% greater risk of heart disease, a 13% greater risk of cancer, and a 90% greater risk of diabetes. The results were published in the Jan. 20, 2015, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Better support for your spine is key in avoiding neck ache.

Chest pain, dizziness, and shortness of breath mean you should back off and call your doctor.

Aerobic exercise is not enough to fight belly fat, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. They say that weight training is also key to fighting the battle of the bulge. Researchers analyzed physical activity, weight, and waist circumference data for more than 10,000 men ages 40 and older, and found that healthy men who did 20 minutes of daily weight training had less of an increase in age-related abdominal fat compared with men who spent the same amount of time doing aerobic activities. Aerobic exercise alone was associated with less weight gain compared with weight training. The best results came from combining weight training and aerobic activity. The findings were published online Dec. 22, 2014, in Obesity. "Engaging in weight training or, ideally, combining it with aerobic exercise could help older adults lessen abdominal fat while increasing or preserving muscle mass," says Dr. Rania Mekary, the study's lead author and a researcher in Harvard's Department of Nutrition.

Abdominal fat is linked to heart disease, diabetes, bone loss, and decreased bone strength. You can fight back by aiming for the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week and starting a weight-training program if your doctor approves.

It appears that exercise may significantly reduce falls among people with less severe PD, and may improve balance and quality of life for anyone with PD.

Just as regular exercise has a host of health benefits for the body, staying mentally active appears to preserve memory and general sharpness. But for getting a good night's sleep, light workouts for both body and brain may be best, according to a study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The study focused on 72 people, ages 67 to 79, who reported poor sleep as well as declining mental sharpness. They were assigned at random to do either strenuous aerobic exercise or a gentler stretching routine, paired with either watching educational DVDs (followed by short quizzes) or engaging in more demanding computer-based brain training.