Staying Healthy Archive

The basic practice yoga exercises in "Intermediate Yoga"—a special health report from Harvard Medical School—includes sun salutation. Within this three-minute routine, you'll assume multiple positions, including lunge, plank, child's pose, upward-facing dog, downward-facing dog, and forward fold. To learn additional intermediate yoga exercises, visit: www.health.harvard.edu/iy

Harvard Medical School's "Intermediate Yoga" health report offers one routine known as Balance Practice. Among the exercises described is "alternate-nostril breath." This deep breathing exercise takes just a minute, but it helps balance both mind and body. To learn additional intermediate yoga exercises, visit: www.health.harvard.edu/iy

Most plant-based diets emphasize foods associated with heart benefits. However, some plant foods, such as fruit juices, refined grains, processed cereals, and potatoes, can be harmful. The goal is to emphasize heart-healthy plants.

Falls can lead to pneumonia, brain injuries, or muscle breakdown. Learn the risks so you can avoid them.

It's easy to see why falls are a top cause of injury and death among older adults. Crashing to the ground with force obviously can break a bone, or worse. But are you familiar with that "worse" part? Learn about fall risks now, so you can do as much as possible to avoid injuries in the future and maintain your mobility and independence.

Fractures

In older adults, about 90% of broken bones (fractures) happen because of a fall. Breaks commonly occur in the ribs, spine, wrist, arm, ankle, or hip.

Ask the doctor

Q. What are mRNA vaccines, and could they prevent other diseases besides infections?

A. The very first vaccines approved in the United States to prevent COVID-19 are a new type: mRNA vaccines. The way any type of vaccine works is to train a person's immune system to recognize and attack a target, like a virus, when it enters the body. A vaccine does that by "showing" the immune system either a harmless (dead or weakened) virus or a critical piece of the virus' protein coat. With the COVID-19 virus, that critical piece is called the spike protein.

Here's what to ask when email and phone calls are the main way to help loved ones in a long-term care facility.

Managing a loved one's care in a nursing home or an assisted living facility has always been challenging. And it's harder now that visitation is extremely limited to protect residents from COVID-19. So how can you check on your loved ones, make sure they're being cared for properly, and let them know you're there for them?

Direct communication

If your loved one is able to communicate well, a daily phone or video call is crucial. But remember that when you ask basic questions — "How are you feeling?" "Are you eating and drinking enough?" "Are you getting enough sleep?" — you may not get an honest answer. "They may just tell you what you want to hear," says Dr. Suzanne Salamon, associate chief of gerontology at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

How much weight, how many reps and sets, and how often? Here's what new guidelines suggest.

Old-fashioned resistance training — lifting heavy weights multiple times — is the best way for men to slow and even reverse age-related muscle loss, known as sarcopenia. It can also increase your strength, protect against falls, and help you live a more independent life.

Resistance training (also known as strength training) consists of doing upper- and lower-body exercises using free weights (like dumbbells, kettlebells, or barbells), weight machines, resistance bands, or just your own body weight.

Research we're watching

Your surgeon's birthday might be a bad day to get surgery. A study published Dec. 19, 2020, by The BMJ found that among Medicare beneficiaries 65 to 99 years old, those who had one of 17 common surgical procedures on their surgeon's birthday were more likely to die within 30 days of surgery than those who had surgery on other days during the year. To come to this conclusion, researchers looked at all fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries who underwent emergency procedures from 2011 to 2014. They tracked patient outcomes, making adjustments based on how severe the patient's illness was. Even after factoring in these differences, they still found that patients who underwent surgery on their surgeon's birthday had a higher death rate (6.9%) compared with those who did not (5.6%). The study authors suggested that this might have happened because surgeons were distracted by life events and were not as focused on work.

Exercise and recreational balls can play an important role in recovery and pain reduction.

A golf ball to ease foot pain? A kids' playground ball to recover from a knee injury? The combinations may sound foreign, but they're familiar approaches in the world of physical therapy. Here's how these tools of the trade (and the toy box) can help you.

A playground ball

This is the kind of inexpensive rubber or plastic ball (less than $10) you'll find at a grocery or big-box store. It's about the size of a soccer ball, but lighter. "We commonly use that type of ball for knee rehabilitation. We'll have someone do mini squats against the wall with the ball between the knees. Squeezing the ball strengthens the quadriceps muscles," explains Clare Safran-Norton, clinical supervisor of rehabilitation ­services at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.