An ongoing study of thousands of nurses has now released data on the 17,000+ women now over 70 years old. The results: “Women who were obese at age 50 were 79% less likely than women with a normal BMI at that age to be healthy survivors.” The criteria for “healthy survivors” is that they did not have cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, coronary bypass, congestive heart failure, strokes, kidney disease, and a host of other maladies. Moreover, those who gained weight between the ages of  18 and 50 were less likely to be healthy than those with a steady weight. Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Free Press tells us that “Rigorous exercise is hurting a generation trying to defy aging“. They claim the Baby Boomers are pushing themselves too hard, resulting in pain and injury in the pursuit of health. The exercise maladies they describe include back pain, sore shoulders, arthritic knees, tendinitis, and an estimated 282,476 sports related emergency department visits in 2008 (a side bar points out that this is out of 78.2 million Baby Boomers). While accidents do happen, the fact is that there is a lot you can do to avoid exercise related pain and injury.

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Today isn’t the actual anniversary of the event but close enough. On September 26, 1914, something seeming mundane happened. A baby was born to a family of French immigrants living in San Francisco. What actually happened was more auspicious. That baby was Jack Lalanne who over the weekend celebrated his 95th birthday. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine came to the conclusion that “Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.” That is, in the long term it doesn’t really matter whether a diet is high fat or low fat for the purpose of losing weight, as long as it has reduced calories. The obvious conclusion is that the right weight loss plan for any given person is the one they will actually follow long term.

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The other day, I got a postcard from Cenegenics Medical Institute, “the world’s largest age management medicine practice….” Their treatments are highly personalized, state of the art, and therefore not inexpensive; I have no doubt that their patients feel the results are worth every penny. The card advertises that “the Cenegenics Program of nutrition, exercise, and hormone optimization (when clinically indicated) can make you look and feel years younger!” [Emphasis theirs] Specific benefits may include decreased risk of age related disease, improved muscle tone, decreased body fat, increased energy, increased sex drive, and sharper thinking. So let’s look at that list a little more closely.

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