If you have older family members or loved ones, you may worry about their health as they age. Aging increases the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and dementia. The good news is that adopting and maintaining a few key behaviors can help older adults live longer, healthier lives. As a family member, it’s important to encourage healthy lifestyle behaviors in your loved ones — it’s never too late to start!
Exercise offers multiple health benefits, and researchers are particularly interested in discovering how it affects the brain function of older adults.
Anxiety is the body’s natural response to stress. A person may feel anxious before a test or when waiting for important news.
It occurs when the body releases stress hormones. These hormones trigger an increase in heart rate and a narrowing of the blood vessels. Both of these changes can cause a person’s blood pressure to rise.
The number of people with neurodegenerative diseases is increasing rapidly. A 2022 analysis estimated that by 2050, around 153 million people will be living with dementia worldwide. Parkinson’s disease, the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, now affects over twice the number it did in 1990, with more than 6 million people living with the condition in 2016.
The trouble with stress is that it seeps into every area of your life — affecting your sleep, mood and the size of your waistline. The interactions between these factors were the subject of a recent study in the International Journal of Obesity, which found that people with high stress and poor sleep were less likely to achieve a 10-lb weight loss goal.
Isolation does strange things to the human mind. We’ve known since the 1980s that people who are more socially isolated tend to have worse health, but we still don’t know why loneliness is so closely linked to our health. Although the link between loneliness and poor health is well-established, scientists have only recently been able to take the first glimpses of what social isolation looks like in our brains.
It turns out that even with the great effort we put into training, taking a bit of time off can mean that we become "unfit" much faster than it took us to actually get in shape.
Heart diseases affect the heart and blood vessels. Almost half of all adults in the U.S. have at least one form of heart disease. Heart disease causes depend on your specific type of heart disease. There are many different types of heart disease.
Isn’t it remarkable the way certain smells can instantly transport you to a different place or time in your life? Perhaps the smell of fresh baked apple pie can bring you right back to your grandmother’s kitchen. Maybe the smoke of a campfire evokes your summers spent with childhood friends. Your sense of smell can awaken forgotten memories and different parts of your brain.
Recently, a study performed at the University of California, Irvine and published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience yielded some very interesting findings, which confirmed the deep connection between the sense of smell and memory.
Although you should expect to experience some forgetfulness with age, there is plenty you can do to minimize memory loss and even improve and enhance your memory as you get older.
