CATEGORIES: Elder Law, Elder Care Attorney, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, NC.
For obese people over age 64, the combination of aerobic exercise and weight training is better for improving physical functioning than either form of exercise alone, a new study concludes.
Each type of exercise, and a combination of the two, produced 9 percent reductions in body weight over six months. But the combination provided the best mix of protection against muscle and bone loss with improved aerobic capacity. Aerobic exercise and weight training (also known as resistance training) “have additive effects in improving your physical function,” chief author Dr. Dennis Villareal of the Baylor College of Medicine and the DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston told Reuters Health by phone.
The findings in the New England Journal of Medicine have broad significance because one third of older adults in the United States are obese, and frequently experience all the health risks that obesity creates.
Lifestyle and Southern diet factors place a large number of North Carolina seniors at risk for obesity, and being sedentary places seniors at an even greater additional risk. Those risks, however, are mostly preventable. An improved diet, and regular exercise, can help seniors remain independent, active, healthier, happier, and in control of their business and legal affairs much longer, adding to quality and length of life.
Sources:
National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, (May 24, 2017).
Dennis Villareal, at al, Aerobic or Resistance Exercise, or Both, in Dieting Obese Older Adults, New England Journal of Medicine (May 18, 2017), http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1616338