harvardhealth_news_UNDEFINED
People new to exercise should do it whenever they feel motivated and energized. Morning workouts may help people feel energized and creative and lead them to make more careful food choices throughout the day. But people’s joints and muscles may feel more limber in the afternoon, and an afternoon workout can provide a healthy, energizing substitute for a 3 p.m. snack.
People with heart attack symptoms have avoided emergency rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. But waiting too long for diagnosis and treatment can be dangerous. Two classic heart attack symptoms, chest pain and breathlessness, are also common symptoms of COVID-19. People who show up with those symptoms will be tested for COVID and asked to isolate until testing negative. But their initial workup for a possible heart attack will otherwise be essentially the same as in the past.
People should be cautious about weight-loss diets that restrict a specific category of food (such as carbohydrates, fats, or even animal products) without focusing on the overall quality of the foods. Diets with lots of ultra-processed foods or red meat may contribute to poor heart health. But people can lose weight on less-extreme versions of either low-carb or low-fat diets, as long as they focus mostly on unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
In a study published online Jan. 25, 2021, by General Psychiatry, people who took afternoon naps performed better on cognitive tests (scoring better on location awareness, verbal fluency, and memory) compared with people who didn’t nap.
In a study published online Jan. 12, 2021, by Annals of Internal Medicine, people who wore stable, supportive shoes reported greater reductions in knee pain than people who wore flat, flexible shoes.
Isolation is associated with the potential for cognitive decline, so it is important to reach out to others and stay socially connected. Ways to do that include using social and video apps to see and chat with friends or join an online club; making phone calls to family and friends to catch up; or signing up for a buddy-call service at a senior center to be paired with a volunteer who will call and offer conversation.
There are many ways to maximize lung health. For example, exercising gets the heart and lungs pumping, causing a person to take deep breaths. Those deep breaths open up all areas of the lungs and assist in clearing out accumulated lung secretions (mucus). Other ways to maximize lung health include avoiding exposure to air pollution, quitting smoking, practicing deep breathing exercises, controlling weight, and getting out of a chair at least once per hour to take some deep breaths.
Several types of physical rehabilitation are available to assist with recovery after medical problems such as a fall, illness, or surgery. Inpatient rehab is prescribed after a hospital stay, when one isn’t well enough to go home; it offers comprehensive care from doctors, nurses, therapists, and other health professionals. At-home rehab sends skilled professionals—including nurses and therapists (physical, occupational, or speech)—into a person’s home for therapy sessions. Outpatient rehab is for people well enough to get to a rehab facility throughout the week.
Compared with people who didn’t take aspirin, people ages 70 or older who took aspirin at least twice per week had a 20% lower risk for developing colorectal cancer—but only if they had begun the therapy by age 65.
Age-related macular degeneration can be slowed or treated. There is hope for future treatments, and many approaches are being studied, such as gene therapy and stem cell therapy. For now the only advice to help ward off AMD is to practice healthy lifestyle habits such as exercising, not smoking, controlling blood pressure, and eating a healthy diet. Getting regular, comprehensive eye exams is one of the best ways to detect eye disease early and save vision.