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One of the best moves you can make for your health is to get moving. “Walking is man’s best medicine” is a well-known quote from Hippocrates. Centuries later, we have multiple research studies that reveal the power of exercise as medicine. One study specifically compared exercise to common medications for heart disease, stroke, and prediabetes, demonstrating that exercise can have comparable outcomes with regard to lowering risk of death. Recent research also highlights the impact that even short doses of exercise can have on your mood and increased creativity. However, as when you stop taking a medicine, if you stop exercising, the benefits stop as well.

Finding ways to make exercise fun and engaging is key

Most people know exercise is good for their health, yet only about half of Americans meet the physical activity guidelines to accumulate 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week.

These days, making exercise more fun can include using apps on your phone or a fitness tracker, as well as using social media sites. Research has demonstrated that there is a relationship between using commercial physical activity apps and increased engagement in exercise.

Do certain people respond more favorably to using exercise apps?

A recent study explored the psychological mechanisms that come into play when people use apps to increase their levels of exercise. Researchers surveyed 1,274 male and female adults between the ages of 18 and 83, asking them questions online at one specific point in time (also known as a cross-sectional study).

You've resolved to exercise more, and you're looking for an online exercise video that will help you achieve your fitness goals. That's a great start, but there's more to choosing an exercise video than simply finding workouts that appeal to you. "Online exercise videos aren't regulated. And trying to keep up with a workout that isn't designed for older adults could lead to injury," says Dr. Edward Phillips, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School and Whole Health medical director at VA Boston Healthcare System.

Where to start
YouTube is a rich resource for effective exercise videos. You can find workouts designed for older adults from hospitals, government health agencies, academic centers (including Harvard Medical School), personal trainers, and senior centers. However, YouTube also contains scores of workout videos that could be risky for older adults. So it takes work to find a workout tailored to your needs.

Think you're doing your heart a favor by drinking diet instead of regular soda? That may be wishful thinking, according to a research letter published Nov. 3, 2020, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Researchers studied nearly 105,000 people who filled out three 24-hour dietary recall surveys every six months. During a 10-year follow-up, researchers tracked the participants' cardiovascular health.

Compared with people who drank neither sugary drinks nor artificially sweetened beverages, those who drank higher amounts of either type of beverage had a higher risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or other serious cardiovascular problem. "High" intake wasn't even that high: for both sugared and artificially sweetened drinks, the median intake per day was around 6 ounces, or about half a can of soda.

Although researchers accounted for many confounding factors (such as smoking, diabetes, and a family history of heart disease), the findings can't prove a causal link between either beverage type and heart disease. But they cast doubt on the notion that sugar substitutes are safer for the heart than regular sugar.

Your core is the stable part of your body that helps make everyday movements more efficient and safe — like whenever you reach, carry, walk, bend, or twist. A strong core offers other health benefits as you age in addition to proper movement (see "Get more from your core").

Some floor exercises like the plank and superman poses are great for engaging your core muscles. A plank pose is where you hold a push-up position — with straight arms or resting on your forearms — for 10 to 30 seconds.

With superman, you lie facedown with arms extended overhead, and you lift legs, shoulders, and arms off the floor simultaneously and hold for two to three seconds.

Increase the load
But if you want a different core workout, consider walk-and-carry exercises, says Eric L'Italien, a physical therapist with Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Center. He calls these moves "loaded carries" because you hold weights, such as dumbbells or kettlebells, while walking.

"Carrying a heavy object while you walk teaches you to brace your core, which engages much of your entire core musculature, including your shoulders, back, and hips," says L'Italien. Loaded carries also can improve everyday movements like holding and carrying groceries, moving furniture, or rising out of bed.

Hold and stroll
Here are three easy-to-do loaded carries to try. You can perform them together as a core-only workout or add one or more to your usual exercise routine.

"Do them before your regular workout to make your workout more challenging, or afterward, if you want to make the loaded carries feel more strenuous," says L'Italien. (If you're not already doing strength training, or you have a chronic health condition, first check with your doctor.)

Good news if you take a more leisurely approach to your workouts: a recent study found that people who performed harder workouts didn't live any longer, on average, when compared with people who did more moderate workouts. Researchers studied a group of people in Norway who participated in five years of supervised exercise training. The participants included 790 women and 777 men (with an average age of 73), divided into three groups. Everyone followed federal recommendations to get 30 minutes of moderate exercise on most days of the week. But in addition to that, one group received two supervised weekly sessions of high-intensity interval training. A second group added two supervised moderate-intensity continuous training workouts per week. All three groups continued their assigned workouts for five years.

At the conclusion of the trial, 4.6% of the participants had died, but there was no significant difference in death rates between the group that followed the modest federal exercise recommendations and the two groups that did the more intense workouts. In addition, all groups had similar levels of cardiovascular disease and deaths from cancer. However, that's not to say that participating in regular high-intensity workouts wasn't linked to any benefits. The participants who did the harder workouts had better outcomes on certain measures of mental health and physical fitness.

Getting enough vitamins through diet (or a multivitamin, if necessary) is one of the best ways to bolster your immune system. And you may wonder if vitamins can also ward off colds and other respiratory conditions. An observational study published Oct. 27, 2020, by BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health offers encouraging news. Researchers evaluated the self-reported diet information of more than 6,000 British adults over eight years. People who reported the highest intakes of vitamins A and E from both diet and supplements, and high intake of vitamin D just from supplements, had the fewest complaints of respiratory illness, such as colds, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The study doesn't prove that these vitamins prevented respiratory problems, but other studies have linked them to lower risks for respiratory disease. Vitamins are most effective when they come from diet. Good sources of vitamin A include liver; whole milk; cheese; carrots; and dark, leafy greens. Good sources of vitamin E include vegetable oils, nuts, and seeds. It's difficult to get enough vitamin D from food (such as fish or fortified milk), so taking 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 provides some insurance.

The roughly 38 trillion bacteria that dwell deep within your intestines perform many important tasks. Collectively known as the gut microbiota, these microbes help digest food, metabolize medications, and protect you from infectious organisms.

In many ways, your gut microbiota — which weighs about half a pound in total — functions somewhat like a distinct organ in your body. Just as you have a unique genome, you also have a unique gut microbiome, consisting of some eight million genes that control your microbiota. Scientists are still learning how the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome influence the health of the cardiovascular system.

A cholesterol connection?
One recent discovery involves a group of gut bacteria that can break down cholesterol in the intestines. Since the early 1900s, scientists had known that gut bacteria could transform cholesterol into a compound called coprostanol, but they didn't know which species were doing it. So researchers analyzed stool samples from 3,079 people to characterize their gut microbiomes and then sequenced nearly six million microbial genes.

They found that people with a gene they dubbed IsmA in their microbiome excreted up to 75% less cholesterol in their f***s than people who don't carry that bacterial gene. The presence of this gene (which makes enzymes that metabolize cholesterol) was also linked with lower blood cholesterol levels in the participants. The findings, published last year in the journal Cell Host and Microbe, could help explain why some people can consume more cholesterol in their diets with relatively little effect on their blood cholesterol levels.

Drinking coffee or green tea is associated with many health benefits, such as better cardiovascular health, lower inflammation levels, and a reduced risk for developing chronic disease. Now, a study published online Oct. 20, 2020, by BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care suggests tea and coffee consumption are also linked to a reduced risk for early death among people with diabetes. Researchers evaluated the health and self-reported lifestyle habits — including diet — of about 5,000 people in Japan over five years. Compared with people who didn't drink any coffee or green tea, people who drank the most had much lower risks of premature death from any cause: about 40% lower for people who drank either two cups of coffee or four cups of tea per day; and 63% lower for people who drank both four cups of tea plus two cups of coffee per day. The study is only observational and doesn't prove that the drinks keep people alive longer. But we know coffee and tea contain powerful plant compounds with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that are good for health.

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