Exercising, eating and sleeping
Your way to a longer, better life
Dear Reader, Once you reach midlife, it’s natural to start thinking forward to what life will be like after retirement. You probably have particular dreams and wishes for what you would like to do when you reach that stage. Or maybe you’ve already left the work force and want to have the energy (and health) to keep doing the things you love. Maybe you want to
perfect your golf swing or your tennis backhand — or perhaps travel across the United States or to other countries. Taking time to
enjoy your family and simply unwind after a lifetime of stressful jobs is another common
Robin Netherton
goal. What your goals are doesn’t matter. What matters is that you define them, so you can make sure you get them done. That’s the best
way I know to create a satisfying life once your time is no longer work-oriented.
Experience shows that middle-aged and older adults who take the time to identify their goals — and do what they need to do healthwise to meet those goals — have the best quality of life. Why? Because they are the
ones who are motivated to stick with healthy lifestyle habits. They know that picking the healthy option will allow them to stay fit and active longer, so they can take those trips, play with their grandchildren, or get out on the golf course.
This report will provide guidance to stay on top of your health and help you prevent problems before they start, so you can live the retirement you’ve dreamed of. After all, it is wise not just to map out your trips and the list of things you want to do as you age. You also
need to map out how to take care of yourself so you get to enjoy your later years in the best health possible. You have the power to make this happen.
Sincerely, Howard LeWine, M.D
Exercising as you age
No matter what your age, exercise is one of the best things you can do to keep your body and mind strong and improve your quality of life. Exercise can help prevent an astonishing range of ailments — without the side effects of medication. Among other things, it helps lower blood pressure, reduces your risk of heart attacks and strokes, helps manage blood sugar, helps keep your bones and muscles strong, improves your sleep, helps shrink abdominal fat, sharpens your thinking, and boosts your energy and mood. It can even extend your life. One large study of Americans ages 65 and over demonstrated that men and women who were at least moderately active stood to gain between three and 5.7 more years of life, depending on how often they exercised. Just as important, more of those years were lived free from disability.
Equally exciting, research is showing that simply getting up and moving around more during the day adds benefits on top of those
you gain from a formal exercise program. In
fact, the single most important thing you can
do to maintain mobility and independence into old age is to keep physically active. Yet, a lot of people complain that they don’t have time or can’t find a routine they like. Here’s
some help:
Stand up for your health
You don’t need to become a marathon runner to benefit from physical activity. In recent years, scientists have documented the value of simply getting up out of your chair and moving around. In fact, “move more and sit less” is
the first recommendation in the latest Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The government based this guidance on research showing a strong correlation between time spent sitting and a greater risk of death from all causes, especially heart disease. The risk of diabetes and certain cancers also increases with more time sitting. You can lower your risks of all of these conditions by standing and moving more — even if you already exercise. That’s not to say that exercise
doesn’t count. It does. But routine movement during the day adds to those benefits.
Why does prolonged sitting have such damaging consequences? One explanation is that it relaxes your largest muscles. When muscles relax, they take up very little sugar (glucose) from the blood, raising your risk of diabetes. In addition, sedentary behavior contributes to chronic, low-grade inflammation, which plays a role in heart disease and stroke.
Another point in favor of everyday movement is that it helps you burn more calories. Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic coined the term “non-exercise activity thermogenesis,” or NEAT, to refer to the energy you burn through ordinary activity that you don’t think of as exercise, such as fidgeting, carrying the laundry upstairs, or pacing while you talk on the phone. His studies have found these calories
add up, helping you control your weight.
Start an exercise program
In addition to standing and moving more, you’ll want to start a formal exercise routine, if you don’t have one already.
How much exercise is enough?
Exercise involves several components — aerobic conditioning, strength training, stretching, and balance exercises. You’ll need to
incorporate them all into your routine to reap the full benefits.
Aerobic exercise is responsible for many of the benefits of physical activity. It boosts heart health by lowering blood pressure, keeping arteries flexible, and reducing the risk of unwanted clotting. It promotes good lung function and improves blood flow to your brain, helping to keep you sharp. It helps control your weight and your blood sugar levels, improving diabetes management. It tunes up immune function, helping fight off infections. It improves sleep, especially energy-restoring deep sleep, and boosts your mood.
The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate physical activity a week. That works out to 30 to 60 minutes of moderate aerobic activity five days a week.
Strength training helps keep your muscles and bones strong as you age. It’s especially beneficial for people in their 50s or older, because it builds muscle mass, helping counteract
the muscle loss that occurs naturally with age. Strength training improves body composition, replacing fat with muscle and giving you a slimmer, firmer figure. It gives you more energy. It causes muscles to soak up glucose from the bloodstream and improves your insulin sensitivity. It helps prevent low back pain by promoting well-balanced, resilient core muscles, and helps reduce arthritis pain by building the muscles that support your joints.
The Physical Activity Guidelines recommend two or more sessions of strength training a week; each can take as little as 20 minutes.
The ideal routine works all the major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms).
Remember to bracket both aerobic and strength workouts with a brief warm-up (for example, five to 10 minutes of marching in place) and a cool-down.
Stretching is often overlooked, but it will help keep you limber, which can help you avoid certain types of injuries. It can help in numerous ways — relieving back pain, stiff muscles, a sore neck.
Balance exercises are important, too. Your balance skills begin declining in your third decade, though this won’t become a problem until later in life. At that point, however, balance problems can lead to devastating falls. The Physical Activity Guidelines recommend balance exercises for all older adults, but people of any age can benefit. You can try a formal program like yoga or tai chi that improves balance or simply challenge yourself by lifting one foot off the floor and counting to 25. (If this seems easy, try it with your eyes closed.)
Eating your way to a long, healthy life
Of course, you can’t talk about a healthful lifestyle without discussing healthy eating.
Dr. Walter Willett, former chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan
School of Public Health and one of the world’s leading nutrition experts, has devoted much of his career to understanding the many ways in which diet influences health. When he began, he suspected that a good diet could contribute to the prevention of heart disease and cancer. What surprised him was how many other ailments he could add to that list over time. “Aspects of diet play a role in the prevention of disease and dysfunction in almost every organ of the body,” he says.
What is the healthiest diet? These days there are so many diet plans it’s almost impossible to keep them all straight. Any diet book that becomes a blockbuster inevitably spawns variations, as publishers seek to capitalize on a trend — until the next big idea comes along, and throngs rush to embrace yet another new approach.
Even as the media latch on to new diet fads, the truth is that healthy diets have a lot in common, even when they might seem at first glance to be polar opposites. For example, the paleo diet includes meat but excludes grains and legumes, while the vegan diet includes grains and legumes but excludes meat and other animal products. Yet, both diets can work for different people. How? When planned well, each includes lots of vegetables and minimizes highly processed foods. Those are two of the common denominators
of a healthy diet. Following is a more detailed account. As you will see, there are no specific “superfoods” and no special ratio of protein to carbohydrates to aim for. Instead, it’s about choosing foods wisely.
Five principles of a healthy diet
While details may vary from diet to diet, all healthy eating plans have these five principles in common:
1. Lots of plants. Plant foods — vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds — offer a wealth of vitamins and minerals, as well as fiber and healthful compounds called phytochemicals (literally “plant chemicals”), natural substances in plants that offer humans a range of health benefits, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and even anti-cancer activity. At the same time, while most plant foods are high in nutrients, they are relatively low in calories. The combination of high
nutrient content and low calories — a quality known as nutrient density — means that a plant-heavy diet can be good for both health and weight loss.
2. Adequate protein. Getting enough protein, along with physical activity, is important for staying strong, healthy, and independent. But there are many ways to get that protein, and some are more healthful than others. People
who limit how much meat they eat tend to have lower risks for chronic diseases. Plant protein sources (beans, lentils, soy foods, nuts, seeds) and seafood offer the most health benefits — and if you eat a variety of these foods, you will get all nine essential amino acids. Soy has good amounts of all of them, comparable to levels found in animal proteins.
3. Minimally processed foods. A 2019 National Institutes of Health study definitively showed that eating a diet high in ultra-processed foods causes weight gain and unhealthy shifts in blood sugar and blood cholesterol.
For the healthiest diet, rely as much as possible on whole foods.
4. Limited saturated fats, added sugars, and sodium. The U.S. government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting saturated fat (found mainly in animal products) to less than 10% of daily calories. The same goes for added sugars (sugars added during cooking or processing).
5. Balance. To meet nutrient needs, it’s important to choose a variety of nutrient-dense foods across and within all food groups. This helps you get the nutrients you need without taking in too many calories.
Putting it into practice
In principle, the concepts of healthy eating are simple. The hard part is figuring out how to implement them on a day-to-day basis. The USDA recommends from five to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables daily, depending on your age and activity level — an amount that seems impossible to many people. But it’s actually not as hard as it sounds. A serving size of vegetables is just one cup of salad greens, or one-half cup of other cooked or raw veggies. A whole medium-sized piece of fruit or one-half cup of chopped fruit counts as a fruit serving. Below are some easy (and delicious) ways of eating better. If you aren’t already consuming plenty of fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods, it may be best to make changes gradually, one at a time, so you don’t feel overwhelmed and give up.
Sneak in more vegetables. There are many ways to do this. For example, try roasting vegetables along with whatever entree is in the oven. Roasting is a great way to let the deep, rich flavors of vegetables shine through, because their starches start to convert to sugar at around 275 ° F, releasing a deep, nutty sweetness. Or poach veggies in low-sodium chicken broth and white wine, with garlic, basil, or
tarragon for a flavor bonus. If you don’t like vegetables on their own, you can add pureed vegetables to such dishes as casseroles, lasagna, soups, spreads, and toppings. When making mashed potatoes, try substituting cooked, pureed cauliflower for half the potatoes.
Spice it up. The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 1 teaspoon of salt a day, and ideally closer to half a teaspoon. While most salt in the diet comes from processed foods, you can cut down on what you add at the table if you cook your food with herbs and spices. Try cayenne, curry powder, garlic, pepper, marjoram, oregano, paprika, parsley, sage, rosemary, or thyme for meats; caraway, basil, dill, marjoram, nutmeg, parsley, sage, or thyme with vegetables; cinnamon, cloves, ginger, or nutmeg with fruit. The possibilities are endless.
Experiment with new foods. To get a broader range of disease-fighting nutrients, think beyond broccoli and whole-grain pasta. Try new grains, vegetables, and fruits. Bulgur, farro, and quinoa are good grain alternatives.
Stick to healthy snacks. Eating small snacks during the day can keep you from getting so hungry that you overindulge at lunch or dinner, and can also help keep your energy and blood sugar on an even keel during the day. The key is finding healthy snacks you like, such as cashews and raisins, or apple slices with sunflower-seed butter. Try keeping a bowl of fruit on hand for when the munchies strike, and stash less-than-healthy snacks in out-of-the-way locations that are hard to reach.
Sleep: The simplest key to good health If you’re like many people, you’ll find it takes work to overhaul your diet and identify an exercise regimen you like and can stick with. By comparison, sleeping is relatively easy, and it can actually further both of the first two goals. When you’re well rested, you have the energy
to exercise, and you don’t feel the same need to scarf down sugar for energy. Sleep powers the mind, restores the body, and fortifies virtually every system in the body. Far from being a luxury, sleep is now known to be essential. In fact, sleep deprivation can be used as a form of torture.
And yet, as many as one in three Americans sleeps less than six hours a night — a trend that can have serious personal and public health consequences. Insufficient sleep increases the risk over time for a number of serious health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, and dementia.
If you find yourself waking unrefreshed, having difficulty falling or staying asleep, or feeling excessively fatigued during the day, set a goal for hours of sleep per night, just as you set goals for diet and exercise.
Tips for a better night’s sleep
Clearly, reaching your sleep goal doesn’t require the same kind of physical exertion that going to the gym does. But it may call for a more disciplined approach to sleep than you’re used to. The following tips are part of what doctors call “sleep hygiene” — a set of principles for maintaining healthy sleep patterns.
Make sleep a priority. In today’s world, it’s tempting to prioritize work and other activities over sleep. As a result, you end up going to bed long past your bedtime — and losing out on sleep. To remedy this, experts at the National Sleep Foundation recommend scheduling sleep like any other daily activity
and crossing it off your “to do” list when you turn in for the night. “Don’t make it the thing you do only after everything else is done,” they advise. “Stop doing other things, so you get the sleep you need.”
Establish and maintain a consistent sleep schedule and routine. Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning. A set sleep routine will “train” you to fall asleep and wake up more easily and keeps your sleep/wake cycle synchronized with your circadian rhythms.
Use the bed only for sleep and sex. Watch TV or read in a different room, so you associate your bed with sleep rather than activities like watching your favorite shows or playing games online.
Exercise during the day. Exercise is the only proven way to increase the amount of time you spend in deep sleep, the type of sleep that is most restorative for your energy. The more deep sleep you get, the less likely you are to awaken in the middle of the night, and the more rested you’ll feel.
Get outside during the day. Even if you’re not exercising per se, daylight exposure helps cue your brain to maintain a normal circadian rhythm.
Create a sleep sanctuary. People respond to cues in their environment. Removing the television, phone, and laptop from the bedroom reinforces that this room is meant for sleeping. An ideal environment is quiet, dark, and relatively cool, with a comfortable bed and minimal clutter. Heavy curtains and rugs can help
absorb sound. A fan or “white noise” machine can create a soothing soundscape. If the room isn’t dark enough when the lights are out, use a sleep mask.
Cut down on caffeine. For some people, a single cup of coffee in the morning means a sleepless night. That may be because caffeine blocks the effects of adenosine, a neurotransmitter thought to promote sleep.
Stop smoking or vaping. Nicotine is a central nervous system stimulant that can cause insomnia. This potent drug makes it harder to fall asleep because it speeds your heart rate, raises blood pressure, and stimulates fast brain-wave activity that indicates wakefulness.
Use alcohol cautiously. Alcohol depresses the nervous system, so a nightcap may help
some people fall asleep. However, the soporific effects disappear after a few hours. Drinkers have frequent awakenings. Also, because alcohol relaxes throat muscles and interferes with control mechanisms in the brain, it can worsen snoring and other nocturnal breathing problems.
Avoid excessive napping during the daytime. Prolonged napping can disrupt your natural sleep cycle and prevent you from feeling tired enough to fall asleep. Short naps (no more than 90 minutes), on the other hand, were found to lessen cognitive decline in older people in a study from China. For many people, naps of 30 to 45 minutes before 3 p.m. will provide a sufficient amount of sleep time to feel refreshed but not interfere with nighttime sleep.
If you can’t sleep, get up. If you’re still awake after about 20 minutes in bed, get out of bed and sit in a comfortable chair and read awhile to help yourself relax. Otherwise, you’ll set yourself up for tossing and turning.