Walk away from your health problems

When Tony Bennett crooned “I Walk a Little Faster,” he was singing about how looking for love put some pep in his step. Looking for health can do it, too!

Walking is known as the sixth vital sign — an important indicator of current and future vitality — along with body temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation. That’s because your gait — stride, speed and balance — says a lot about your cognition and executive decision-making as well as your muscle tone and vision. Every step involves processing complex information about your surroundings, your balance, your cardio-respiratory function and overall strength.

Now a study has found that your ability to walk two-thirds of a mile without trouble indicates whether or not you’re headed for a bone fracture in the next five years. The research, published in JAMA Network Open, looked at data on over 265,000 adults 45 and older and found that women who said they were limited “a lot” in walking that distance had a 60 percent higher fracture risk than women with no limitation. For guys, the increased risk was over 100 percent.

When we talk about walking the walk — with a goal of 10,000 steps a day or the equivalent — it’s not because it’s kinda good for you. It is life-changing.

Alzheimer’s breakthrough

More than 6.5 million folks in America are living with Alzheimer’s disease and many more are undiagnosed. But AD may be easier to ID with a newly designed blood test. In January, a study in JAMA Neurology announced the development of a test that’s up to 96 percent accurate in identifying elevated levels of beta amyloid and up to 97 percent accurate in identifying tau, two substances associated with the development of AD. This is heralded as a way to catch the disease early (even pre-clinically) and take steps to ease its progression — and one day, if the right medications are developed, to reverse it.

However, the Alzheimer’s Association points out that up to 80 percent of folks with AD also have cardiovascular disease and “autopsy studies suggest that plaques (from Tau) and tangles (from beta amyloid) may be present in the brain without causing symptoms of cognitive decline, unless the brain also shows evidence of vascular disease.”

Prevention of heart disease sounds like a smart approach to reducing your risk of AD, so heart-healthy lifestyle choices offer double benefits.