Want to reach the century mark?

There are seven simple ways to boost your odds of living an additional 50 years after age 50, noted cardiologist Clyde Yancy, MD, recently told delegates at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Vancouver. To learn more, I spoke with Dr. Yancy, chief of the division of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a past president of the American Heart Association. Here are his live-longer tips:

1. Walk the walk. Walking briskly for 20-30 minutes daily will help you manage your weight and your blood pressure and ward off heart disease, says Dr. Yancy. Want to do more? “People who engage in vigorous activity for 70 minutes a week have an added survival advantage,” he adds.

2. Keep a lid on LDL (bad) cholesterol. “There is a sharp, linear relationship between LDL and heart attacks and strokes,” notes Dr. Yancy. Aim for an LDL cholesterol level of under 100 – or a level of 50 if you’ve already had a heart attack — and a total cholesterol count of 200 or less.

3. Eat to your heart’s content. Be sure to include the heart-healthy foods listed below in your diet, while limiting or avoiding less nutritious choices:

* 4-5 cups of fruit and vegetables daily.

* 2 or more palm-sized servings of oily fish weekly, such as halibut, mackerel, salmon and trout.

* Fiber-rich foods. Choose whole, not refined, grains, including whole-wheat bread and pasta, brown or wild rice, whole oats, whole-grain cereal, popcorn, bulgur (cracked wheat) barley and quinoa.

* A handful of nuts four times weekly:

- Less saturated fat. Limit sat fat to no more than 7% of total calorie intake.

- No more than two servings weekly of processed lunchmeat.

- No more than four sugar-sweetened beverages weekly – that’s about 450 calories worth. Sweetened beverages include flavored coffees, fruit-flavored punch, and soft drinks.

4. Be aware of your blood pressure (BP). “Having a normal BP is one of the most important steps we can take toward good heart health,” Dr. Yancy maintains. Starting at age 20, the American Heart Association recommends blood pressure screening once every 2 years, if your blood pressure is less than 120/80 mm Hg. If it’s higher than that, you may need more frequent screenings, and should talk with your doctor about how to get your BP under control.

5. Stay on top of your blood sugar. “As long as your blood sugar is less than 100 mg/dl, you won’t have diabetes,” Dr. Yancy promises. The American Diabetes Association recommends having your blood sugar checked at least every three years, starting at age 45; or at any age if you are overweight or obese and also have one or more other risk factors, such as a family history of diabetes.

6. Don’t smoke. “Nicotine accelerates progression of plaques embedded in blood vessels, leading to heart attack and stroke,” Dr. Yancy cautions. Even if you don’t smoke, stay out of smoke-filled spaces; breathing secondhand smoke also ups your heart attack risk.

7. Aim for a better BMI. Carrying too many pounds is bad for your heart – and the rest of your body, Dr. Yancy warns. To check your heart health and calculate your body mass index, log onto www.heart.org\mylifecheck. If your BMI is greater than 25, you’re considered overweight. If it’s 30 or above, you’re obese. Either way, talk to your doctor about ways to trim down.

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To learn more about heart health, diet and longevity, check out this recent article in Clinical Geriatrics, and these online sources: Mayo Clinic, and the National Institute on Aging .For more news on these topics, also check out these Healthy Outlook Blog posts: “Five Keys to a Long, Healthy Life,” “A Winning Weight-Loss Recipe: Self-Compassion,” and “Free Weight Loss App Combines Calorie Counter and Food Diary.”

Scientific proof mounts: Be happy and live longer.

That’s what British researchers found when they asked nearly 4,000 people, aged 52 to 79, to spend a typical weekday recording their emotions and then checked back an average of five years later to find how many study participants were still alive. Those who had scored the highest “positive attitude” (PA) had a substantially longer survival rate.

Only 3.6 percent of the high-PA group had died, compared to 4.6 percent of the medium-PA and 7.3 percent of the low-PA.  The group highest on happiness ended up with a 35 percent lower risk of dying.

“We were surprised that measures obtained over one single day might predict so strongly,” said Andrew Steptoe, a University College, London psychology professor who co-authored the study with Jane Wardle, a clinical psychologist who directs UCL’s Health Behavior Unit.

The study, published in November in the Washington, DC-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is significant because emotions were recorded real-time rather than recalled weeks or months later. Life remembered is not always life as lived, Dr. Steptoe explained. Using a simple pen-and-paper diary and a four-point rating scale, participants paused four times during the day to assess how happy excited, content, worried, anxious and fearful they felt.

Findings included:

*The “happiest” people were slightly younger and more likely to be male and married.

*Positive emotions overall were lowest at 7 a.m. and highest at 7 p.m.

*Ethnicity, paid employment, education and presence of serious disease made no significant difference in PA.

*Smoking was less common and physical activity higher among those with higher PAs.

*Happier people had higher opinions of their own health.

The study joins a growing body of research which links being happy with living longer. “Happiness is no magic bullet, but the evidence is clear and compelling that it changes your odds of getting disease or dying young,” reports Ed Diener, University of Illinois psychology professor emeritus and lead author of a recent review of studies related to happiness. “The overwhelming majority of studies support the conclusion that happiness is associated with health and longevity.”

One way researchers account for the link is theorizing that happier people lead healthier lives, but Professors Steptoe and Wardle suspect biological processes are also at work. “In other research, we have found differences in stress hormones and in immunological defenses that may be relevant,” Professor Steptoe explained.

Meanwhile, all signs point to cultivating an upbeat outlook if you want to add more birthdays to your life – and enjoy them.

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Track and manage your own emotions with our Moody Me mobile app. Take a short quiz to find out how happy you are. Check out our blog posts to learn how putting a smile on your face may make you happier. You might also like these related Healthy Outlook posts: “Journaling for Health and Peace of Mind,” “Gratitude: What Science Shows,” and “Journal Writing for Breast Cancer Patients.”

Published by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the survey—now in its sixth year—identifies current trends to help guide personal trainers, fitness instructors and other fitness professionals in their programming for the coming year. By focusing on fitness tactics with staying power, the survey also distinguishes trends from shorter-lived crazes.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is what’s missing from this year’s list: Pilates, which was among the top 10 trends in 2008, 2009 and 2010, now has fallen out of the top 20 for the second consecutive year. “My thought all along was, this is a fad, not a trend,” says Walter R. Thompson, PhD, regents professor of exercise science at Georgia State University and author of the study. “Sure enough, it stayed out of the top 20 again.”

Thompson is likewise skeptical of a newcomer to this year’s list: Zumba and other dance workouts. “I’m not convinced it will stay there,” he says. Some rankings are partly driven by the economy and might score higher in some regions: “Clubs have to hire instructors with specialized training, and those classes cost more. Zumba is a good example,” he says. “It scored well in the Northeast but isn’t as popular in the South, where unemployment is still at 10 percent.”

The 2,620 respondents selected these trends as the top 10 for 2012

1. Educated, certified and experienced fitness professionals. As the practice of hiring a personal trainer has gone mainstream, the field has been flooded with so-called trainers whose only “education” was losing weight or playing on the local football team. ACSM members want that to stop, and have kept proper certification for trainers in the number-one spot for five years.

2. Strength training. Respondents have voted strength training as a top-10 choice for all six years of the study, reflecting their strong position that muscle-building should be a part of everyone’s exercise routine.

3. Fitness programs for older adults. It’s no surprise that as baby boomers age, programs catering to their needs grow in popularity. Age-appropriate programs have proven a strong trend, staying in the top 10 since the study began.

4. Exercise and weight loss. Most weight-loss programs now include exercise as a vital feature, but exercise as a weight-loss tactic didn’t appear among ACSM’s top 10 until 2011.

5. Children and obesity. With growing recognition of childhood obesity as a health crisis in America, fitness professionals have started designing programs specifically for kids. It has remained a strong trend for all six years of the study.

6. Personal training. As certified trainers become more accessible and affordable, the practice of hiring a trainer has become common. At this writing, several states have introduced legislation requiring trainers to become licensed. Thompson, who is called to testify in personal injury cases at least twice a year, says professional trainers endorse licensing efforts.

7. Core training. Although stability balls and other “balance equipment” haven’t appeared in the top 20 for several years, core training in general remains a strong trend, affirming the importance of core strength to overall safety and agility.

8. Group personal training. Exercising in small groups allows people to get individual attention more affordably than if they hired a trainer alone. Creative fitness professionals who package their services for groups of several people can potentially reach more customers and boost their own incomes.

9. ZUMBA and other dance workouts. Interval-style exercise looks like fun when students are dancing to Latin music—but are dance workouts a lasting fitness trend? “Ask someone who buys the DVDs in December if they’re still exercising to them in March,” Thompson says, laughing.

10. Functional fitness. ACSM defines functional fitness as “using strength training to improve balance, coordination, force, power and endurance” in their daily activities. This fitness approach, which has appeared in the top 10 for most of the past six years, often overlaps with fitness training for older adults.

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Read the entire Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2012 in the ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal online. Read more about the health benefits of exercise, how it enhances physical fitness, and GE’s cool new Fit Friendzy Exericse Challenge App.

If you go off your diet on a holiday, all the diet gurus tell you don’t get discouraged, just go right back on it the next day.     But compulsive eating experts believe that dieting to make up for overeating is self-defeating.  If you’re approaching food in a healthy way in the first place — i.e. eating whatever you want (but in moderation), paying attention to your body’s signals of hunger and satiety, and not eating out of emotional rather than physical hunger — you won’t feel like overeating on the holidays.   Studies have shown that willpower is limited and eventually you run out of it, which is one reason why diets don’t work in the long run.

“Every diet triggers an equal and opposite binge,” say Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter, co-authors of the anti-diet classic Overcoming Overeating.  “Most people have binges or mini binges on holidays because the rest of the year they’re constantly telling themselves they should, or shouldn’t, eat this or that,” says psychoanalyst Munter, who also co-authored When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies with Hirschmann.   “As soon as you put a food off-limits, start dieting, or restrict intake, those foods start to ‘glitter.’”

When food glitters, it becomes special; it becomes a tranquilizer rather than a fuel.   Many of us have gotten out of touch with the fact that food is a fuel we need to keep going, just like a car needs gas.   Your body not only tells you when it needs gas, it even tells you what kind of gas it needs, and when it’s full   Those of us who have dieted for a lifetime have lost those natural signals. This is why study after study has shown that diets can actually cause weight gain.

“Food is the centerpiece of early human life,” Munter explains.   “When a baby is hungry, she experiences terrible distress, which gets relieved when a bottle or breast is put in her mouth.  We get confused because later on we feel that eating relieves psychological as well as physical distress.”

The answer is to feed ourselves the way we feed infants.  Munter calls it “demand feeding for adults.”  If someone legalizes all foods and doesn’t choose foods according to what’s fattening, but rather pays attention to when she is physically hungry, asks her body what kind of fuel it needs and starts paying attention to when she’s had enough, binges aren’t going to happen.   “Each time you feed yourself out of physical, rather than emotional hunger you take care of yourself and strengthen yourself,” says Munter.   “You actually re-mother yourself by learning to distinguish emotional from physical distress.”

If someone is using the overcoming overeating approach, she is looking forward to, not dreading, that extravagant holiday dinner.  She might have a little snack earlier, but when she gets to dinner she asks herself, “What does my body most want?”   That might actually be turkey breast and vegetables, not stuffing or pumpkin pie.  Our bodies actually tell us when we need healthy food.   The best way to avoid cramming down the pie and cookies is to promise yourself that you’ll have them around during the year.   If you know you’ll always have your favorite foods available and that they’ll never be off-limits, you won’t feel the need to eat the 3,000-calorie average Thanksgiving dinner.    If your hostess keeps pushing you to have more, the greatest compliment is to say, “I’m too full, but I’d love to take some home.”

Demand feeding takes commitment and practice, and it’s very scary.    Unrestricted eating terrifies dieters who are afraid they will go on an endless binge and gain a ton of weight.  Surprisingly, that’s not what happens.    Having your favorite foods around is very comforting.  After feeding yourself on demand for a while you’ll know when you’re emotionally rather than physically hungry, and start eating what your body needs instead of stuffing your face with whatever is in front of you.  When you eat mindfully, you’ll know when you’re satisfied and be able to stop eating.

“The key to demand feeding is, when you want to eat for emotional reasons, ask yourself, ‘What part of me is upset?’  Each time you do that you learn to turn to yourself instead of food,” explains Munter.    “You have to become competent at all kinds of self-soothing,” not just eating for comfort.

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For more information, here’s an article about mindful eating, an important part of the overcoming-overeating approach. To learn more about smart eating habits, take a look at these Healthy Outlook Blog posts: “Small Steps Can Lead to Long Term Weight Loss,” “A Weight Loss Diet Based on DNA,” and “Pic Healthy Photo Food Diary Mobile App.”

Visit a playground and you’re almost certain to see happy children running, climbing and sliding to fun and fitness. What you usually don’t see are adults, particularly seniors, out and about.

That’s about to change. In October, more than 200 volunteers gathered in Seattle to build a playground for all ages. In addition to traditional play structures for children, Tudor Square Park now offers adult elements, including fitness stations, walking paths and balance and flexibility apparatus. “It’s a truly multi-generational space for people of all ages to play, get active and even gather for family reunions, picnics and more,” says Nikki Bonifer, Medicare marketing director for Humana.

The healthcare provider and KaBOOM, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting play for America’s children, are spearheading an effort to build multi-generational playgrounds around the U.S.. Humana found that nearly one-third of seniors desire multigenerational playgrounds and reunion spaces where families can gather, exercise and build memories. The goal, says Bonifer, is to create “a lasting neighborhood legacy by building spaces for all generations to play and stay active for years to come.”

A recent study from the National Council on Aging and Humana found that these facilities could be a boon to seniors. Seven in ten say that they exercise for 30 minutes at least three times per week. Meanwhile, playgrounds benefit children—many of whom don’t get adequate exercise and have minimal interaction with other generations on a daily basis. According to a study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), only one in five children in the U.S. live within a half mile of a park or playground.

In addition to Seattle, community groups in New Orleans, Greensboro, Albuquerque, Tucson, Nashville, Orlando, and San Antonio have constructed multi-generational playgrounds in recent weeks. In most cases, the projects are completed within a single day. Humana and KaBOOM hope to team up with more local communities to build additional multi-generational playgrounds in the future. Says Bonifer: “The goal is to create truly multi-generational spaces for families to enjoy for years to come.”

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Visit the KaBOOM website to find out about an iPhone app called Playgrounds that helps you locate playgrounds in your area. You can download it from iTunes. A KaBOOM report called Play Matters offers insights into ways to improve childhood play. Also check out a Healthy Outlook Blog post, “Kick Your Kids Out Now,” which discusses ways to get kids engaged in outside exercise.

One in 3 Americans has high blood pressure and many of them don’t know it because they haven’t had their blood pressure checked for this silent condition that raises the risk for heart attacks and strokes. Read the real-life stories of some of the men and women who are diagnosed and are taking smart steps to achieve their blood pressure goals in the NIH MedlinePlus magazine: Ron Tucker, 42, says, “No more grabbing a burger and fries at a fast food joint for lunch, starting now. My wife Monica has already volunteered to fix some new recipes–if I help.” What steps are you taking to keep your blood pressure under control and reduce your heart attack risk?

Some studies suggest that obesity is contagious–and a new study now finds that the opposite also seems to be true. When obese people get cognitive-behaviorial therapy, their families also get a bit trimmer, because they “catch” healthier lifestyle habits and improve their attitudes about eating. Among the best habits to promote this very positive “ripple effect” are tracking daily calories and keeping a food diary.  And now there’s a cool and convenient app for that, GE’s free weight-loss app combines a food diary and calorie counter.

Research shows that the simple act of recording what you eat helps curb the urge to overindulge, with a Kaiser Permanente study showing that people who keep a daily food diary had double the weight loss of those who didn’t write down what they ate. In the new study, Reuters reports, Italian researchers found that six months after a family member started cognitive-behavior therapy aimed at changing unhealthy attitudes about food, relatives had also showed changes for the better, cutting, on average, more than 200 calories a day, and also eating a bit less fat and refined carbs.

What weight-loss methods are working for you or a family member?

Good news for college freshmen! Weight gain may be just a myth.

Guest blogger Andrea Campbell is the author of Your Corner of the Universe: A Guide to Self-Therapy Through Journal Writing and other books. She is a member of American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Neurologist Richard Restak observed that dealing with the daily raw emotions of patients can be stressful and at times discouraging for him and other doctors involved in similar specialties. He believes that writing things down has helped him to make order out of life’s chaos, and that switching between two very different career activities, physician and author, has given his life stability.

Traumatic experiences such as the death of a loved one, fighting a recurring disease or surviving abuse create anxiety. When people suffer an illness or emotional upheaval they have an inherent need to discuss or confront the experience. Consistent journal writing can serve as stress relief. The act of converting emotions into words changes the way a person thinks—and this personal narrative helps them to summarize, store and cope with their feelings more efficiently. Here’s a look at other potential benefits:

* Better Health – Writing about their chronic conditions can help boost the health of patients who suffer from asthma and arthritis. “We looked at writing about the most stressful experience of one’s life in an emotional way,” says Arthur A. Stone, Ph.D. at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and co-author of this study. Over four months, one group wrote about their plans for the day, while the others wrote out feelings about a stressful event, all the while continuing their regular medical treatment. After being evaluated, researchers found that 47% of the patients who wrote about their feelings showed improvement after 4 months, while only 24% of the other group did. However, the study did not evaluate whether these health improvements would persist beyond 4 months.

* Better Coping Skills – According to a recent Baylor University study, men with testicular cancer demonstrated improved mental health after five weeks of writing positive thoughts. “There’s a lot of research that takes this writing-based approach…but we applied this line of research to the testicular cancer context for the first time that we are aware of,” says Mark T. Morman, Ph.D. and director of graduate studies at Baylor University. “We think writing about the experience could add to the therapy and can help with recovery and quality of life issues after treatment, as the men try to get on with their lives.”

* Handling Grief – After a loved one dies, the emotional devastation for family and friends may be accompanied by an upset stomach, frequent headaches, shortness of breath or a tightening in the throat and many other physical symptoms. Much has been written about the various stages of grief, but an article in the Mayo Clinic Health Letter suggests that keeping a journal and writing a letter to the deceased may help to alleviate feelings of anxiety and the associated discomfort. Writing out words left unsaid, regrets, and thoughts about loss isn’t a cure for grief, but the process can help people cope with feelings that may be too painful to express verbally.

* Making Sense of Emotions – The world may feel unsafe or out of control but venting on paper is not enough. A study of the effects of journaling on students at the University of Iowa showed that if someone only writes about stressful emotions, doing so might actually make things worse. The study found the combination of writing down one’s feelings about traumatic events, and initiating efforts to understand and make sense of them offered greater benefits than simply writing down negative emotions.  In other words, a key to better health is to free-flow write about feelings, then try to make sense of your reactions to life events and learn from them. By journaling, you give yourself permission to be totally honest and review your experiences in a thoughtful manner in order to enhance feelings of control and mastery over the traumatic event.

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For additional information on how to write about traumatic experiences download “Emotional Processing of Traumatic Events,” or pick up “Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative.” For tips on journal writing see “Writing and Health: Some Practical Advice.” For a look at how keeping a food diary may help with weight loss, check out our blog post, “Free Weight App Combines Calorie Counter and Food Diary.”

The message should have registered by now:  too much food and too little exercise are making our kids dangerously fat. The statistics from the Centers for Disease Control are staggering:  almost 1 in 6 children in the U.S. between the ages of 2 and 19 are obese, a level that’s nearly tripled since 1980. What’s more, the trouble begins in babyhood, according to a new report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine, which estimates that 10 percent of infants and toddlers are overweight – and may be heading for an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and other health problems in later life.

But while overeating and inactivity have been tagged as the leading causes of childhood obesity, they’re not the only factors to blame for the epidemic. In an effort to battle this spreading health threat on all fronts, scientists are also tracking other contributory causes.

At the University of Illinois, a multidisciplinary team of researchers is studying how various cultural, environmental, and family factors affect the weights of about 400 children aged 3-5 from various socioeconomic backgrounds. “The issue is more complex than just how much you eat and how much you move,” says team member Sharon Donovan, Professor of Nutrition. The Illinois researchers are identifying and investigating influences ranging from genetic changes to family relations to shopping habits – including bulk-buying at discount stores – in their ongoing study. “We believe that effective intervention needs to be at every level,” Donovan says.

Elsewhere, other researchers are looking into a variety of factors that may worsen obesity levels. Among the possibilities they’ve discovered:

*Stressful Surroundings:  Researchers at Stanford University Medical School have found that children who grow up in troubled homes and violent neighborhoods are twice as likely to be obese as those whose childhood is less traumatic. The study of 710 children from a poor, crime-ridden section of San Francisco suggests that kids who experience high levels of adversity suffer a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

*Long-Term Bottle Feeding:  Parents who keep their kids on the bottle past the age of two raise the risk of obesity by about 33 percent, according to a review of data on 6,750 children at Temple University Center for Obesity Research.

*Food Commercials:  Research at the UCLA School of Public Health suggests that overweight kids are harmed by the fusillade of food advertising they see on TV, not the programs they watch in between.  The study of 3,563 kids under the age of 12 found that those with the highest BMI watched the most commercial TV; non-commercial TV and DVDS showed no similar association.

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For more information about the treatment and prevention of childhood obesity, visit the American Academy of Pediatrics website and Let’s Move, the White House website to promote children’s health. To learn about what families can do to fight the problem, see our blog entries, “3 Healthy Family Habits to Prevent Childhood Obesity” and “Exergames: Interactive Video Games to Boost Fitness.”