Healthy eating for older adults Archive

This simple activity is one of the best ways to protect your heart.

Planning ahead can help you navigate the hazards of holiday overindulgence.

Research we're watching

Want to nudge down your cholesterol level? Try a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. New research adds to earlier evidence that among the whole grains, oats are the most effective choice when it comes to lowering cholesterol.

The findings were gleaned from 24 studies that looked at blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) in people who ate diets featuring whole-grain foods versus non-whole-grain control diets. Compared with the control diets, whole-grain diets lowered total cholesterol levels by an average of 4.6 points. Diets featuring oats proved to be slightly superior, dropping cholesterol levels by 6.5 points, on average. An added bonus: whole-grain diets don't appear to lower beneficial HDL cholesterol. The report appeared in the September 2015 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

This adapted version of the sport can help improve your strength, endurance, and balance.

When you think of boxing, you may picture greats like Rocky Marciano duking it out with Jersey Joe Walcott. But boxing isn't just a sport anymore. It's also a popular way to stay fit among older adults, through a version known as fitness boxing. There's no getting into a ring or taking any punches, so there's no risk of head trauma. Instead, fitness boxing has adapted the movements of the sport into exercise routines. "This kind of boxing has many health benefits, because it constantly requires you to think, change your position, and change your posture," says physical therapist Linda Arslanian, director of rehabilitation services at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's hospital.

Avoid food that's been left out on a table for more than two hours, and handle food properly if you're doing the cooking.

You may drink coffee because it tastes good or helps you wake up. But the popular brew is also associated with health benefits, such as reducing the risk for heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. Now a study from Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute published Aug. 17, 2015, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggests that regular consumption of caffeinated coffee may be associated with a reduced recurrence of colon cancer, and even a reduced risk of death. The study included nearly 1,000 people with stage 3 colon cancer. They filled out questionnaires about their dietary patterns during chemotherapy, and then again six months after treatment was completed. People who drank four or more cups of coffee per day were 42% less likely to have cancer return than non-coffee drinkers, and were 34% less likely to die from cancer or any other cause.

This type of study doesn't prove that coffee drinking caused the lower chance of cancer recurrence and death. A randomized trial is needed to show cause and effect. But researchers are encouraged by the results. "Regular coffee intake has been associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, and it may be that through a similar mechanism, coffee may also improve outcomes for people with advanced colon cancer," says Dr. Charles Fuchs, senior author on the paper.

There's no magic pill you can swallow to make you live longer, but what about food? A study from the Harvard School of Public Health published Aug. 4, 2015, in BMJ found that people who ate spicy foods almost every day had a 14% lower risk of death than people who ate spicy foods once a week. Researchers evaluated the health and diet information of almost 500,000 people in China from 2004 to 2008, then followed up with them a few years later. The study was observational, so it didn't show that spicy foods caused people to live longer, only that people who regularly ate spicy food—especially food with fresh and dried chili peppers—were less likely to have died during the study period than those who ate spicy food less frequently. "Some evidence from other studies suggests the bioactive ingredients in spicy foods such as capsaicin may lower 'bad' cholesterol and triglycerides and improve inflammation," says study author Dr. Lu Qi.

If you'd like to add more chili pepper to your diet, stick with something healthy, such as turkey chili or lentil pilaf, and skip the greasy tacos. But be careful: spicy foods may trigger an increase in gastric acid in some people, causing heartburn.