Your health: Avoiding illness

Fight off those germs

November marks the start of cold and flu season, and a time when we are more vulnerable to other infectious diseases. To fight off the germs, it's important to keep up our body's defenses and protect ourselves.

The Harvard Medical School stresses keeping your immune system functioning, managing stress and getting a good night's sleep can be key factors in avoiding seasonal illness.

In a 2009 study, people who slept an average of less than seven hours per night were three times as likely to get sick as those who averaged eight hours or more.

Stress has been linked to a number of health problems, including suppression of the immune system and susceptibility to infectious diseases.

Keeping mind alert

If you want to keep your mind sharp as you age, make sure you exercise your body regularly.

Two recent studies provide strong evidence of a correlation between exercise and better cognitive function among seniors, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

A French study of 2,809 women conducted over five years confirmed that the women who got daily exercise equivalent to a brisk 30-minute walk are less likely to have cognitive impairment than the women who exercised less or not at all.

A Canadian study of 197 seniors with an average age of 74.8 used a more precise measurement of physical activity: active energy expenditure.

When their data was adjusted for other variables, those with the highest AEE were the least likely to suffer from cognitive impairment.

The studies strengthen earlier, less well-documented studies that showed a correlation between exercise and reduced cognitive impairment, but there remains a chicken-and-egg problem, said Dr. Carol Schramke, director of the division of behavioral neurology at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Factors other than exercise may be involved, she said.

“(Studies have shown) people who did line dancing did better over time than the people who walked on a treadmill,” Schramke said.

Line dancing is a social activity. Walking on a treadmill is a solitary one. Could the social activity be as important as the exercise? Schramke said more research is needed.