9-19-06

Healthy Aging

Americans are now living longer. For many seniors, the keys are maintaining a healthy lifestyle and taking preventative measures.

Living a healthy lifestyle helps protect against the deterioration that is often associated with aging. Dr. Amber Barnhart, assistant professor of family and community medicine at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield, offers suggestions for lifestyle improvements.

SOUND BITE: " . . . eat a healthy balanced diet, making sure they get fruits and vegetables, as well as keeping their calories down. It is very important as you get older not to have extra weight kind of creep on because that has more of an impact on your health than when you are younger. We would strongly encourage our senior citizens to exercise including cardiovascular, which would be walking, jogging, swimming, activities like that."

Dr. Barnhart says increased weight has a big impact on the heart, lungs and liver. It also can aid the progression of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. She advises seniors to have the various cancer screenings.

SOUND BITE: "For men and for women, colon cancer screenings is highly recommended. For women there’s also breast cancer and that would be to make sure you get your mammograms. If a man knows that his family’s genes includes prostatic cancer in his own male relatives, that man would definitely want to get prostate screening."

For more information about healthy aging, check with a family doctor, a local senior citizen center or public health department, or visit the National Institute on Aging’s website at www.n-i-a.org.

This is Ruth Slottag at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield.