Weighing less, moving more
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Being overweight and under-exercised can reduce an older person's ability to do ordinary daily activities.
But people over 65 who lose weight and increase their activity can regain some of what they lost. At Wake Forest University, Jack Rejeski examined data on people in a program to do that. He says those with the least mobility improved as much as 20 percent on one crucial test - the time it took to walk around 1,300 feet.
``The best thing, in my opinion, that any older adult can do is watch their weight and be active, so that they move as far away from disability as they possibly can.'' (10 seconds)
The study in Archives of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.