Ingredients:

2 lb. ground turkey meat

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 cup chopped green pepper

3 cloves garlic

2 cans low sodium tomatoes in puree, chopped

2 cups water

1 6 oz. can low sodium tomato paste

8 teaspoons low sodium beef bouillon

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 tablespoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons oregano leaves

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup dried lentils

2 cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed

Prep:

At the Madison Senior Center downtown, members take modern dance classes, participate in social circle gatherings and book clubs.

“It isn’t a place to sit around and play cards or knit or just sit around,” said 80-year-old Reta Harring. “There’s so much going on.”

Aging experts said activities such as these will make a difference in the fight against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

“It is possible to exercise the brain muscle and enhance the cognitive fitness,” said Senior Center director Christine Beatty. “That’s good news and why it’s an important topic right now.”

When you talk of a physical exercise the immediate conception one gets from the term is heavy exercises like running, jogging, moving the body from one side to the other which all are meant for body building and fitness.

This of course incorporates sports activities such as football, netball, athletics, basketball and boxing.

Little or nothing is said about light physical exercises like yoga which do not make one sweat but still yield the same benefits.

Yoga, initially is an exercise that targets at keeping the body free of diseases.

The Alzheimer’s patients who were non-carriers of the APOE4 gene benefited the most from exercising. APOE4 gene is known to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
The theory is bolstered by a study published July 15 in the journal Neurology, which involved a group of 121 people age 60 and older, including 57 who had early Alzheimer’s. The participants were put on treadmills to measure their peak oxygen consumption, which is the standard used to measure cardiorespiratory fitness.
The study found that people with Alzheimer’s who had low levels of fitness had four times more brain shrinkage than those with Alzheimer’s who had high levels of fitness. However, lead author Jeffrey Burns, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Kansas School of Medicine noted that the study looked at fitness levels but not exercise activities. What remains to be seen is whether exercise itself can help prevent brain atrophy in people who are at risk for developing Alzheimer’s. “The cause and effect has yet to be established, but evidence is building,” Burns said.
Another separate study presented at the same conference revealed that a 12-month home-based exercise program reduced falls and improved balance in patients with dementia. People with dementia usually fall up to three times more than those who have no cognitive impairment, according to researchers from Western Medicine, a consultant physician service provider for Hollywood Hospital in Nedlands, Western Australia, which conducted the study.
“Falls have a negative impact on a person’s quality of life, often resulting in nursing home placement, increased mortality and significant costs to the community. Targeting this high risk may be a relatively cost effective way of having a significant impact on the overall rate of falling in the elderly,” Megan J. Wraith, a speech pathologist at Western Medicine and a researcher on the study said.
The two studies were funded by the National Institute on Aging and National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the Sir Charles Gairdner Research Foundation and Hollywood Private Hospital Research Foundation.

Researcher Gianni Maddalozzo with OSU’s Department of Nutrition and Exercise Science looked at the effects of whole body vibration on 7-month-old rats that were placed on vibration platforms at OSU’s Bone Research Laboratory. Both groups were fed the same diet and kept in a sedentary environment. One group was put on the vibration platform for 30 minutes a day, five days a week for 12 weeks. The other group was not put on the platform.

What is aerobic exercise?
The term “erobic exercise”technically refers to exercise “ith air.”Aerobic activities enables the body to use the energy it receives from breathing in order to fuel activity. Aerobic exercise includes activities such as:

Running
Swimming
Rollerblading
Biking
Skiing
Brisk walking
Dancing
Hiking

You must consider many factors when deciding which of the above activities best suits your tastes and lifestyle. Regardless of which one you choose, all of them can lead to significant benefits to health and well-being.

Benefits to aerobic exercise

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 large eggs
2 mashed, ripe bananas
1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Cooking spray
Preparation. Preheat oven to 350°.
Spoon flour into dry measuring cups. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add banana, yogurt, and vanilla and beat until blended.

1 cup chuncky peanut butter
1 1/4 cup splenda
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray non stick cooking spray on  a large baking sheet. In a mixing bowl, combine the chuncky peanut butter, 1 cup sugar replacement, the egg, and vanilla, and stir well with a spoon. Roll the dough into bitesize balls. Place the balls on the prepared baking sheet. With a fork, dipped in sugar replacement to prevent sticking, press a crisscross design on each cookie. Bake for 11- 12 minutes. Cool slightly before removing from pan.

A recent study shows middle-aged members of a runner’s club were half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run.

Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, researchers at Stanford University in California found.

“At 19 years, 15 percent of runners had died compared with 34 percent of controls,” Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Any type of vigorous exercise will likely do the trick, said Stanford’s Dr. James Fries, who worked on the study.

Older adults who consume fish regularly are improving their brain health, a new study by Finnish researchers found.Those studied who ate more fish were less likely to show certain brain infarcts-tiny areas of tissue that have died because of an insufficient blood supply-on an MRI scan, according to the study, which followed 3,660 adults age 65 and older. The tissue damage causes no obvious symptoms, but it can raise a person’s longer-term risk of having a stroke or developing dementia.