If you want to keep your bones strong as you grow older, get up and hit the pavement. Researchers have found that high-impact exercise is better for building dense bones than low-impact exercise or no exercise at all.

High-impact exercise, like jumping rope or step aerobics, appears to be most effective at building bone density. Doctors say women need to continue the exercise throughout their lives in order to
maintain the effects.

It's best for women to start exercising at a young age and maintain an exercise program. But if you're already older and not quite up to the challenge of step aerobics, any weight-bearing exercise, such as a brisk walk, can be beneficial.

Not only does it help your bones, it helps your heart and lungs, too. Doctors at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas say women also need tobe sure to get plenty of calcium.

Most women don't get all the calcium they need on a daily basis. Good sources are skim milk, yogurt and cheese. Calcium supplements, particularly those made with calcium citrate, also can help keep bones strong.

From: http://www.cooperinst.org/default.asp

What are the health risks of being overweight?

If you have any questions about whether overweight is an issue of vanity or an issue of health, consider the following lists of conditions which are convincingly associated with being obesity:

• Coronary artery disease, heart attacks, and sudden death
• Congestive heart failure (the heart has to pump blood to all of those fat cells, and their need for oxygen and other nutrients is particularly high)
• Strokes
• Arthritis, particularly of the hips and knees (they've got to support that weight).
  
• Diabetes (the major cause of "Type 2" or "Adult Onset" diabetes is obesity)
• High blood pressure (many people could be on far fewer or no medications for their blood pressure if they lost weight).
• High cholesterol (not all high cholesterol is caused by being overweight. In fact, much of our cholesterol level isdetermined by the genes we inherited from our parents. Nevertheless, weight gain can cause these already somewhat faulty genes to be overtaxed. Cholesterol levels may often return to normal with restoration of ideal body weight).
• Sleep apnea
• Breast, ovarian, prostate, colon andcervical cancer
  

How much are these risks increased? Very substantially:

• Coronary artery disease is 4 times more frequent
• Strokes are 6 times more frequent
• High blood pressure is 12 times more frequent
• Diabetes is 6 times more frequent. We have not touched on the social problems in this regard. Measures of psychological and social satisfaction are clearly lower in the overweight.
  

Very few conditions can cause as many problems! Very skinny people, many of whom may be malnourished or debilitated, have a higher mortality than those of normal weight. After accounting for these few, there is a graded worsening of the mortality rates as weight goes up.

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