New Year’s resolutions are often made with the intent to live healthier lives, but are often broken long before they ever have a chance to work. Perhaps if we rethink the word and break it down to re-solutions, we’d have a better chance of success.

Diet and exercise are usually at the top of our re-solutions lists, and for good reason considering the majority of this country’s healthcare dollars are spent on lifestyle related conditions. But it seems too many people adopt the goals of diet and exercise mainly to lose weight, instead of truly understanding the overall benefit to our health, both in the short and long term.

As a longevity expert, my focus has always been on quality of life. It’s not about how long we live, but rather how well we live that really matters. To die young, as late as possible is the goal! Equally important is to maintain our independence so we can live the life we love and love the life we live. Yet unfortunately, particularly as people age, they often live to short and die too long – meaning they may spend longer periods of time in poor health, unable to live the life they desire. So as we become an aged society within a healthcare system that has the ability to keep us alive longer than we may want to be, it’s more critical than ever to recognize what we need to do and why.

One of the most exciting new directions in the field of gerontology is discovering the solutions to slowing down the aging process by lessening the likelihood of disease and disability. While these aspects are not likely on the minds of most people as they make their New Year’s re-solutions, they are important in the overall strategy of living healthier lives, which will ultimately have long-term results, literally.

First and foremost, we’ve just got to do a better job making the connection between inactivity and health, period. In fact, exercise and physical activity may have the single, most important affect on our health and aging process – and it’s way beyond just losing weight. Medical experts claim the sedentary lifestyles we’ve adopted in this country over the last thirty years (which I blame largely on technology that is strapping us to our computers, TVs, DVDs, etc.) plays as great a risk to our health as smoking.  In fact, I’ll never forget a study I read years ago comparing smokers who exercised and non-smokers who didn’t to determine which group was healthiest. And yep, you guessed it; smokers who exercised were healthier than non-smokers who didn’t exercise!

While it’s unlikely the majority of you reading this are smokers, it’s important to make the association to inactivity because it’s very likely many of you are not as active as you should or could be. But why, is the real question. Sure, we all know exercise is good for us, but what we may not know is just how bad it is if we don’t do it. Studies today report that 50% of the functional loss that occurs after the age of 50 is due to inactivity and lack of exercise – but most everyone wants to blame it on age.

A recent Wall Street Journal article on the Hidden Benefits of Exercise (1/5/10) reported that exercise reduces:

• The risk of stroke by 27%;
• The incidence of diabetes by approximately 50%;
• The incidence of high-blood pressure by approximately 40%;
• The risk of mortality by approximately 50%;
• The risk of recurrent breast cancer by approximately 50%;
• The risk of Alzheimer’s disease by approximately 40% and
• The risk of colon cancer by over 60%.

If we could put exercise into a pill it would be the most widely prescribed on the planet -- no medication can do all this. Now if we could just get the healthcare system to adopt this form of treatment, maybe we wouldn’t have as many of these problems in the first place.

Exercise is obviously an important re-solution for living healthier lives. In fact, Kaiser Permanente has developed an “Exercise is Medicine” program with the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Medical Association to encourage doctors to assess and review each patient’s physical activity program at every visit. Currently it’s estimated that only four out of ten doctors even talk to their patients about the importance of exercise. Kaiser’s California facilities last year began rolling out exercise counseling to eight million members as part of their doctor visits. Additionally they’ve established a toll free line to help members create a personal fitness plan that may include favorite activities like gardening, walking, etc.

“Exercise can be used like a vaccine to prevent disease and a medication to treat disease,” said Dr. Sallis, chairman of the program. “If there were a drug with the same benefits as exercise, it would instantly be the standard of care.”

In many ways, this is not only a wellness issue, but a bottom-line issue as well. It’s in Kaiser’s best interest to keep their members healthy since obviously the cost of treatment is considerably less than for a less healthy member. Perhaps a similar program and or strategy would be a good re-solution for our country’s healthcare problems, too.

While exercise is beneficial at all ages, it is particularly important for those over 40, when people generally start to experience some physiological decline in strength, endurance and flexibility. Even people over the age of 70 live longer, better and are more independent if they’re physically active at least 30 minutes/day.

There is often confusion about what type of exercise people should be doing and for how long. so the federal government’s Health and Human Services division is developing a national plan with the following recommendations for adults:

• At least 2.5 hours a week of moderate intensity;
Types of activity may include ballroom and line dancing, biking on level ground or with a few hills, canoeing, gardening (raking, trimming shrubs) tennis (doubles) brisk walking, water aerobics;

• Or 1.25 hours a week of vigorous intensity aerobic exercise;
Types of activity may include aerobic dance, biking faster than 10mph, heavy gardening (digging, hoeing), tennis (singles), jumping rope, swimming laps, hiking uphill, race walking, jogging, or running;

• Or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity;

• Additional health benefits are gained from as much as doubling the minimum time spent each week in moderate or vigorous aerobic physical activity.

• Strength training exercises for all major muscle groups a minimum of 2 or more days a week.

While stretch, flexibility and balance exercises are not listed, they are essential activities to include that provide stress reduction as well as numerous other health benefits.

It’s always recommended to check with a doctor before beginning any exercise program and now there’s even a website: exerciseismedicine.org which includes videos and self-assessment tools for consumers on how to start an exercise program, how to exercise with diseases such as asthma and heart disease, as well as how to exercise following a stroke or heart attack.

Simply stated, the re-solution for living healthier lives is to eat less, and move more -- the exact opposite of what most people do now. While the focus here has mostly been on the health benefits of exercise, we must also recognize that our caloric intake has increased by 500 calories on average per day, resulting in a 19 lb. weight gain for most adults over the last 30 years. The combination of increased inactivity and caloric intake helps explain why losing weight is often such a common New Year’s resolution today.

But it’s more than just losing weight, it’s about living a healthy lifestyle so we can live all the years of our life and add more life to our years. That’s the re-solution that will ultimately make the real difference in our lives and enable us to have a healthy and happy new year!

Kelly Ferrin, gerontologist and author of “What’s Age Got To Do With It? Secrets to Aging in Extraordinary Ways” has been studying aging and retirement issues for over 25 years. She was one of the first to ever receive a degree in this field from the prestigious Andrus School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California, the top school in the nation for age-related studies.

website: kellyferrin.com ••• email: ageangel@earthlink.net