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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
For many older adults, a visit to the doctor is not complete without the bestowal of at least one prescription.
What if, in addition to prescribing medications as necessary, physicians also prescribed exercise?
Ann Yelmokas McDermott, PhD, a researcher in the Lipid Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University, and Heather Mernitz, PhD, now of the Nutrition and Cancer Biology Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA, propose using the familiar concept of a prescription to help physicians incorporate exercise recommendations into their routine practice.
In the journal American Family Physician, McDermott and Mernitz provide clinicians with explicit guidelines for giving their older patients effective "exercise prescriptions."
McDermott and Mernitz caution that, as with medication prescriptions, these exercise parameters must be personalized to suit each patient's health status and goals.
McDermott, who is also a licensed nutritionist, points out that fewer than half of older adults report ever having received a suggestion to exercise from their physicians.
"Clinicians shouldn't feel like they have to be fitness experts to discuss exercise with their patients," she says.
"Only 30 percent of America's senior citizens engage in regular exercise," notes McDermott, "yet there is compelling evidence suggesting that people in all conditions of health and at all fitness levels benefit from regular physical activity.
Mernitz adds, "Seniors tend to have less access than other demographic groups to physical activity information and programming.
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Posted on October 8, 2006 09:17 PM
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