According to a study of 947 adults aged 30 to 91, it was found that older adults preferred exercising with people in their own age group to working out with younger adults.

Exercising with peers increased with older adults’ interest in exercise itself, and exercising in groups of adults their own age was more appealing than exercising alone.

Working out has both physical and emotional benefits for all adults, but for older adults it is vital to stay healthy and mobile. Finding the appropriate group setting for regular exercise can help keep seniors motivated and moving.

The study appears in the April issue of Annals of Behavioral Science and was authored by Mark Beauchamp, Ph.D.

Psychologists are finding that there is one thing that improves as we age - our outlook. Sutdies show that as we age, we are more balanced in the way we process emotional information.

Research at the University of Colorado was conducted that studied the way people of different ages reacted to emotionally charged images. The images were viewed for a few seconds only while brain reaction was monitored. Participants clicked a mouse to register which category these images fell into.

The results showed that younger adults pay more attention to emotionally negative images than positive ones. The 55+ age group had different results.

“But the new finding from our study was that the older adults, ages 55 plus, didn’t show this so-called ‘negative bias.’ Instead they tended to show a better balance between paying attention to both negative and positive images.”

The article, Looking at the Sunny Side of Life: Age-Related Change in a Event-Related Potential Measure of the Negativity Bias, is published in the journal Psychological Science.

Getting older provides positive outlook

It’s often said that laughter is the best medicine. Norwegian researcher Sven Sveback says he’s got the data to prove it.

Sveback, of the medical school at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has released a study of 54,000 individuals whom he tracked for seven years after they filled out a questionnaire on how much humor they found in life. He found a direct correlation between having a sense of humor and longevity.

According to Sveback’s research, humor cut the chances of death for cancer patients by 70%.

“Humor works like a shock absorber in a car,” he says. “You appreciate a good shock absorber when you go over bumps, and cancer is a big bump in life.”

A Laugh A Day May Help Keep Death Further Away

Transcendental Meditation can reduce the incidence of factors that can lead to heart failure and even lessen the severity of congestive heart failure.

In conjunction with the usual health care, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania gave participants in a study either TM education or traditional health education. The participants were 23 African American men and women, average age 64, who were recently hospitalized with New York Heart Association class II or III congestive heart failure. African Americans have twice the mortality rate from congestive heart failure as white Americans.

The group practicing TM showed greater improvements in the six-minute walk test at three months and six months and continued to experience improvements in quality of life and depression. They also required fewer hospitalizations.

Transcendental Meditation likely works to improve heart function by reducing sympathetic nervous system activation associated with stress.

Another recent study showed that older adults don’t ask their doctors about complimentary or alternative medicine for treatment of their conditions. According to the above research, it seems they may be missing some simple techniques that could greatly improve quality of life.

Transcendental Meditation for the Heart