When human beings begin to age beyond the young adult stage in life, the body slowly starts deteriorating. While a lot of it can be slowed by exercising, a good diet, and other lifestyle changes, it is a natural part of life. Losing strength in your muscles is also another aspect of it. However, even if you aren’t as strong as you were before, one can always go back to training and exercising to regain some of it back.

Knowing whether you have lost strength can be tricky, but you can figure it out through a few strength tests. These tests can help you figure out what specific areas you need to work on and how to go about it.

Why Is It Important To Build Strength As You Age?

As we get older, focusing on making our muscles stronger becomes even more crucial than just doing activities that get our heart rate up. Building muscle helps our bodies fight against the natural loss of muscle and bone that comes with aging. This means you'll be able to keep doing everyday tasks without struggling and you'll be much less likely to get hurt from falls or other accidents. Strong muscles make all activities easier and safer as we age. So, while getting your heart pumping is still good, don't underestimate the power of building and maintaining muscle strength as you age.

Think of it as building a strong foundation for an active and independent future. You absolutely can and should begin incorporating exercises that challenge your muscles, no matter your current fitness level. This will pay off in feeling better, moving easier, and staying healthier as you continue to age.

Tests That Can Determine Your Strength Levels

A few simple tests can help you recognize potential weaknesses so that you can work on them in the future! A few things you should have before you start are a clock or stopwatch Just a way to keep time and a solid wall for support if needed. You might also want a soft mat for the exercises you do on the floor. You can do these exercises without shoes or in comfortable athletic shoes.

One-Foot Balance

Stand normally, then carefully lift one foot a little bit off the floor. See if you can stand on the other leg without holding onto anything for a full minute. This checks your balance, which relies on good muscle strength.

Sitting-Rising Test

Start standing up. Cross one leg over the other and carefully sit down on the floor with your legs crossed. See how easily you can sit down and then stand back up without using your hands, knees, or arms for support.

Wall Sit

Stand with your back flat against a strong wall. Step your feet forward a bit and then slide down the wall until your hips are at the same height as your knees. Make sure your knees are right above your ankles. Hold this position for as long as you can to test your leg strength.

Plank

Get down on the floor on your hands, making sure your hands are directly under your shoulders. Then, stretch your legs out behind you and put your toes on the ground. Try to keep your body in a straight line from your head to your heels, engaging your core muscles. Hold this position to test your core strength.

Push-Up

Start in the same position as the plank, but you can have your knees on the floor for an easier version. Slowly bend your elbows backward, keeping them at about a 45-degree angle from your body, and lower your chest almost to the floor. Then, push yourself back up. This tests your upper body strength.

Our sleep health plays a much bigger role in keeping our bodies running than you may know. It can affect our gut health, mental health, as well as other aspects of our body. Most people think that losing sleep means they will be tired, have less attention, may be short-tempered etc., nothing too bad and believe it is something they can recover soon enough in the next night’s sleep. However, it is not that simple or easy! A 2016 study published in the Scientific Reports Journal showed that it can take 4 days' worth sleep to recover one hour of lost sleep.

So, how worse can sleep deprivation be? And how long before it starts affecting your body?

A study published in the journal Biomarker Research looked into how not getting enough sleep affects our bodies, particularly our heart health. They found that even a few bad nights of sleep can quickly lead to changes in your body that are linked to heart problems.

Bad Sleep vs. Good Sleep

In this study, researchers compared what happened to people's bodies after nights of poor sleep versus nights of healthy sleep. Sixteen young, healthy men participated. Each man spent two separate three-night periods in a sleep lab.

Restricted Sleep: In one session, they got very little sleep, averaging only about 4.25 hours per night for three nights.

Normal Sleep: In another session, they got a healthy amount of sleep, averaging about 8.5 hours per night for three nights.

Throughout the study, researchers took blood samples in the mornings and evenings. They also had the men do 30-minute high-intensity exercise sessions and took blood samples before and after. They then checked for levels of 88 different proteins in the blood that are known to be related to heart disease.

How Poor Sleep Affects Your Body

After analyzing the blood samples, the researchers discovered that even just three nights of not enough sleep were enough to change the men's blood chemistry.

Inflammation and Heart Risk

Levels of proteins linked to a higher risk of heart disease and inflammation went up after just three nights of poor sleep. This shows how quickly your body can react negatively to a lack of rest.

Exercise Helps, But Doesn't Fix It

While exercise did have some positive effects on protein levels, it wasn't enough to completely cancel out the harm caused by not sleeping enough. Even with exercise, participants still showed increased levels of 16 proteins associated with heart disease.

The study points out that even young, healthy people can experience these biological changes from short-term sleep loss. This really highlights why it's important to be aware of how even just a few nights of poor sleep can affect your heart. The researchers also mentioned that more studies are needed to see how short-term sleep restriction affects older adults and women.

Tips for Better Sleep

For those looking to improve their sleep and avoid these harmful changes in the body, experts' advise trying to go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time every day, even on weekends. You must also avoid caffeine and alcohol later in the day. Don't use electronic devices right before bed. Limit long naps during the day. Make sure to exercise regularly, and eat a healthy diet.

Being one of the most common cancers among women, breast cancer accounts for 30% of cancer cases in females every year. The American Cancer Society explains that breast cancer occurs in middle aged women and older women, the median age of diagnosis being 62 years of age. The average risk of developing breast cancer in women happen to be about 13%. Which means there is a 1 in 8 chance that a woman can develop breast cancer.

The best cure is prevention, and a new study shows that screening for breast cancer is the best way to tackle the disease. While there are treatments after diagnosis, they not only drastically decrease the quality of life a person is used to, but they must also go through a grueling process, with less chances of survival. One of the best ways to increase your chances of survival in breast cancer is to catch it early. However, by the time symptoms start appearing, the cancer has usually spread, which makes treating it much more difficult.

The study, published recently in Radiology Imaging Cancer, found that almost three out of four women (73%) in their 40s only discover they have breast cancer after symptoms appear. This is a significant problem because these women are less likely to survive compared to those whose cancer is found early through screening methods like mammography.

For instance, the study showed that women diagnosed due to symptoms were six times more likely to have advanced cancer, which is much harder to treat. Researchers noted that the results show patients whose breast cancers were detected because of symptoms had a 63% higher likelihood of dying.

Symptoms vs. Screening

To conduct the study, researchers tracked 821 women aged 40 and older who were diagnosed with breast cancer at The Ottawa Hospital in 2016.

They found that half of these patients (50%) were diagnosed because of symptoms (like a noticeable lump, skin or nipple changes, nipple discharge, swollen lymph nodes, or breast pain), rather than through early detection by a mammogram.

The study revealed that breast cancers detected by symptoms, rather than screening, were much more common in:

• Women in their 40s, accounting for 73% of cases.
• Women older than 75, with about 70% discovering cancer after symptoms appeared.
• The researchers also reported that deaths were higher among patients whose breast cancer wasn't caught early through screening.

Shifting Guidelines for Mammograms

This research comes at a time when both the U.S. and Canada are re-evaluating the best age for women to begin regular mammograms.

Last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force updated its recommendations to suggest breast cancer screening every two years for women aged 40 to 75.

Similarly, the American Cancer Society now advises women aged 45 to 54 to get annual mammograms, with the option for women in their early 40s to start screening if they choose.

Experts noted that this difference in guidelines can impact how long Canadian women might live with undetected breast cancer. She observed a concerning trend in her own practice, seeing many women under 50 and over 75 being diagnosed only after developing symptoms.

These study results will likely bolster the push to lower the breast cancer screening age to 40 in both the U.S. and Canada. Experts mentioned that many provincial and territorial screening programs in Canada have already lowered the screening age, with a goal to establish a single national policy for screening.

Working in an office has its own set of problems. Work stress has become a common occurrence, to the point where it is considered something people must deal with if they wish to be employed. However, this amount of stress is not natural for the body and can cause adverse effects as stress has been shown to affect a person’s mental health, heart health as well as hormones.

So how does one tackle this issue, while also not sacrificing their financial well-being? Self-employment may be the answer. Many people these days are opting for it as this helps them have their own time and freedom, while also allowing them to earn a living.

Being your own boss might seem like it would add stress, but a new study suggests that self-employed women actually have healthier hearts than those who work for a company.

Why Self-Employed Women May Be Healthier

Researchers recently reported in the journal BMC Public Health that women who work for themselves showed lower rates of several factors that contribute to poor heart health. These include:

• Obesity: Carrying too much body fat.
• Physical Inactivity: Not getting enough exercise.
• Poor Diet: Not eating healthy foods.
• Sleeplessness: Not getting enough quality sleep.

These findings hint that the type of work environment someone is in could really influence their risk for heart attack and stroke.

Link Between Work and Heart Health

Researchers explained that there's a strong connection between being self-employed and having fewer heart disease risk factors, and this link seems even stronger for women than for men.

Experts emphasized that it's crucial to understand how our work environment impacts our health so we can create healthier workplaces for everyone. Previous studies have already shown ties between the kind of job someone has and their heart disease risk. For example, people in high-stress jobs with little control over their work have been linked to higher blood pressure and heart disease.

What the Study Found

For this study, researchers looked at data from nearly 20,000 working adults who participated in a large health survey between 1999 and 2018. This survey included physical exams and questions about their jobs and daily habits.

The results clearly showed that self-employment was beneficial for heart health risks in both white women and women of color:

White women who were self-employed had notably lower rates of obesity (7.4% lower), physical inactivity (7% lower), and poor sleep (9.4% lower).

Women of color saw similar benefits, with lower rates of poor diet (6.7% lower), physical inactivity (7.3% lower), and poor sleep (8.1% lower).

While it's not realistic for all women to become self-employed, the study's authors suggested that companies could learn from the positive aspects of self-employment, like increased freedom and flexibility. For example, offering flexible work schedules could give women more control over their time and potentially improve their health.

Interestingly, white men who were self-employed also saw some benefits, such as a drop in poor diet (6.5% lower) and high blood pressure (5.7% lower). However, these same benefits weren't found for self-employed men of color. This might be because men of color often face greater challenges when starting their own businesses, like higher costs to get started, less money available, and fewer mentors to guide them.