Endurance activities, often referred to as aerobic, increase your breathing and heart rates. These activities help keep you healthy, improve your fitness, and help you perform the tasks you need to do every day. Endurance exercises improve the health of your heart, lungs, and circulatory system. They also can delay or prevent many diseases that are common in older adults such as diabetes, colon and breast cancers, heart disease, and others. Physical activities that build endurance include:

Brisk walking or jogging

Yard work (mowing, raking)

Dancing

Swimming

Biking

Climbing stairs or hills

Playing tennis

Increase your endurance or “staying power” to help keep up with your grandchildren during a trip to the park, dance to your favorite songs at a family wedding, and rake the yard and bag up leaves. Build up to at least 150 minutes of activity a week that makes you breathe hard. Try to be active throughout your day to reach this goal and avoid sitting for long periods of time.

Safety Tips

Do a little light activity, such as easy walking, before and after your endurance activities to warm up and cool down.

Listen to your body: endurance activities should not cause dizziness, chest pain or pressure, or a feeling like heartburn.

Be sure to drink liquids when doing any activity that makes you sweat. If your doctor has told you to limit your fluids, be sure to check before increasing the amount of fluid you drink while exercising.

If you are going to be exercising outdoors, be aware of your surroundings.

Dress in layers so you can add or remove clothes as needed for hot and cold weather.

To prevent injuries, use safety equipment, such as a helmet when bicycling.

Quick Tip: Test Your Exercise Intensity

When you’re being active, try talking: if you’re breathing hard but can still have a conversation easily, it’s moderate-intensity activity. If you can only say a few words before you have to take a breath, it’s vigorous-intensity activity.

Strength Exercises for Older Adults

Your muscular strength can make a big difference. Strong muscles help you stay independent and make everyday activities feel easier, like getting up from a chair, climbing stairs, and carrying groceries. Keeping your muscles strong can help with your balance and prevent falls and fall-related injuries. You are less likely to fall when your leg and hip muscles are strong. Some people call using weight to improve your muscle strength “strength training” or “resistance training.”

Some people choose to use weights to help improve their strength. If you do, start by using light weights at first, then gradually add more. Other people use resistance bands, stretchy elastic bands that come in varying strengths. If you are a beginner, try exercising without the band or use a light band until you are comfortable. Add a band or move on to a stronger band (or more weight) when you can do two sets of 10 to 15 repetitions easily. Try to do strength exercises for all of your major muscle groups at least 2 days per week, but don’t exercise the same muscle group on any 2 days in a row.

COVID-19 and its variants are continuing to have an impact on the daily lives of older adults, affecting their physical, emotional, social and financial well-being. It is important for older adults and their caregivers, families and friends to take a close look to assess the changes they may have experienced during the pandemic—and to look for services and supports that can help address them. The Eldercare Locator, USAging and the U.S. Administration for Community Living have made this the focus of the 2021 Home for the Holidays campaign.

The centerpiece of the campaign is Healthy Aging in a Pandemic World: What Older Adults and Caregivers Need to Know Now, a brochure describing some of the changes that families, friends and caregivers may notice in the older adults in their lives. The brochure poses questions readers can and should ask themselves and their loved ones and provides information on services available that can help address changes they may have identified.

After nearly two years of taking precautionary measures to stay safe and healthy during COVID-19, older adults who are re-engaging with one another, their families, friends and communities may need advice on where to turn for assistance with a range of changes they may have experienced during the pandemic, including physical changes brought on by putting off doctors’ appointments, emotional or social changes resulting from physical distancing and isolation, or financial changes due to cognitive changes or scams. Developed with this in mind, the campaign encourages older adults and caregivers to evaluate their health and well-being and consider any needed changes to their lives or environment.

“Ensuring that older adults have the resources they need to fully—but safely—re-engage, in their communities is central to the mission of the Administration for Community Living,” said Alison Barkoff, Principal Deputy Administrator, U.S. Administration for Community Living. “The Eldercare Locator is a vital national resource for older adults, families and caregivers looking for local resources to help them live actively and independently, and to get and stay connected with others.”

Launched in 1992, the Eldercare Locator is the only national information and referral resource to provide support to consumers across the spectrum of issues affecting older Americans. The Eldercare Locator, established and funded by the U.S. Administration for Community Living and administered by USAging, can be easily accessed at eldercare.acl.gov.

Home for the Holidays is an annual public education campaign that encourages discussion of important issues affecting older Americans at a time of the year when family and friends often gather. Past campaigns have focused on the decision to give up driving, updates that can be made to homes to accommodate the changes that come along with aging, the importance of maintaining brain health and more.

USAging is the national association representing and supporting the network of Area Agencies on Aging and advocating for the Title VI Native American Aging

Programs. Our members help older adults and people with disabilities throughout the United States live with optimal health, well-being, independence and dignity in their homes and communities.

Shingles, also called herpes zoster, is a disease that triggers a painful skin rash. It is caused by the same virus as chickenpox, the varicella-zoster virus. After you recover from chickenpox (usually as a child), the virus continues to live in some of your nerve cells.

For most adults, the virus is inactive and it never leads to shingles. But, for about one in three adults, the virus will become active again and cause shingles. Usually, shingles develops on just one side of the body or face, and in a small area. The most common place for shingles to occur is in a band around one side of the waistline.

Most people with shingles have one or more of the following symptoms:

Fluid-filled blisters

Burning, shooting pain

Tingling, itching, or numbness of the skin

Chills, fever, headache, or upset stomach

For some people, the symptoms of shingles are mild. They might just have some itching. For others, shingles can cause intense pain that can be felt from the gentlest touch or breeze. It’s important to talk with your doctor if you notice any shingles symptoms.

If you notice blisters on your face, see your doctor right away because this is an urgent problem. Blisters near or in the eye can cause lasting eye damage and blindness. Hearing loss, a brief paralysis of the face, or, very rarely, inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) can also occur.

If you think you might have shingles, talk to your doctor as soon as possible. It’s important to see your doctor no later than three days after the rash starts. The doctor will confirm whether you have shingles and can make a treatment plan. Most cases can be diagnosed from a visual examination. If you have a condition that weakens the immune system, your doctor may order a shingles test. Although there is no cure for shingles, early treatment with antiviral medications can help the blisters clear up faster and limit severe pain. Shingles can often be treated at home.

After the shingles rash goes away, some people may be left with ongoing pain called postherpetic neuralgia, or PHN. The pain is felt in the area where the rash occurred. The older you are when you get shingles, the greater your chances of developing PHN.

If you are in contact with someone who has shingles, you will not get the symptoms of shingles yourself. However, direct contact with fluid from a shingles rash can still spread the varicella-zoster virus, which can cause chickenpox in people who have not had chickenpox before or the chickenpox vaccine. The risk of spreading the virus is low if the shingles rash is kept covered.

Everyone who has had chickenpox is at risk for developing shingles. Researchers do not fully understand what makes the virus become active and cause shingles. But some things make it more likely:

The current shingles vaccine (brand name Shingrix) is a safe, easy, and more effective way to prevent shingles than the previous vaccine. In fact, it is over 90% effective at preventing shingles. Most adults age 50 and older should get vaccinated with the shingles vaccine, which is given in two doses. You can get the shingles vaccine at your doctor’s office and at some pharmacies.