Meditation, Exercise Cut Flu Risk

Two ways to avoid the flu: start meditating, start exercising, or both, OK that’s three ways. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison tracked the health of three groups of people, mainly women who were over the age of 50. HealthDay reports that the women were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one-third did not change their habits; one-third started an eight-week program of moderate exercise, such as running on a treadmill and biking, for 45 minutes a day with weekly training sessions; the rest spent the same amount of time in mindfulness meditation, which included yoga, stretching, walking and other activities with an instructor and on their own. During the winter flu season in Wisconsin, the researchers found that those who meditated had 27 episodes of acute respiratory illness and a combined total of 257 days of illness; those who exercised had 241 sick days and 26 episodes. That compared to 40 episodes and 453 sick days for those who did not change their habits. The meditation group lost 16 days of work to illness, the exercise group lost 32, and the group that did not change their habits missed 67 days. Read more in HealthDay.