Stay sharp after menopause: How aerobic exercise can improve key thinking skills
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 29-Oct-2026 15:17 ET (29-Oct-2026 19:17 GMT/UTC)
Regular aerobic exercise – the kind that gets your heart pumping – can improve important thinking skills called executive functions, and the benefits appear especially strong for women after menopause, according to Rutgers researchers.
Dr. Emily Flanagan, Assistant Professor and Director of the Developmental Physiology Laboratory at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, has been awarded a prestigious National Institutes of Health R01 grant totaling up to $3.55 million to investigate how energy intake and expenditure influence infant growth during the first year of life.
The five-year grant from the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases will support Flanagan’s project, “Characterization of Infant Energy Balance to Optimize Early Life Growth.” The study will examine the fundamental drivers of infant growth and could help improve how energy needs are estimated during a critical period of development.
As dogs age, many develop more than one chronic health condition. New research from the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) shows those conditions can dramatically shorten a dog’s lifespan, highlighting the importance of managing multiple diseases together rather than individually.
In a recent study published in GeroScience, researchers with the Dog Aging Project found that dogs with five or more chronic diseases were more than twice as likely to die as dogs living with only one diagnosed condition, regardless of their age or size. The findings suggest that, as in humans, chronic diseases interact in ways that make their combined effects more harmful than each condition alone.