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What else should make up a heart-healthy eating plan? “It is increasingly difficult to isolate a specific food group and say it is related to heart health,” says Dr. Robert S. Nierzwicki, a specialist in cardiovascular disease and nuclear cardiology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. “There are many confounding factors. When I look at a heart-healthy diet, I look at food patterns as opposed to individual foods.”

Phyllis Zee, a neurologist and neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, says the research connects a lot of dots between sleep and memory. She’s curious whether the results will hold up in adults who are at risk for neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

For nine years, these experts have been examining “SuperAgers” — men and women over age 80 whose memories are as good — or better — than people 20 to 30 years younger. Every couple of years, the group fills out surveys about their lives and gets a battery of neuropsychological tests, brain scans and a neurological examination, among other evaluations. “When we started this project, we weren’t really sure we could find these individuals,” said Emily Rogalski, an associate professor at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

If people with early Parkinson’s could brake the disease’s advance and delay their need to start medications, the researchers have reasoned, they might change the arc of their disease, delaying its most severe effects. That possibility recently led a consortium of researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora and other institutions to look at exercise as a treatment.

It’s not unusual for anxiety to be expressed physically rather than emotionally—or for us to get so used to feeling anxious that we begin to ignore it and fail to link the physical symptoms with the anxiety. Which can make it difficult for doctors to make the right diagnosis since anxiety can produce a wide variety of symptoms. “That’s the challenge,” says Dr. Michael Ziffra, an anxiety specialist and psychiatrist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “You might be more prone to headaches and it’s not unusual for it to cause impairments in cognition, problems with attention, focus and concentration. You might even find your memory is impaired.”

“It is not surprising that providers who are eligible to certify for medical marijuana were more cautious about recommending it, given that their licensure could be jeopardized due to federal prohibition,” study co-author Dr. Kelly Michelson, a critical care physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, said in a hospital news release. Michelson also directs Northwestern University School of Medicine’s Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities.

“It is not surprising that providers who are eligible to certify for medical marijuana were more cautious about recommending it, given that their licensure could be jeopardized due to federal prohibition,” study co-author Dr. Kelly Michelson, a critical care physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, said in a hospital news release. Michelson also directs Northwestern University School of Medicine’s Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities.

A very recent study led by Northwestern’s Mercedes Carnethon, landed in the same ballpark: a difference of 40 minutes. Carnethon and her colleagues then looked at cardiovascular complications like stroke and hypertension, and found that they could explain “more than one-half of the racial disparities in cardiometabolic risk” as a result of sleep differences. Furthermore, they found an indirect association between race, sex, sleep, and disease risk only among women—a tendency reflected in the general literature. Similarly, another recent study out of Northwestern looked at the correlation between self-reported discrimination and specific indicators of inflammation, and found associations for women but not for men.

“I’m not making the case that everybody should go jumping on the treadmill quickly at a high heart rate,” said Daniel Corcos, co-author of the study and professor of physical therapy and human movement sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “People have to use common sense. If they have Parkinson’s disease and they are otherwise in good shape, then it’s fine.”

“If you have Parkinson’s disease and you want to delay the progression of your symptoms, you should exercise three times a week with your heart rate between 80 to 85 percent maximum. It is that simple,” said study co-lead author Daniel Corcos. He’s professor of physical therapy and human movement sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.