Well, we’ve made it to the end of our introductory guide to fitness for seniors and baby boomers, hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Now, Looking to the future, while it’s no secret that our genetics and perhaps even our luck plays a role in how long we’ll live, there are certainly a ton of things we can do to increase our chances of living into a triple-digit-age.
Besides the cliché diet and exercise most people associate with longer lives, there are simple things we can do in our everyday lives to increase our chances of living longer.
Before our world’s population was being knocked off far too soon by lifestyle-induced diseases such as cancers, heart attacks and stroke, living into a second century of life wasn’t as unheard of as it is today.
Geriatrician, teacher and author Mark Lach’s currently-oldest patient is 109 years old, lives at home and she is a busy lady.
He attributes her longevity to genetics and her ability to pick herself back up after life’s setbacks- a term referred to as adaptive competence. After all, living that long means you’ve seen your share of death, loss, and heartbreak. Your ability to move forward can play a part in how long you live.
Here’s some more proof. Becca Levy, Epidemiology and Psychology Professor at Yale School of Public Health in Massachusetts, USA, did a study on longevity of individuals in their 50’s.
Study subjects who related to statements such as “as you get older you are less useful,” on average died seven-and-a-half years before those who disagreed with those pessimistic statements.
Seeing the glass half-full instead of half-empty may have more of an impact than we realize. Great advice for any stage of life.
While being optimistic is certainly a good trait to possess, standing alone it won’t get you to seeing one-hundred candles on your birthday cake.
Living a healthy life is important just as well, with staying active being a big part of the equation.
Low-impact exercise that you enjoy doing is a better choice than higher-impact exercise that you don’t look forward to due to its intense nature. The key is to find something you enjoy doing so that you stick to it. Think swimming, bike riding, walking and dancing.
In addition to being active, getting adequate sleep each night is important for longevity.
Our bodies repair during sleep, so it’s important to get enough shut eye on a regular basis to allow this process to happen fully.
By getting adequate exercise and sleep, flexibility, awareness and balance increases which decreases your chance of having a debilitating fall due to lack of coordination, balance, or a foggy mind from a restless night.
As technology develops and medical breakthroughs abound, medications to treat diseases that have a low life expectancy rate increase.
Early detection tests and devices are more common and help diagnose cancers before they progress too far to treat.
Stem cell research is opening doors to curing diseases that before were deemed incurable.
Chemotherapy is being replaced more and more with targeted cancer therapies, which attack only the sick cells in the body instead of healthy ones as well.
Laparoscopic surgeries reduce the risk of surgery-related complications or death. The implementation of more smoke-free areas reduces the amount of toxins we are exposed to or breathe in.
The world as it is today is much different than it was a century ago. It’s hard to tell what it will look like another hundred years from now. But, if you have a great set of genetics, luck, and make the right choices towards a healthy lifestyle, you may find yourself being the next centenarian.
Good luck and begin your fitness journey today if you haven’t already!
