Four health practices to grasp as you get older

By Janet Karim

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11, KJV)

Just when I feel like I have heard all there is to hear about getting old or aging, a senior citizen says to me as I enter an elevator with her: “Getting old is not for wimps!”

This week, I had three shocks in my body. One day after dinner, I felt like a stone was lodged in my chest. I looked at what I had eaten: not a single vegetable was on my plate. I quickly grabbed a cucumber and ate it; this melted the stone-in-chest feeling I experienced.

The second shock was when my lips felt like they were cracking up, ripping apart. I had stopped drinking my seltzer water after the stone-in-chest feeling, and in fact, I had stopped drinking water altogether. This led to me becoming dehydrated, and my lips were the first casualty of my dehydrated body. I now drink at least two cups of water when I wake up.

The third shock was worrying over a bunch of things occurring in my life. This caused my stomach to ache so much that I felt like calling 911 to send me an ambulance. I was that sick, anxious, and heavily burdened. I called my cousin instead. I told him my worries; he walked me through the items that were causing me pain. He erased many of them and advised me to keep my eye focused on one: the major one. His eagle-eyed view was that I could handle it. By morning’s end, I had jumped the hurdle that had caused me a stomach ache. Hallelujah!

These woes and blues made me realize that as we age (we all do, and getting old is not for wimps), we must focus on four things to enjoy the aging journey. Here they are:

1. Take care of your physical health through exercises

Start and maintain regular physical activity, like exercising for one hour or more at least twice a week. This promotes and protects heart, bone, and muscle health.

Practice standing on one leg as a way of staying steady and active. This is a great way to prevent falls as you gain more balancing bravado.

If you have some habits that are harmful to health, quit them now. Such habits as smoking and/or heavy drinking: stop these or at least reduce them as a way of reducing the risk of developing chronic disease.

2. Maintain a healthy eating and water-drinking habit

Eat foods that are health-enriching, such as vegetables, fruits (especially dried fruits), whole grains, and oils. In your diet, do include protein (meat as well as beans) and seafood. These promote muscle mass that is essential as our body ages.

Drink one to two glasses of water in the morning, keep drinking water as much as possible during the day, and especially during dry weather spells. During colder weather, drink hot or warm water.

3. Mind your mind activity and social connections

Keep your mind active by reading a book, magazine, or newspaper. Another mind activity is to learn new skills or adopt a new hobby or continue one and partake in it regularly. Aging experts claim that partaking in these mind activities challenges your brain, and you stay mentally active.

On the social side, as you age, aging experts advise that you should not keep yourself isolated, but rather be engaged socially as a way of combating loneliness and isolation. You can do this by keeping active at church functions, volunteering in the community, and regularly contacting children, grandchildren, or other relatives (thank God for cell phones and social media!)

If you are retired like me, sleep at least 6 to 8 hours a day. Manage your stress too by doing the things you enjoy doing. As a media practitioner, I watch a lot of news, but after that, I watch at least 1¹/₂ hours of comedy shows. Therefore, I go to sleep laughing. I go to sleep with a relaxed mind.

4. Retain a preventative health care schedule

In the 1970s through to the 1990s, there was a popular slogan that said: “Prevention is better than cure.” This slogan is as good and true today as it was back then.

In today’s modern times, keep an annual guide for checkups with your family doctor, get screened, and keep up with the screening schedules; check on all the necessary vaccinations: just as our mothers made sure we received all our vaccinations, keep up with all the vaccinations that are available and that you need. If you have a chronic condition, make sure you are up to date with the essential monitoring that is required for the condition.

(Adapted from Healthy Aging Tips for the Older Adults in Your Life | National Institute on Aging)

It has always been a known fact that as we get older, we experience challenges in our health. As has been said before, modern medical science discoveries enable people to go through aging with aplomb; people’s lives are manageable. As you age, there are a few things you can do to make sure that the aging journey is smooth, manageable, and a super fine later-life undertaking.