Recently we came across an interesting article on “10 habits for senior citizens to promote healthy aging”. Being relevant to the kind of services Porosh renders, we felt the insights shall be useful not only for our members but also the wider senior citizen community. Thus, the article written by Holly Klameris offered below.

With progressive aging, our body undergoes a lot of changes. These changes can be positive, like gaining experience, becoming wiser, an increase in maturity level, etc. However, aging has its disadvantages as well. These disadvantages are just not lines on the face or graying of hair; it is majorly associated with our mental and physical wellbeing.

Aging is something that we cannot control. But, how we do age, that is in our hands. Believe it or not, things become much easier for senior citizens when they are healthy. On the other hand, for someone who is facing medical problems like heart issues, bone, and joint-related issues, diabetes, some type of dementia, or other brain-related issues, life becomes much more difficult. These individuals need lots of care and attention. You can either take care of yourself or can even use professional help. Numerous memory care facilities and senior assisted living facilities are available for the people who are in the golden age of their lives.

We all want to remain fit and healthy as were grow older. Here are healthy habits that might help you in healthy aging.

1. Exercise

If you want to remain physically and mentally fit during the golden era of your life, be active, and exercise regularly. Regular exercise, along with a healthy and nutritious diet, forms the key to age healthily and happily. Regular exercise helps in preventing numerous diseases like heart diseases, arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, depression, etc.

2. Social connectivity

Old age is the best time to cultivate your relations. The feeling of loneliness and depression are quite common among older people. Many older people face isolation during their old age because of reasons such as medical issues, retirement, or death of the spouse.

To avoid such situations, you need to maintain contact with your family, friends, and relatives. Meet your children or loved ones regularly. In addition to this, you can join some club or groups. This way, you will get a chance to meet new people and make new friends.

3. Healthy eating

Another easy and yet difficult way to enjoy healthy aging is by keeping control over your taste buds. What we eat has a direct effect on our health. Try to avoid eating junk food, fried food, processed food, sweets, etc.

Eating whole-grain foods, fresh fruits, and vegetables will keep you healthy and fit in old age. Remember, the nutritional requirement varies from person to person. Hence, it is advisable to consult your doctor to know about your dietary haves and have nots.

4. Sleep

Peaceful sleep is essential for our body. It is during this time that our body and mind relax –refreshes and prepares for the next day. 7-8 hours of quality sleep is essential for the proper functioning of our body. Lack of quality sleep may result in memory issues, irritability, depression, and increased fall risk.

Insomnia is quite common among our seniors. You can avoid it by following simple bed-time habits.

Keep your sleeping room dark. Switch off all the lights, T.V., mobile device, and laptop.

Avoid having alcohol and caffeine-rich drinks in the evening or before your sleep-time.Try not to sleep for more than 20 min during the daytime.

5. Health care

Make your health your priority. Our health depends a lot on our social factors, environmental factors, our actions, and our genes. Sometimes, we are the best judge of how our body responds to these factors. For example, what effect the change of season has on our body or if spicy food suits our body or not.

Hence, if making a few changes in your lifestyle can help you in improving your health, then try to adopt those changes. Also, be regular with your monthly, quarterly, or annual body check-up. If you are facing any health issues, contact your doctor immediately. Most importantly, be honest with your doctor about your health and ask questions.

6. Prevention practice

You might not believe it, but many old-age related health issues are preventable. This includes accidents, falls, depression, frailty, etc.

You can prevent illness by adopting simple healthy habits like:

· Washing hands after using the restroom.

· Washing hands before and after having meals.

· Take the flu vaccine regularly.

7. Stress Management

With growing age, the ability of our body to deal with stress tends to decrease. Stress affects the body at all levels i.e., mental, physical as well as emotional. Prolonged stress in elderly adults can result in depression. Studies have shown that stress might result in fatigue, memory loss, hypertension, and heart-related issues. In addition to this, stress even reduces our body’s immunity.

We might not be able to avoid stress completely. However, we can learn ways to deal with stress. For example, listening to music or exercise helps in reducing stress. In addition to this, yoga, meditation, talking to someone, and breathing exercises have also been found to be very effective in reducing stress.

8. Challenge cognitive ability

With age, our cognitive abilities like executive functioning, paying attention, memory, etc. declines. This can be overcome by performing certain brain exercises that can challenge our cognitive abilities. This can be done by learning new things like a language, musical instrument, reading a book or even taking dance lessons, etc. Similarly, playing brain games like Sudoku, Chess, etc. can also be very helpful in keeping our brain active.

9. Regular check-ups

Regular health-check-ups, including general body check-up, dental check-ups, and vision check-up is very important to live a healthy life during old age. With age, focusing on near-by objects or reading small letters becomes difficult. A regular check-up would be very helpful in taking care of any eyes-related disorder.

10. Preventing fall

Another major disadvantage of aging is that our tendency to fall increases. However, it can be prevented by making the home clutter-free and removing things that might cause hindrance in walking like a rug. Keeping night lights on can also help prevent a fall during the night. Another simple thing that can help in avoiding falls is keeping the bathroom and kitchen floor dry.

We hope our readers have found the piece informative and useful. But as we know, it will be beneficial only when we start practicing.

(Inputs taken from www.landmarkseniorliving.com)