Aging is a natural phenomenon when every system in your body starts to slow down from wear and tear. Older adults experience more healthcare challenges as their youthfulness, strength, and stamina decline.
Though you cannot stop degenerative and decaying processes, you can slow down their frequency and speed with better healthcare management techniques. Otherwise, aging does not affect your life quality solely. It promotes several health problems in old age.
For instance, aging slows healing and repair, delays rehabilitation, and increases susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections. Existing health issues worsen and multiply if you overlook health in old age. Thus you must maintain your health and attend to early indications to prevent chronic complications in old age.
And it is possible to keep healthcare challenges at bay and lead a healthy life with preventive measures. The following sections discuss how older adults can ensure their health and fitness in their old age.
- Get regular health checkups
Since aging and a physically inactive lifestyle in old age increase healthcare risks, you must be extra careful of subtle signs. Some healthcare issues like mesothelioma do not show symptoms in the early stages. Symptoms appear when the disease progresses to advanced stages, but then it is late to recover from the damage.
Thus before a preventable health issue transforms into an incurable case like malignant pleural mesothelioma, visit your doctor. Regular healthcare checkups are essential to maintain your health and prevent aging-related health issues.
Hence, reserve time for routine healthcare checkups like eyesight examination, bone density scans, blood lipid profile, and hearing tests.
Older adults are also vulnerable to malignancies like colorectal cancer for men and breast cancer for women. So go for necessary scans and blood tests if you experience unusual changes in your body.
- Maintain a physically active routine
Aging does not bind you to limitations until you have the strength to keep going. An energetic and lively lifestyle and a daily workout maintain your endurance and stamina even in old age and help you move. You can also reduce your risk of old-age health issues.
For instance, physically fit and healthy individuals are 30% less likely to develop dementia than those with an inactive lifestyle. They are also 45% less at risk for Alzheimer’s with a daily dose of physical activity. In addition, exercise helps maintain macular and skeletal structure and reduces the likelihood of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis in old age.
It also boosts vital organ functions. Thus you are resilient against physical health complications like hypertension, obesity, diabetes, stroke, and coronary heart diseases.
Hence, spare at least 20 to 30 minutes of moderate physical workouts like stretching, strolling, brisk walking, jogging, or hiking daily. This investment of time will help in staying fit and healthy while aging.
- Prefer nutritious and healthy food
There’s more to food than filling your stomach or satiating your taste buds. What you consume impacts your physical and mental well-being. Thus healthy and nutritious diet choices reflect your body’s strength, fitness, and resilience.
If you take whatever comes easy without evaluating its nutritional value, you may be depriving your body of the essential nutrients. You may not comprehend the impact of non-nutritious food and unhealthy diet choices straight away, but they contribute to old-age healthcare complications and risks.
Your body’s metabolism slows down in old age. It cannot process trans unsaturated fat into energy so well as in your adulthood, leading to higher cholesterol levels. The same goes for refined sugar intake, which increases the chances of insulin impairment in old age.
In short, evaluate the nutritional value of your food choices. Choose a balanced and nutritious diet if you want to age healthily.
- Get sufficient hours of rest
Your body does not have the same strength to withstand stress and exertion or recuperate in a day or two in old age. Hence, preserve your energy and coordinate with your body’s capacity to work. You cannot cut down sleep hours, take intermittent rest on the go, and ensure productivity in old age.
Aging already promotes sleep irregularities. You will exhaust yourself without sufficient sleep and rest. You will experience loss of concentration, mood swings, and logical reasoning problems with short-term sleep disturbances.
In the long run, insufficient or irregular sleep can promote chronic cognitive health challenges. For instance, anxiety, depression, and memory impairments worsen if older adults already have underlying sleep disorders.
Hence, maintain a balanced routine and spare time for 8 to 9 hours of sleep every day. This simple habit can slow down your aging process, improve your well-being, and save you from countless health problems.
- Maintain oral hygiene
Mouth hygiene is crucial for your overall fitness and health. It decides how you can nourish and satiate your body. You can eat whatever you want with better oral health. But oral health problems are common in old age because of poor dietary choices, lower immunity, and the natural decaying process.
Gums also lose elasticity and strength, creating more gaps between teeth and making them susceptible to plaque and cavities. Studies reveal that approximately 68% of older adults (over 65 years) suffer from gum diseases, and nearly one in five lose all of their teeth.
It means your food choices narrow down if you suffer from these challenges. Hence, follow mouth hygiene practices and preserve your teeth from decaying. Maintaining mouth hygiene is also necessary for healthy digestive system functions.
Otherwise, oral infections facilitate bacteria growth in the mouth and disturb microbiome balance in the gut. In short, mouth hygiene has a profound role in your overall health.
- Withdraw from smoking
Smoking is dangerous for your health regardless of your age bracket. But it multiplies old-age healthcare challenges. Aging and smoking both augment the risks of diabetes, stroke, coronary heart diseases, lung infections, and malignancies in older adults.
It also promotes mental health challenges like dementia, depression, suicidal tendencies, and other sensory impairments in older adults. These challenges will deteriorate your life quality and shorten your life expectancy. Hence, quit smoking if you want to live a healthy life ahead.
Withdrawal is possible at any stage of your life. And if you are already thinking of withdrawal from smoking, do not believe in the notion that cutting down on smoking will not make any impactful difference in the remaining days of your life. Withdrawal from smoking at any stage of addiction will improve your physical and mental health.
Conclusion
The phenomenon of aging is unavoidable, and everyone goes down the hill road. But suffering from health issues in old age is not a destined fate. A pleasant and cherishing life while aging is possible if you look after your health and well-being.
You can minimize your health complications if you are cautious and vigilant of your health. So follow preventive measures and treasure your health.