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Get Better With Age –
12 Ways to Stay on Top of Your Game
A
WebMD Feature
Emotional and mental vitality are closely tied to
physical vitality-just as your mind has powerful
effects on your body, so your physical state affects
how you feel and think.
Social contact can also make a big difference in
how you feel.
Replacing a "lost" activity is a key to staying
active and feeling good about yourself. For
instance, if you can no longer run, you might try
walking, biking, and/or swimming. And if your
favorite activity was dancing, you might try
something else that combines social and physical
activity, such as joining a water aerobics class.
Replacing lost activities can help you keep a
positive attitude and sense of well-being over time,
even if aging and changes in your health mean you
can not do all the things you used to do.
Physical activity. Protect or improve your
emotional and cognitive health with regular physical
activity. While physical activity produces chemicals
in the body that promote emotional well-being,
inactivity can make depression, anxiety, and stress
worse. For example, one study suggests that older
women who walk regularly have more mental sharpness
than those who don't.
Another study showed that regular physical activity
3 or more times a week delayed the beginning of
dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
Social activity. Protect or improve your
emotional health by staying in touch with friends,
family, and the greater community. Whether
physically healthy or ill, people who feel connected
to others are more likely to thrive than those who
are socially isolated.
Volunteering in your community and sharing your
wisdom and talents with others is a gratifying and
meaningful way to enrich your life. In fact, older
adults who regularly volunteer even a small amount
of time generally have a greater sense of well-being
than those who don't.
Mental activity. Protect or improve your memory
and mental sharpness by:
-
Challenging your intellect on a daily basis.
Read, learn a new musical instrument or
language, do crossword puzzles, play games of
strategy with others. Just like an active body,
an active brain continues to develop and thrive,
while an inactive brain loses its power over
time.
-
Helping your memory along. Write down dates,
names, and other important information that you
easily forget. Use routine and repetition. For
example, keep daily items such as keys and
eyeglasses in a specific place. And when you
learn a new name, repeat it out loud in
conversation or to yourself several times to
commit it to memory. (No matter what your age,
having too much on your mind can interfere with
your memory of new information. And as you age,
it is normal to take longer to retrieve new
information from your memory bank.)
-
Preventing depression, which is a common yet
treatable cause of cognitive decline in older
people. In addition to getting regular physical
activity and social contact, avoid the
depressant effect of alcohol and sedative use,
eat healthy meals and snacks, and include
meaningful activity in your daily life (such as
learning, creating, working, volunteering). If
you think you have depression, seek professional
help-antidepressant medicine and/or counseling
are effective treatments for depression.
For
more information, see the topic Depression. If you
find that a physical condition or disability is
making your depressed mood worse, get the medical
treatment you need.
Not smoking. Cigarette smoking may speed mental
decline. This connection was recently identified in
a large study comparing smokers and nonsmokers age
65 and over. If you smoke and would like to stop,
see the topic about quitting smoking.
Stress reduction and relaxation techniques. Too
much life stress can take a toll on your body, your
mind, and the people who are closest to you. In
addition to getting regular physical activity, you
can take charge of how stress affects you by taking
20 minutes a day for relaxation time.
Meditation focuses your attention and helps calm
both mind and body. Daily meditation is used for
managing a spectrum of physical and emotional
conditions, including high blood pressure, anxiety,
depression, and chronic pain.
The
body responds to stress with muscle tension, which
can cause pain or discomfort. Progressive muscle
relaxation reduces muscle tension and general
anxiety and may help you get to sleep.
The
way you breathe affects your whole body. Try
breathing exercises for relaxation. Full, deep
breathing is a good way to reduce tension, feel
relaxed, and reduce stress.
Positive thinking. Positive thinking may help
you live a longer, happier life. But even if you
tend to be an optimist, there are times when it
takes extra effort to frame your life positively.
Take the following steps to harness the power of
positive thinking in your daily life.
Create positive expectations of yourself, your
health, and life in general. When you catch yourself
using negative self-talk or predicting a bad
outcome, stop. Reframe your thought into a positive
one, and speak it out loud or write it down. This
type of thinking can help you best recover from
surgery, cancer, and other life crises.
Open
yourself to humor, friendship, and love. Go out of
your way to find reasons to laugh and to spend time
with people you enjoy.
Appeal to a higher power, if it suits you.
Whether it be through your faith in a loving,
all-powerful God or your connection with nature or a
collective unconscious, your sense of spiritual
wellness can help you through personal trials and
enhance your joy in living.
©
WebMD. All rights reserved.
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Protect or improve your emotional
and cognitive health with regular physical
activity. |
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