By Maria Jauhar, M.D.
Until recent years we all thought we knew what getting older looked like. After all, we’d seen our older relatives move through stages that most of them had in common. Our overall perception was once encapsulated in the expression, “Getting old is not for sissies.”
Healthy Aging Month was founded to bring another point of view to the attention of a rapidly growing population. It’s not surprising that the influential “Baby Boom” generation now swells the ranks of America’s seniors, but with 82 million “Generation X-ers” joining them at age 50 and above, a huge proportion of society can live better by taking a different view of aging.
Let’s Get Physical – and Social and Financial and Mental
Healthy aging calls for attention to all the key aspects of well-being, from the body to the bank account. So Healthy Aging Month reminds people to pay attention to them all. September was chosen as the month to celebrate because, more than the calendar year, the school year sticks with us as the time to begin learning new skills and insights.
And “new” is a lot of what healthy aging is about. New knowledge, new goals, and new habits can be the foundation for a life we didn’t foresee when our mission was establishing a career, making a home, or rearing a family. One of the delights of this new view of aging is that in many cases the focus can shift in a good way to the self.
Seemingly “Soft Stuff” Counts
Catnaps can reduce the danger of heart disease. People with goals and a sense of drive to achieve them are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. These findings are research-backed, and they’re just two of the lifestyle tips you can find on the Healthy Aging Magazine website.
Among the magazine’s 10 Tips to Celebrate Healthy Aging Month are some that sound strangely simple, yet contribute a lot to a person’s fresh approach to living.
One of the most unexpected of these tips might be this one. Remember your favorite age or chapter in your life. Picture yourself as that age and feel it. Some of the other tips might remind us of things our parents seemed to harp on. Stand up straight. Smile. Walk like a vibrant, healthy person.
They might have sounded tiresome when we were teenagers, but later in life they can shape for us an approach to living that helps make living worthwhile. Do we stand and walk this way, or carry this facial expression, because we have to? Or is it just a habit we developed as life progressed? With consciousness and desire, we can just as well develop a new and different habit that serves us much better.
Put Professional Coaching On Your Side, Too
Of course, regular medical attention plays a big role in preventing drastic medical attention at any stage of life. This is especially true as we grow older. A firm foundation for this preventative care is to develop a relationship with a family physician who can get to know you overall – at your best and not just when something goes wrong.
And the best time to develop that relationship is before you need it.
