Healthy Aging Debbie Tarcza SOC – 304: Social Gerontology Instructor: Amy Reid August 15, 2011 As people grow older, leading an active lifestyle is more important than ever. Regular exercise helps seniors maintain health, boost energy, and improve confidence. The good news is, no matter your age, your health, or your fitness level, you can benefit from moving more. Whether you are generally healthy or are managing an illness, there are big and small ways to get more active and boost your fitness level. Exercise is extremely important for everyone, no matter what age you are.
However for seniors, it becomes even more important. The problem is, many seniors do not know where to begin. They may feel discouraged by fitness barriers, such as chronic health conditions or concerns about injury or falls. The truth is that those entering their senior years can not afford to not get moving. Exercise is the key to staying strong, energetic, and healthy as you get older. It can help you manage the symptoms of illness and pain, maintain your independence, and even reverse some of the symptoms of aging. And not only is exercise good for your body, it is good for your mind, mood, and memory. Developing a Healthy Aging Strategy Essay Paper
Many seniors believe that because they are getting older, there is no point to exercising. However, this could not be farther from the truth. Exercise and strength training helps you look and feel younger and stay active longer. Regular physical activity lowers your risk for a variety of conditions, including Alzheimer’s and dementia, heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, high blood pressure, and obesity. (Ghaffar, 2008). In fact, being physically active on a regular basis is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself.
Studies have shown that exercise provides many health benefits and that older adults can gain a lot by staying physically active. Even moderate exercise and physical activity can improve the health of people who are frail or who have diseases that accompany aging. “According to the U. S. Surgeon General’s Report on Physical Activity and Health, inactive people are nearly twice as likely to develop heart disease as those who are more active. Lack of physical activity also can lead to more visits to the doctor, more hospitalizations, and more use of medicines for a variety of illnesses. (NIH, 2010). There are two ways to keep moving; physical activity and exercise. Physical activities are activities that get your body moving such as gardening, walking the dog and taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Exercise is a form of physical activity that is specifically planned, structured, and repetitive such as weight training, tai chi, or an aerobics class. Including both in your life will provide you with health benefits that can help you feel better and enjoy life more as you age. Even those with disabilities or health conditions that require them to be chair-bound can exercise. Developing a Healthy Aging Strategy Essay Paper
Chair-bound people face special challenges but can lift light weights, stretch, and do chair aerobics to increase range of motion, improve muscle tone, and promote cardiovascular health. As you age, regular exercise is more important than ever to your mind and your body. There are so many great benefits to including exercise in your daily routine. Exercise helps seniors maintain or lose weight. As metabolism naturally slows with age, maintaining a healthy weight is a challenge. Exercise helps increase metabolism and builds muscle mass, helping to burn more calories.
When your body reaches a healthy weight, overall wellness improves. Exercise reduces the impact of illness and chronic disease. Among the many benefits of exercise for seniors include improved immune function, better heart health and blood pressure, better bone density, and better digestive functioning. Exercise enhances mobility, flexibility, and balance in seniors. Exercise improves your strength, flexibility and posture, which in turn will help with balance, coordination, and reducing the risk of falls. Developing a Healthy Aging Strategy Essay Paper
Strength training also helps alleviate the symptoms of chronic conditions such as arthritis. There are additional benefits to exercising than just physical; there are mental benefits as well. Exercise improves your sleep. Poor sleep is not an automatic consequence of aging and quality sleep is important for your overall health. Exercise often improves sleep, helping you fall asleep more quickly and sleep more deeply. Exercise also boosts mood and self-confidence. Endorphins produced by exercise can actually help you feel better and reduce feelings of sadness or depression.
Being active and feeling strong naturally helps you feel more self confident and sure of yourself. Believe it or not, exercise is good for the brain. Exercise benefits regular brain functions and can help keep the brain active, which can prevent memory loss, cognitive decline, and dementia. Exercise may even help slow the progression of brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. So, as you can see, there are many benefits to incorporating an exercise regimen into your daily routine. Your mind, body and soul will thank you! So what are you waiting for? Get moving today! Developing a Healthy Aging Strategy Essay Paper
You are never too young or too old to start! References: Ghaffar, A. , (2008). The Benefits of Daily Exercise for the Elderly: Senior Fitness Helps Avoid Chronic Diseases | Suite101. com. Retrieved from: http://www. suite101. com/content/daily-exercise-for-the-elderly-a82799#ixzz1V7nkTez1 National Institute of Health (NIH), (2010). Senior Health: Benefits of Exercise. Retrieved from: http://nihseniorhealth. gov/exerciseforolderadults Quadagno, J. , (2011). Aging and the Life Course. An Introduction to Social Gerontolgy. (5th ed. ) McGraw-Hill; New York, NY.
For many old ages hearing loss has been related with worlds that come with aging. It is believed that as we age our hearing distinctively starts to neglect. Health attention professionals thought that much of this failure was a merchandise of our single age, such that as we grow old our hearing ability lowers. Researchs have shown that older people get less, non as expected in life merely because of the loss of hearing ability which largely stays with them undiagnosed nor treated. However, we can non reason that age entirely causes hearing loss because in some lineage of a specific household bulk have unbelievable hearing ability right to their old age, hence there must be other causes of hearing loss, though is common among aging people ( Bauman, 1999 ) . There are several causes of hearing loss as people tend to age. They are normally as a consequence of life for a longer clip as we accumulate the harmful in the procedure of hearing. Major harmful effects are the loud noise, emphasis, and the prescribed medicines or the usage of drugs. Noise is chiefly every where in our day-to-day lives, it assaults our ears as the bantam hair cells cease to work decently or decease wholly. Slowly we loose our hearing ability but merely discover that our hearing is non every bit sober as it used to be while we were immature. Stress excessively robs us our hearing. Our day-to-day life is full of concern of doing ends meet, sometimes we are full of anxiousness, tenseness and we can be easy irritated, this does non merely interfere with our wellness but besides affect our hearing. The bantam cells in our cochlea demand to stay healthy and when we are stressed, blood vass constricts cut downing the blood supply to organic structure variety meats therefore to the bantam cells of cochlea which needs it adequately. They can acquire ill or die, fring our hearing abilities bit by bit because we experience more stress depending on how long we have lived ( Bauman, 1999 ) . Developing a Healthy Aging Strategy Essay Paper
As we age we tend to take more medicines which on the other manus destruct our hearing. Research workers have identified drugs that can damage hearing being the most prescribed drugs particularly in America today. With this ototoxic drugs the amendss are non noticed easy which at the long tally it has been presumed to normal aging. Many of these drugs are taken bite by bite but they make us deaf easy. Other cause can be the antibiotics or the disease itself for illustration rubeolas though even at an early age as two old ages ( Hear-it.org. 2009 ) .Developing a Healthy Aging Strategy Essay Paper
The symptoms of hearing loss are much definite in the address of an elderly individual, he begins to be humdrum, delayed address acknowledgment, failure to detect loud sounds or copy sounds, non able to turn up a voice and respond to it, frequent ear infections, and you will happen out they largely twenty-four hours dream and tend to retreat from societal interaction. This is non to state that shildren and young persons are non affected, because address and hearing abilities are non age particulars. These symptoms can be besides detected in the babies. All the age groups with the symptoms can be helped to larn gestural linguistic communication or be given hearing AIDSs though can be rather disputing to the old but speedy adopted by the immature ( Hear-it.org. 2009 ) .
However, hearing loss normally have negative impact to the life of all the affected more so to the old. They can be embarrassed or a individuals ability to interact being interfered hence impacting his/her physical, societal, and the emotional well being. It can ensue to depression, people retreating from the societal activities or others may believe there is mental impairment. Developing a Healthy Aging Strategy Essay Paper