It’s a thought that no one wants to entertain, but even so, age catches up with us sooner or later. The one thing we cannot slow is time, but what we can do is control the aging process so that even though our bodies go through the process, our brains and other faculties don’t fail us as we grow older. The trick is to age gracefully so that your body does not give up on you before your brain or vice versa. And to do this, here’s what is necessary:

• Plan your retirement when you’re healthy: It’s not something that we want to do when we’re healthy, but it is a must because you may not have people around to care for you when you’re old and infirm. Put aside some money to take care of your needs and also check out assisted living communities where you have people to care for you and where you can interact with others like you. It beats living alone and dying a recluse.
• Maintain your health with regular exercise and sensible eating habits: As you grow older, your body’s metabolism slows down. So eat less, eat more healthy food, and get some regular exercise every day. A walk for half an hour should do the trick, either in the morning or the evening.
• Avoid activities that cause disease: When you drink regularly (more than one drink a day) and smoke (or do drugs), you’re stressing out your body and driving it to disease. This makes you more of a broken shell as you grow older and you’re wracked by ailments that trouble you one after the other or all at once. So avoid drinking too much, smoking, and eating fatty foods.
• Keep your brain active by staying busy: We’ve all heard those horror stories about Alzheimer’s and dementia and that’s enough reason to protect your brain from the time you’re healthy. It’s been proven that regular physical exercise helps prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s even if it’s in your genes. Also, you must exercise your brain with puzzles, crosswords and other challenging activities so that it does not atrophy like an unused muscle.
• Don’t remove yourself from the social scene: You may not feel like socializing as you grow older and have less energy. But meeting and interacting with other people is a tonic for both your body and mind. Spend time with friends and family members, laugh and play with your grandchildren, and set aside days to do the things you like to do.

This way, you grow old, but you don’t let age steal your life and brain away from you.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Shannon Wills, she writes on the topic of Physical Therapist Assistant Schools . She welcomes your comments at her email id: shannonwills23@gmail.com.

Tags: age become 50, age graceful, Anti Aging, beautiful age

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Anti Aging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.