How can we help?

Everyone wants to live longer but many of us are resigned to the belief that genetics dictate how long each of us live. While genetics definitely play an important role in how long we live, a much more important factor for our longevity is how we live.

When we think about how long we live, we are thinking about our lifespan or longevity. Another very important factor is the health span or our quality of life as we age. It is definitely possible to increase your health span and your lifespan simultaneously by how you live. Taking an active role every day in how you live is the key to expanding both our quality of life and how long we live.

While no one will live forever and genetics has a significant influence on how long each of us will live, everyone can make a choice to age well. Aging well usually requires an individual to take action about his or her health. Exercising vigorously in our 20s and 30s such as running marathons, going for century (100 mile) bike rides or swimming a couple of miles at a time is relatively easy to believe at such a young age. How about doing the same activity in our 60s and 70s? While we may not have the same energy level we had in our 20 and 30s as we age, we can make a choice to live life actively and exercise intensely at any age (perhaps not doing marathons or riding 100 miles at a time but doing half of that is certainly achievable in our 60s). We can still choose a training regimen on a daily basis that promotes our fitness and wellness that is appropriate for our physical condition at any stage of life. Recent studies have shown that exercising intensely on a regular basis through our adult lives helps to maximize our life span potential.

What is important is not letting the stigma of our age slow us down. Our bodies’ function is enhanced by circulation. And circulation is enhanced by elevating our heart rates with an exercise of choice. The exercise of choice should be something we enjoy doing. Perhaps doing yoga, going for a bike ride with a friend or attending a class or lifting weights at the local gym can be an enjoyable way to meet people and get on the road to extending our health spans.

Putting life into our years helps us to add years to our lives. Not letting fear or the stigma of age stop us from exercising intensely enables us to proactively take action for our health. Changing an active lifestyle to a sedentary one because you retire or hit a landmark age even over the span of several years is tantamount to giving up on ourselves for our future mobility and potential for healthy activity. Grandparents can choose to spend as much time (and probably more so) exercising than they did when they became first time parents.

As mentioned earlier, exercise promotes circulation. Circulation prevents inflammation which is a good thing because inflammation is the basis of disease. So, taking action instead of passively letting time go by is the first step towards enjoying your later years and lengthening your health span. Lengthening our health spans means spending less time sitting around watching TV and/or dealing with disease because we just don’t have the time to be sick. Being active often means being outside. Fresh air and nature make us appreciate the life we have. If you have not gone for a walk in the woods recently, treat yourself to such a walk to remind yourself how fortunate we all are to live in the natural world. Exposing ourselves to nature reminds us how healthy our natural world is for our mental and physical being.

What happens if you have a prior injury or chronic condition such as arthritis that prevents you from exercising, getting outside or even moving well? This is where physical therapy comes in to play. A physical therapist can treat you with manual therapy techniques to reduce chronic pain or soreness. That therapist can also teach you the most appropriate exercise techniques for your condition enabling you to start or continue an exercise regimen or at least get out of the house at a level that is right for you.

The important word here is condition not age. When we discuss age, we are generally referring to a number which represents a chronological passage of time. This number is usually different from our physiological age, which is determined mostly by how active we are, what foods we eat, how much sleep we get, and how well we are connected to nature and with other people. (Of course, genetics plays a role in our physiological age too but not as much of a role as is commonly thought.). Maximizing your physical capability for exercise may mean simply going for a walk outside. So, the proper level of exercise for each individual is based upon his or her condition not age.

Do we need to accept what society tells us? That at a certain age we should stop doing certain things like participating in sports or athletic competitions, skydiving, learning to fly a plane or simply attending a sporting event. And what about travel? It’s hard to travel if you are not mobile. So, to stay mobile, you need to stay young or at least act like you did in your 20s and 30s so that you maintain the muscle strength and joint flexibility that you need to go anywhere. Yes, you can climb mountains in your 70s as long as you don’t let societal stereotypes get in your way.

So rather than accepting that our age determines our health at a given stage of life or how active we can be or what activities we do, we can each decide how active we will be in our later years. Pursuing an activity that we have always wanted to do but never had the time to do will give us pleasure if we can make the time to do it and prepare for it mentally and physically. Pursuing such an activity may require disciplined preparation such as going to bed earlier on a regular basis, stretching our legs on a daily rather than weekly basis or parking further away from our destination so that we take a few thousand extra steps each day. But no able-bodied individual should shy away from what they really want to do in their later years simply because they have reached a certain age. People who are proactive about physical conditioning may have physiological ages 20 to 30 years younger than their chronological age.

Acting younger than your chronological age will enable you to extend your health span and lower your physiological age simultaneously. And if you need help getting started to pursue your dream activity or activities, a physical therapist can help get you started on the road to a more active lifestyle by giving you the exercise instruction, manual treatment or proper education about how to use the body you have in order to maximize its potential to give you the potential for a future that you want.