Keep Moving As You Age So That You Can Grow Older Gracefully!
“Life is about movement - everything that is alive moves.” (1)
What a great thing to realize! No matter your age, you have to move. As you grow older, you have to move more (than you may want)! Life is motion. Motion is life. Researchers are really delivering some great information on this fact that will motivate us all (and our loved ones!) to exercise so that we can all age gracefully. Hollstrom & Associates Inc and our Largo chiropractic patients will all grow old better working together, exercising, moving, and meeting at the office for gentle Cox® treatment!
BED REST AND MOBILITY
Bed rest is not always best! It may be less frightening than moving and be even a bit calming. Hollstrom & Associates Inc will give you that! If you have ever been hospitalized, you know there is a lot of bed rest, maybe even too much for your liking! A study of patients in an acute care hospital ward found that inpatient mobility was low despite their individual capacities to move and desires to move. (1) It’s vital to keep acute patients - and those with new bouts of back pain and/or neck pain, too - moving so that they can heal! Beneficially, acutely hospitalized older patients improved their muscle strength and power while hospitalized using an individualized multicomponent exercise program that integrated power training in as little as 3 days! (2) In a review of the good that exercise offers for frail older adults, researchers emphasized the importance of maintaining functional abilities for those who want to grow old gracefully. They further stressed that exercise and physical activity are effective for the prevention of falls, hospital stays, enriched cognition, etc. Exercises from power training (yes – power training for older folks!) to resistance training, balance exercises, aerobic training, walking, etc. (3) Mobility is part of keeping frailty away, and Hollstrom & Associates Inc encourages it!
FRAILTY AND MOBILITY
Those of us over 65 years old are said to be more susceptible to frailty, increasing our risk of lot of other adverse health issues, both cognitive and physical. The desire we all have is that frailty is reversible. Researchers have analyzed this issue by appraising published studies on this topic of frailty reversal. Luckily, 56.7% of the papers proposed that it is reversible (getting a person who is frail/severely frail to a state of being just pre-frail or just mildly frail). (4) Those are hopeful outcomes! One study said that frail and even “pre” frail older patients demonstrated better physical performance and function following a brief (6 week) facility-based exercise program that involved a walking-based high intensity interval training. 64% improved their frailty rating. Particularly, muscle power improved by 47%, muscle strength rose 34%, and aerobic capacity by 19%. (5) And other advantages with physical activity in general: energy and a better emotional state! Frailty and aging tend to lower energy levels and raise fatigue and emotional distress. Moving and physical activity has been reported to fight those feelings in older women as well as increase life expectancy and reduce some negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle. (6) Hollstrom & Associates Inc thinks you’ll concur that these are beneficial!
CONTACT Hollstrom & Associates Inc
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Tom Menendez on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes the effective gentle protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the elderly.
Make your Largo chiropractic appointment now. You’re alive. What a wonderful fact! Celebrate that with some movement.
