Over 60?
Retirees, pensioners and the elderly folks are most often exposed to a sedentary lifestyle and that’s because they have very few choices about it, or do they? If you’re one of the people mentioned above you should be glad because your average lifestyle doesn’t have to be as boring as you think. That’s because you can live a healthy life even if you’re retired or beyond the age of 60! How do you that? It’s simple – stay on your feet.
That’s right, the life of a retiree may seem tempting to spend your days mostly sitting or lying down. True, you deserve the luxurious, or at least a less demanding life after working hard for more than 30 years of your life, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be subtle and allow your health and well being to deteriorate along with your pleasure of killing time. The solution to your predicament is to find something to do between the hours when you’re sitting down and roam around your house or lawn. It doesn’t matter what chores you’ll do whether it’s just making coffee, doing the laundry or mowing the lawn as long as you’ll keep yourself busy.
According to Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of Life Sciences for NASA and author of the book “Sitting Kills,” to start becoming 
healthier the best thing sedentary people can do is simply standing up more. Standing up often helps pump blood from the feet to the head, and tunes the vestibular system, as well as maintain blood pressure. Research shows that even a regular morning jog can’t compensate for being inert during the rest of the 23 hours of the day. Furthermore, it also shows that no matter how fit people are, prolonged bouts of inactivity have been found to increase subjects’ risk of serious afflictions. Among the known risks are hypertension, blood clots, and even some types of cancer.
So as you age gracefully, do mix your lifestyle with fun, relaxation and a regular workout as well 
as maintaining a daily routine of your chores and other light to moderate physical activity. There is an old lady from Canada, who became an immigrant about 30 years ago (she was from Ukraine), and she would divide her time between playing Sudoku, online bingo, gardening, reading books, swimming, cooking and half a dozen other chores. Now she does most of this almost every day and even at the age of 70 she still jogs every morning and keep herself busy throughout the day. What an amazing woman! And to think that she was just an ordinary school teacher.
You too can live a healthier life even in your old age.
You really don’t have an excuse, I mean, if an old lady can do it, then why not you? Of course attitude plays an important role here and you have to absolutely want to live a healthy life in order for you to realize it. Moving around your house, front lawn and backyard is all it takes to begin and soon it will develop as your habit. From there you just build up with more routine chores and workouts. It won’t be long before you become a healthier person.
Johanna Oosterwijk ND
