7 Things You Should Be Doing for Your Bones Now...

Half of us over 50 will have weak bones by 2020 unless we make changes When registered dietitian Toby Smithson gave presentations on bone health, she’d bring three bags of flour, each with a different amount.One bag represented osteoporosis. Another bag represented osteopenia, or bone whose density is lower than normal but not enough to be classified as osteoporosis. The third bag represented normal bone. “You could see the flour and feel the heaviness and density,” said Smithson, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Osteoporosis was the lightest bag.” It was a powerful visual reminder of why it is so important to invest in your bone health now, before it becomes a problem. Consider this sobering thought: The U.S. Surgeon General has said that by 2020, half of Americans over 50 will have weak bones — unless we change our diets and lifestyle habits. Having weak bones puts us at risk of developing broken bones and osteoporosis. “People need to understand that this is preventable for the most part,” says Dr. Steven Hawkins, a spokesperson for the American College of Sports Medicine and a professor of exercise science at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, Calif. “But you have to take responsibility.” Bone Health Basics Our bones give structure to our bodies. They allow us to move. They protect our heart, lungs and other organs. They anchor our muscles. “Bone from an engineering perspective is kind of a marvel,” Hawkins says. Our bodies continually break down and rebuild bone. Children and teenagers form bone faster than they lose bone, but after age 20, we start losing bone faster than we rebuild it. Over time, our bones can become less dense and more prone to breaking. Most...

The 3 Questions to Help You Find Your Purpose...

Answer them and you’ll love your life more, says ‘The Payoff Principle’ author In junior high school, I decided that I would go into the ministry. The problem was, I wasn’t sure it was my dream . . . or ever had been. I went on to get my master’s and doctoral degrees, taught several undergraduate classes and something strange happened. I discovered I loved teaching and I was good at it — very good. But I also felt guilty for tossing aside my “supposed” purpose or calling to the ministry. Fortunately, I attended a workshop on “intensive journaling” about how to relax, think, reflect, visualize and keep a journal, so the deeper things inside me might be revealed. I then wrote in my journal: “I can serve God and others as a teacher, speaker and author.” Almost instantly, my guilt disappeared, and a sense of peace, direction, and well-being settled over me. I knew I was living my life and working my career on purpose. For years, I had confused a job with a purpose. Now, decades later, I am loving the work I do and feeling thankful that I’ve been able to touch the lives of thousands of people because my life and work have lined up with my purpose [https://designingbrightertomorrows.org/growth/5-tips-to-find-meaning-and-purpose-in-later-life/]. The payoffs start to roll in when you know that your life and your work are lined up with your purpose — at least some of the time. So that raises a critical question: How can you discover your purpose? It all comes down to the three critical, but deceptively simple, questions: What are you good at? What excites you? What difference do you want to make? Here’s how to answer them to find your purpose:...

4 Things to Do When Your Parents Are Resisting Help...

Taking these steps can reduce frustration and stress — for all of you “Doctor, my mom needs help, but she won’t accept it and she won’t listen.” Sound familiar? It’s a complaint I hear all the time from families worried about older parents and aging relatives. And it’s a very real issue that we must address. For better health and wellbeing in older adults, it’s not enough to identify the underlying health and life problems — although that is a key place to start. Because even if you’ve correctly identified the problems and learned how the experts recommend managing them, older parents often seem, well, resistant. Understandably, this causes families a lot of frustration and stress. Here are four actions I always recommend that families take when older parents are resisting help. Consider the possibility of cognitive impairment In other words, is a problem with brain function contributing to this resistance? Now, let me emphasize that you should not assume that your parents are in their wrong mind just because they are making health or safety decisions that you don’t agree with. That said, because it’s very common for the brain to become vulnerable or damaged as people age, decreased brain function is often a factor when an older person resists help. This can affect an older parent’s insight and judgment and can also affect how well they can process your logical arguments. It’s important to spot such cognitive impairment. Some of the impairment is often reversible. For example, older adults frequently develop delirium when ill or hospitalized, and an older person may need weeks or even months to recover to their best thinking abilities. Cognition can also be dampened by certain conditions, like hypothyroidism, or by medication side effects....

Walking 20 Minutes a Day Might Save Your Life...

A brisk walk could cut your risk of early death, even if you’re obese There’s now more encouraging evidence that you don’t have to run marathons to make a difference in your health. A brisk 20-minute walk each day could be enough to cut your risk of early death – even if you are obese, according to new research published Jan. 14, 2015. The study of more than 334,000 European men and women found that twice as many deaths may be attributable to lack of physical activity than to obesity. And a modest boost in activity could make a big difference, the study concluded. Small Change = Big Reward “This is a simple message: just a small amount of physical activity each day could have substantial health benefits for people who are physically inactive,” said Ulf Ekelund, of the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, England, who led the study. He added, however, that we should really aim for more than that. “Physical activity has many proven health benefits and should be an important part of our daily life,” noted Ekelund. The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Exercise. Deadly Effects of Inactivity Inactivity puts you at increased risk of heart disease, cancer and early death, studies show. It can contribute to increased body mass index (BMI) and obesity, though the association with early death is independent of your BMI , the researchers said. In the Cambridge study, researchers found that the greatest reduction in risk of premature death occurred in the comparison between inactive and moderately-inactive groups. Subjects were categorized based on their level of work activity (such as being a desk worker vs. a nurse) and how active they were outside of...

Why You Should Give Yourself a Hug...

Self-compassion improves health The lives of millions of boomers in their 50s and 60s have been characterized by ambition, achievement and competitiveness. Then the recession and lingering economic woes took their toll. For many, drive has given way to disappointment. Self-esteem has been eclipsed by worries about money, retirement and aging. Many of us think we should be doing better. But here’s advice worth heeding: Stop berating yourself. A growing body of research from some of the nation’s top universities is documenting the benefits of self-compassion — being as kind and accepting of your own failures as you would a friend’s. Giving yourself a break and accepting your imperfections improves overall health and well-being, boosts creativity and success and can even help people cope better with aging, studies have found. Moreover, those who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety. We Are All Imperfect “Treating oneself kindly leads people to understand and experience the reality that their troubles are part of the human condition,” says University of Texas at Austin educational psychology associate professor Kristin Neff , who has published a book on her research on self-compassion, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. Self-compassion, Neff says, is recognizing that we are all imperfect and should support ourselves, as well as others. This is especially relevant for boomers who, at this stage, tend to tally their life achievements and come up short. Even bags under the eyes and a painful joint or two can lead to a barrage of self-criticism. In fact, says Neff, people with low self-compassion mistakenly believe that being self-critical will motivate them. “But being kind to yourself does not lower standards,” she says. “With self compassion you aim and reach...

Why the Arts Are Key to Dementia Care...

This form of communication can engage intuition and imagination When you receive a serious medical diagnosis, it can feel as though that diagnosis replaces your identity. I am no longer myself — instead, now I am cancer, or heart attack or dementia. But even when we carry a diagnosis, we also continue to live our lives. We are more than our diseases and care plans. People can live as long as 20 years with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease  disease. Family and professional caregivers, as well as community members, need tools to ensure that people with Alzheimer’s can be more than their disease. But how? Conversation can be challenging, in person and by phone. How can we stay connected and foster what has come to be called the “personhood” of someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s? The answer is: the arts. A symbolic and emotional communication system, the arts don’t rely on linear memory and rational language. Rather, the arts engage our intuition and imagination. Their building blocks for expression are movement, gesture, words, patterns, sounds, color, rhythm, texture and smell — to name just a few. As access to rational language falters, a person’s imagination can soar. Memory vs. Imagination You don’t need to be an artist to use the arts for expression. These tools are available to everyone. Over the last 20 years, I have worked to encourage care partners to communicate with people who have dementia through creativity. The shift from expecting and correcting memory to opening and connecting through imagination can be profound, especially for family members. After years of distance, the arts can help families rekindle an emotional connection. I remember in one workshop for caregivers, I was demonstrating how they could use open-ended questions...

How to Help Mom and Dad Move to a New Home...

Here are five tips to make the transition less traumatic for your parents For most people, moving from one home to another is exhausting. Even when we get help with packing and transporting our possessions, moving means changing countless aspects of our everyday lives — from making a new place for the silverware to potentially finding new friends. And it can mean saying goodbye to memories we’ve made over the course of years. Older adults often have a much harder time with the transition. For your parents, moving can go from merely taxing to highly traumatic. That’s when it becomes transfer trauma, also known more broadly as relocation stress syndrome. “You’re literally transitioning to a completely different phase of life, to a completely different environment,” says Tach Branch-Dogans, president and CEO of Moving Memories and Mementos of Dallas, Texas, who spoke at the Aging in America 2015 [www.asaging.org/aia] conference of the American Society on Aging [www.asaging.org] I just attended. That’s true whether a person is voluntarily downsizing or being moved into a nursing home, she says. Symptoms of Transfer Trauma Moving can result in a host of physical and psychological changes, including loss of sleep, agitation, depression, withdrawal, short-term memory loss, irritable bowel syndrome, loss of appetite and nausea, Branch-Dogans says. Tracy Greene Mintz, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Redondo Beach, Calif., who has worked and lectured extensively in the area of relocation stress syndrome, says loss of control is at the core of transfer trauma. “This week you’re going to be at home living independently; next week you’re going to be in assisted living. The abruptness with which we move older people … is very damaging psychosocially and emotionally because it strips the older adult of control,”...

6 Travel Tips for Midlife Adventurers...

You’ve done the backpack bit. Now, your journeys take planning. Preparing for a trip was simple in our youth: Stuff a backpack with a few changes of clothes and some personal items and head out to a grand adventure. Now, though, we may be gluten-free, diabetic, a little lame, sleep-deprived and out-of-shape. At some point, the inequity of age hits us all. That doesn’t mean we stop having adventures. It just means that for most of us, preparing for them is different — and should be. Here are six tips to help you make the most of your next big trip: Pack as if your bags may get lost. After being stuck in Italy for three days without my bags, I learned to carry a change of clothes (and several sets of underwear) in my carry-on. My husband and I usually check two bags: each contains half my clothes and half his. This ensures we both have at least some of the clothes and toiletries we need, even if an airline loses our luggage. Bring the food you need. If you must limit your diet — or eat every few hours — it’s easy to pack food to supplement what’s available at your destination. Peanut butter, small applesauce cups, rice cakes, crackers and meal replacement bars are portable and may be life-savers on the road. My three-week trip to India included many days when I was unable to eat the food available. One of our travel companions was diabetic. We were glad we’d each brought portable snacks and vitamins. Shed clothing as you go. Lugging heavy bags up the stairs in European train stations taught me to pack lightly. I save undergarments, sneakers and clothing that are near the...