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Exercise is known to have multiple benefits for all people, but seniors must be made aware of how exercise can enhance their later years and make their retirement more enjoyable. The importance of exercise for senior citizens are broad based.
Energy
When you are tired and listless, get up and exercise. Exercise can give you energy. It invigorates you to get your blood pumping through those veins. It will alleviate tiredness and make you feel like a new person. What sixty-five year old wouldn't like to feel like a forty-five year old again? There is no need to sit and grow tired! Seniors often make excuses to keep sitting, and this is definitely the wrong decision to make. Having more energy will enable the senior to get out and enjoy doing things with family and friends. His personal outlook on life will just be more positive, making him happier all around.
Mental Sharpness
Exercise can help seniors maintain their mental sharpness. It will provide increased blood flow that keeps the brain functioning well longer than if the individual did not exercise regularly. For this reason, doctors frequently advise patients to get more mild exercise to ward off the negative effects of aging. Without regular exercise, seniors are often victims to dementia and Alzheimer's disease. These debilitating ailments interfere with the senior's ability to make healthy decisions and interact easily with family and friends. This leads to a very lonely life----not what we want when we think of retirement.
Joint Pain Management
Another benefit of exercise is the effect it has on aging joints. Exercise is known to provide relief from arthritis pain of the knees and hips. Mild exercise under a doctor's care can do much to postpone the need for hip or knee replacement surgery or even negate the need for it at all. Those seniors who are already experiencing arthritic pain need exercise to overcome the stiffness in the joint that comes with arthritis. Sitting for long periods of time will magnify this stiffness and make walking at all very painful. So exercising those joints by walking, cycling, or swimming will alleviate a lot of the pain that is typical in aging people.
Improved Heart Function
There are also heart benefits from exercise. As we age, our heart function may begin to weaken, and pumping the blood to all parts of our body can tire it out. That's why the elderly often are victims of heart attacks. We need a healthy heart, maintained by healthy diet and exercise. Walking is a mild aerobic exercise that will benefit the heart and keep it pumping efficiently. Walking can be done in the home or outside, getting some fresh air. Seniors can feel vulnerable outside sometimes, though, so walking with a buddy might be a good idea. Many parks have walking trails for those who enjoy getting out in nature. However, inclement weather might make it necessary to find an indoor walking location. Shopping malls are often used for early morning walkers. In my city, if you go to a mall around 6:00 a.m. you will find up to fifty walkers following a perimeter path through the mall. It's air-conditioned on hot days and dry on rainy ones, so it's perfect for seniors who want to get in that daily exercise in spite of the weather.
Aiding with Digestion and Irregularity
Finally, exercise can have an effect on our digestive system. Sometimes our system gets sluggish and we suffer from irregularity. Getting plenty of exercise and drinking water can go a long way in regulating our digestive tracts and making us more comfortable. Irregularity is a common problem among seniors, and we seldom think of exercise as a type of remedy for it.
So if you are a senior and you want to have energy and feel good all throughout your retirement years, get out of that chair and exercise!
This is a great article with lots of great advise. It's true that it is really easy to forget all the marvelous benefits of life-long activity!
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