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 reminder! No matter your age, you have to move. As you grow older, you have to move more (than you may feel like)! 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 grow old and grow old(er) gracefully. Aurora Chiropractic Center and our Juneau 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 isn’t always best! It may be less scary than moving and be even a bit comforting. Aurora Chiropractic Center will give you that! If you’ve 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 get up and move around. (1) It is vital to keep acute patients - and those with new bouts of back pain and/or neck pain, too - moving to get them better! Beneficially, acutely hospitalized older patients improved their muscle strength and power while hospitalized following an individualized multicomponent exercise program that integrated power training in as little as 3 days! (2) In a review of the benefits of exercise for frail older adults, researchers stressed the importance of preserving functional abilities for those who want to grow old gracefully. They further emphasized that exercise and physical activity are good to prevent 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 at bay, and Aurora Chiropractic Center encourages it!
FRAILTY AND MOBILITY
Those of us over 65 years old are said to be more susceptible to frailty, amplifying our risk of lot of other undesirable health issues, both cognitive and physical. The hope we all have is that frailty is reversible. Researchers have studied this issue by examining published studies on this topic of frailty reversal. Fortunately, 56.7% of the papers proposed that it is reversible (returning a person who is frail/severely frail to a state of being ‘pre-frail’ or just mildly so). (4) Those are hopeful outcomes! One study said that frail and even “pre” frail older patients demonstrated better physical performance and function following a short (6 week) facility-based exercise program that involved a walking-based high intensity interval training. 64% upped their frailty rating. Particularly, muscle power went up 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 are more apt to decrease 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) Aurora Chiropractic Center thinks you will concur that these are beneficial!
CONTACT Aurora Chiropractic Center
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 older patient.
Make your Juneau chiropractic appointment soon. You’re alive. What a wonderful thing! Celebrate that with some movement.
