ONE STEP AT A TIME your health
Welcome to midlife—the time when you might start to notice a creaky knee or a roll of fat that wasn’t there before. But don’t let that send you into panic mode. Rather, it’s a great reminder to start planning for, well, the rest of your life. The lifestyle choices you make now can largely influence how vibrant and active you will be in the coming decades. Here, a few tips to help you sail through midlife and beyond.
In Your 40s and 50s YOUR HEALTHIEST LIFE PRESCRIPTIONS
Don’t take your doctor lightly. “At this age, the biggest mistake people make is not taking their test results seriously,” says Shantanu Nundy, M.D., staff physician at
the University of Chicago Medical Center. This is not the time to be brushing off your doctor’s health recommendations. If you have high blood pressure, for instance, it’s not enough to think about cutting back on salt. “You have to be really proactive about it,” he explains. Work with your doctor to get your condition under control now.
Bone up on calcium. Women lose the most bone mass during and after menopause. Make sure you’re taking 1,000 mg of calcium and 400–600 IU
of vitamin D daily to help prevent osteoporosis and lower your risk of fractures.
Get pumped. Even if you didn’t pump iron in your younger years, start doing it now. Without a weight-training program, muscle strength and mass decrease as we get older. Strengthening the
muscles around your joints can also help take the pressure off of them, and possibly reduce your risk of arthritis and joint-replacing surgeries. Lifting weights can also build bone strength, which can help protect against broken bones later on in life.
Baby steps. If you are at increased risk of heart disease or stroke, talk to your doctor about the benefits and risks of taking a baby aspirin daily. For many people, the potentially
dangerous side effects may outweigh the benefits, so don’t take aspirin daily without first consulting your doctor.
Little exercises. Big payoffs.
We’ve all seen the commercials about bladder control problems. While urinary incontinence (the medical term for leaking urine) isn’t a normal part of aging, it’s true that aging takes a toll on the muscles that help keep us dry. The good news is there are easy exercises you can do that help strengthen these muscles. The benefits of Kegel exercises? Better bladder control (and maybe even better sex). Here’s how:
1 Find the right muscles. Squeeze the muscles you’d use if you were trying to stop yourself from passing gas or stopping the flow of urine. Those are your pelvic floor muscles.
2 Pull in the pelvic floor muscles and hold for three seconds. Then relax for three seconds. Work up to three sets of 10.
3 Don’t squeeze other muscles (in your stomach, leg or buttocks) at the same time. Focus on only tightening the muscles around your rectum and vagina. Also, don’t hold your breath.
4 Spend five minutes, three times a day, doing these exercises. You can even do these exercises while you’re doing other things like watching TV. Sometimes it’s easiest to start practicing Kegel exercises lying down. As your muscles get stronger, you can do them sitting or standing.»
28 HEALTHYADVICE.COM
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