If you've noticed you’re losing strength, that you’re slowing down.
If you’ve begun to feel a little shaky, or feel like you could tumble over easily, then this article is for you.
Let's start with the basics: You're over 50, possibly in your 60s or even, your 70s...
These things that are happening to you, that you’ve noticed in your body, consider them as messages: your body is speaking to you.
Going by the statistics and the averages, my guess is that you can already tell that your body is weakening.
And the fallout of this weakening is going to color your life for the shorter and longer-term: a foretelling of the Quality of your Life for, maybe 30, 40 years or more.
Too often, we are our own worst enemy, kicking the can down the road, leaving our responsibilities for our future self to deal with "out there, somewhere in the future". (That's like saying to ourselves: "I'll deal with the problem when that problem gets so bad that I simply can't ignore it". If you've already noticed, you've arrived at the warning stage...)
Take a moment and breathe in the graph below: it's about ageing and strength:
And most of us are on that steeply-trending red line. (Hey, that's 'the norm').
Thing is, after we cross the Disability Threshold, we can do nothing to improve our situation (because, we've simply lost so much of our physical ability, we are in no position to lift ourselves to a better physical status).
And we pay the price for procrastination.
Hence, the time to do something is now. If you're going to do anything at all.
But let’s take a step back… to the beginning.
You and I, we’re pretty clever people. We are “professionals” in one way or another. We have educated ourselves, and earned a livelihood for ourselves and our families, to lift ourselves (and our families) up to another level, a better place.
Somewhere in the past, we realised that we need to educate ourselves. Because we realised that without education, we cannot get our heads around complexity: And the more complex and challenging a job, the more we get paid for our input.
Education, we realised, puts us into a better place than where we were the day before we undertook that education.
Balancing our priorities:
Very often, financial stresses like bills, our mortgage or rent, the children’s schooling, etc, help us keep our focus on our finances: on building up our income stream/s, on getting a better job, on getting promoted, and investing what we can into solid, income-producing streams.
This focus on our finances helps us build a solid foundation of… well, money/income. Our mortgage gets paid off, our investments are ready to support us during a time when we no longer want to work.
The fact remains that we lose out on other areas of our lives that may be just as important, if not more so, than our finances: especially looking after ourselves, physically.
Yes, sure, social media snippets may promote “healthy eating” and “health” in general, but we, as a “progressive culture” miss out on the action bit, neglecting our bodies. Too often, we don't take care of this "Foundation of our Being" (and of our Future Self), as it should really be looked after.
And the stresses of providing for our families don’t help.
Have you noticed: The first thing we drop as we grow out of our 20s into our more stress-filled lives, is physically exercising.
Years pass...
And as we arrive at our 50s, and 60s, we realise that our bodies are failing us.
A real-life story of personal neglect:
As a quick example, one of our friends, who just turned 61 last birthday, announced to our yearly “Christmas catchup” group that she had "taken a couple of tumbles": she simply felt herself collapse forward.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not a rare occurrence.
The CDC Falls page tells us that 36 million falls occur each year, in the USA alone! (That’s more than 1 fall a second across the USA in any one year!)
So yes, people in general don’t look after the physical foundation of their future quality of life (their body).
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Question: Ask yourself: What is the foundation of my future quality of life? (Because, if I have a poor physical structure, my future Quality of Life will be poor. Everything, in the older years especially, depends on my body.) |
People who do what every one does as they get older (i.e., nothing special) get weaker very quickly, their legs and upper bodies can’t support them, and they become progressively more and more unable to do things, anything.
Most doctors put this down as "the ageing/aging process" and we ourselves (as everyday people) accept this as “normal ageing”.
However, I must tell you (and yes, I put myself forward as someone who’s highly proactive about the way he ages), at well over the age of our friend in the example above, I squat and jump amazingly for my age.
And I don’t consider myself having exemplary genes or being particularly gifted physically.
I’m simply doing the right things for myself. That's it.
Permitting yourself to get/be physically disabled is the worst thing you can do for (and to) yourself.
Unfortunately, it is the default choice of many people, (as the CDC confirms, a statistic that continues to worry that emininent health body).
You, you have noticed that you are losing strength, as an older person. Sure, you don’t particularly have any extra-special diseases, but the thing is, with age (and when we don’t do the “right things” for our bodies), 3 diseases come creeping in.
So, let's Educate ourselves:
Here are some details about your body, and what creeping age does to it.
Diseases that Physically affect people due to the passage of time (ageing/aging).
1. Sarcopenia:
This is a disease where your muscles slowly turn into fibrous tissue. The muscle mass that you used to have previously, gradually (thanks to disuse), starts transforming itself into a mass of basically connective tissue (mixed with muscle fibre). This connective tissue does not have the contractile capabilities of muscle tissue alone, and therefore, your strength gets reduced.
So though you don’t seem to have lost too much weight, your body seemingly looking pretty much like it used to a decade ago, you have become weaker.
You may not have noticed these changes within you right now.
Or you may have.
- You may have noticed that your walking speed has slowed down.
- You may have noticed that your arms and legs seem to be softer (having a more puffy look to them) than they used to be.
This is mostly Sarcopenia taking over your musculature.
Many people call it “the normal effects of ageing/aging”.
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Sarcopenia is a preventatable disease that the uninformed, unaware and non-'action-takers' fall prey to. Mel Drego https://groeVolve.com |
But don’t blame yourself.
I see this kind of thing happening too often in our busy-busy world.
And we're "too busy" to do anything about it while we still have the time. (Remember that "Disability Threshold" creeping up to you?)
For example, our friend in the story I’ve told above, knew 3-4 years ago that her legs were showing signs of weakening.
Did she do anything about it after that discovery?
Zilch. Zero. Nada.
And the fallout? The recent tumbles. (Things have gotten worse, strength (muscle) lost all over her body.)
And was any action taken after the recent tumbles? Again, nothing!
(Strange, but true story. A story that is, undoubtedly, repeated in many corners of our emancipated and highly educated world.)
Too many people find it difficult to take action, to get started.
Which is where I can prompt you to join up and change the way you are ageing.
There’s the link. You need to click on that link, take action.
Take charge of your physical state: sooner is better (and more effective) than later.
So that’s Sarcopenia. But wait... there's more...
2. Dynapenia:
Dynapenia is another disease that makes inroads into the older demographic’s bodies (that's us).
Another sneaky disease, silent, but devastating.
Dynapenia is not commonly known to many people, at least not as widely as is Sarcopenia.
It is the loss of the power of your nervous system to trigger a muscle to do its job of contracting and exerting force.
Simply stated, when you don’t use that muscle (and remember, when we’re talking about triggering a muscle, it’s really a set of muscles that we call upon), your nervous system loses the ability to converse with that muscle, to command it and get it to respond in the way that you want it to.
It’s like you once had a friend who’d do anything for you. But maybe you both moved into different neighbourhoods and you stopped your regular conversation with that friend.
Now suddenly one day, you realize you need that friend to do something for you. But when you call on that friend, wanting them to do you some favour, they just look at you blankly (like they don’t recognize you) and they don’t respond to you any more.
That’s Dynapenia: you losing your ability to call on your muscles to do things for you. Your unconscious nervous system (the part of you that you don't even consciously invoke in order to move an arm or a leg) is losing its ability to connect up with your muscles.
Of course, you can start talking with that former-friend (your muscles) and proceed to develop a stronger relationship. This will take time, and regular "conversations", and eventually, you will become friends again.
And yes, this involves a lifestyle change, and you get the nuts and bolts of this lifestyle change when you utilise the Ageing via Intelligent design system.
Sneaky Dynapenia is another reason to take charge of your next 30, 40 years.
And the 3rd hidden age-related issue that we have with our bodies, and one that doesn’t even give us a warning sign (unlike Sarcopenia and Dynapenia), is
3. Osteopenia:
Or Osteoporosis as it’s more commonly called.
Your bones have become less dense, less strong. Due to some nutritional difficiencies and some disuse factors, your bones lose their density and start becoming more porous. In advanced cases, it can just take a bump (or a sneeze) for you to crack a bone.
Spinal bones can collapse, often non-uniformly, causing a loss of height. Your spine can become twisted due to a spinal bone collapse, which is very unlikely to collapse evenly anyway.
Osteopenia, again, is a use it or lose it issue.
Ironically, it’s the fall-out of too much time spent doing non-physical work in our information-filled society, and not enough time spent performing activities that place physical stress on our bodies.
Too little physical stress on the whole body causes even bones like those in our rib-cage to lose their toughness.
And another thing: Sarcopenia and Dynapenia are co-morbidities to Osteopenia. That means that these 3 diseases travel hand-in-hand, like a little group of friends.
Except, they're nobody's friend.
Warnings? Or "just ageing"?
So let’s get back to those little whisperings or warnings that you may have received from your body.
And let me help you translate what your body is saying to you.
Basically, your body is telling you that Sarcopenia and Dynapenia have started to make inroads into your body.
And, depending on how you tackle problems in your life, you have the choice.
You can bow your head and accept this is all "as part of ageing/aging": Bad Choice!
Or you can start performing weight-bearing exercises to help your body: a better choice.
The one optimal path forward for most could be this:
The Ageing via Intelligent Design System
The groevolve Ageing via Intelligent Design system is an overall proactive lifestyle that helps you get into doing the right things for yourself as you grow older, so that you can optimize yourself to age strong, capable, (and, if that's what you want, to stand out above the crowd.)
But, more importantly,
The Ageing via Intelligent Design system steers you towards Quality Ageing.
And that's what most of us won't say "No" to.
Join up, and lift the quality of your life for yourself. It's called "proactivity".
