As we age our bodies go through some major changes. There are certain precautions to take and lifestyle changes to make in order to ease the transition into our later stages of life. By making healthier choices we can not only prevent illnesses and injuries, we can also preserve our health and independence.
1. Simple Changes to Your Everyday Life
There are many simple ways to maintain your health as you age. We always hear about how important diet and exercise our for our health as we get older, but really, what are the effects these factors have on us later in life? First of all, your diet has a direct effect on your risk of developing certain illnesses and diseases. Diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, vision loss, osteoporosis, and even memory loss can all be exacerbated by a poor diet and lack of exercise.
It’s also important to maintain a healthy regime of vitamins, as well as limit your intake of certain toxins. Alcohol and tobacco use can have serious repercussions that manifest physically in our bodies as we age. By increasing the good things we put in our bodies and limiting the bad, our bodies have a chance to continuing thriving.
2. Ways to Remain Independent
One of the most difficult parts of the aging process is losing your independence. Family members begin to worry about the health and safety of their aging loved ones, and they are afraid to let them continue to live alone. While it’s important to have people close to you that will look out for you in this way, it can often feel like they aren’t considering your thoughts and feelings in these sorts of situations. Your family may believe that you need to move into an assisted living facility, but this isn’t your only option. By making just a few simple changes to your home, you can increase its accessibility and retain your ability to care for yourself.
A real area of worry for many families of aging loved ones is the bathroom, specifically the shower and tub. Being able to shower and bathe ourselves is a huge part of our privacy and independence, but the shower and tub do pose a risk to older individuals. Getting in and out of the tub is very hard on the bones and joints, and there’s a big risk of falling when trying to lift yourself out, and the shower is a slip and fall hazard. This is why the Safe Step walk in tub is a crucial tool for accessibility. The Safe Step tub brings your bathtub and shower together so that seniors with mobility issues can continue to keep up with their hygiene while maintaining their dignity and privacy.
Having a tub that you can simply step into and sit upright reduces risks of falling and it specifically makes the shower and bathtub more accessible to wheelchair users. The Safe Step tub offers users more options than their competitors. Users can choose to take a bath the traditional way, by stepping in and sitting down and then filling up the tub, but the Safe Step’s plumbing also offers the ability to use the showerhead. There are also additional amenities such as the water jets and handshower wand that can help with pain management for people who experience chronic pain. The Safe Step Bathtub also comes with a lifetime warranty to ensure users that if there’s an issue with the door seal or plumbing, help is just a service call away.
3. Treatment and Preventative Care
Arthritis is something that almost everyone deals with as they age. It’s often the source of chronic pain and mobility issues for seniors. Depending on the type of arthritis and the part of the body it’s affecting, it may be necessary to speak with a physical therapy specialist or rheumatologist about how to treat the joint pain and inflammation you are experiencing. If you’re seeking arthritis treatment in central Pennsylvania, the Foot and Ankle Specialists of Central PA are here to help you onto the road to less pain. Chronic pain, tissue swelling, and inflammation of the joints can all have direct effects on your quality of life.
Untreated rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or osteoarthritis can lead to stiffness, fractures, gout, cartilage deterioration, neuropathy, and even unavoidable surgery — such as hip joint or knee replacement. This is why it’s crucial that you don’t ignore symptoms of arthritis. Fractures and injuries to the ligaments and tendons become much more serious as we age. It becomes harder for our bodies to recover from these types of injuries. Physical therapy and medicinal pain management are essential to people suffering from RA and osteoarthritis because they can help slow the progression of the diseases, and even reverse some mobility issues that they cause.
5. Maintaining Your Support System
As we get older it’s essential to surround ourselves with supportive and loving individuals. Not only because aging can be a lonely process, but because you need people on your side who can help you make the best decisions about your health and living arrangements. Sometimes moving into an assisted living facility is unavoidable. This move doesn’t have to be a negative change in your life. By having family and friends to support you through big transitions like this, it makes the change come easier.