We expect most people in this their 50’s and 60’s to have a few aches and pains for any number of reasons. Recovery is not as good and your levels of endurance drop off a bit. Sleep issues may arise to slow you up as well. Weight gain may still be in evidence and the spectre of diabetes and related morbidity gaining a foothold. Menopause and gynaecological changes may impact upon your wellness.
Time to really take charge of your well-being before it takes charge of you! The concept to develop is not to stop doing the good things but they may need to be modified.
Interesting
Menopause usually occurs in the late 40’s through early 50’s. In the 1800’s most women died within 10 years of menopause. Now women can expect to live for another 30 or more years after menopause.
Health Tips
Exercise Levels
Since some musculo-skeletal vigour has left you it is prudent to consider how much exercise is relevant and allow a little more time for recovery. Remember, don’t stop, modify. A person in their 50’s and 60’s does not have the physiology of a 19 year old, despite how you feel.
The concept of incidental exercise is paramount. Rather than formal exercise activities it is good to make sure you are not taking too many energy-saving short-cuts. Incidental exercise makes sense for healthy medicine and for ageing well in your 50’s and 60’s.
This means taking a walk to the shops instead of driving, do more frequent gardening and using stairs instead of an elevator. Good ways to approach this is to spread the efforts and not be as task-oriented as you once were or needed to be. If your garden needs 4 hours work don’t do it in one day. Work for one hour and stop there. Come back the next day and do another hour. This lessens the risk of the activity injuring you and becoming sore. Remember that exercise is best if it is repeated. They get repeated if you are having fun and not getting hurt.
The list of ways you can engage with incidental exercise is endless.
Of note though is that in our modern lives the chances that incidental exercise can entirely replace any formal exercise is unlikely. Your walking should be about 3-4 times per week for around thirty minutes at close to your top pace.
Increasingly, the physiological evidence these days is favouring the notions of intensity rather than duration. This means shorter duration exercise but with plenty of short bursts of activity to really increase the heart-rate. So you can forget about long, slow slogs. Find some hills or just up the tempo for short bursts.
Bike riding is a good option. If weight gain needs to be addressed then the latest research has some interesting information for you. It appears that a twenty minute session of effort then recovery at intervals of 8 seconds work followed by 12 seconds slow pedaling gives excellent results. Repeat for twenty minutes with a 5 minute warm-up and warm-down.
Dietary considerations
If your diet has any significant poor kilojoule sources then minimize them. Alcohol and biscuits are obvious examples of poor quality kilojoules but that does not mean they can’t be eaten at all, just infrequently and not too many. Your metabolic expenditure is decreasing at this stage of life. The extra kilojoules are not being burnt up.
Maximize the quality of your kilojoule intake with particular attention to calcium needs. If the intake needs to lessen then you should ensure that the quality of that intake is high.
Keep up with your dental care. Don’t let your teeth make nutritional choices for you. Your gastro-intestinal system may be slowing a little and so your requirement for foods with a high fibre content is raised. Some of these foods are quite chewy and so you need your teeth to be in good condition.
Middle-Age weight gain
Some research suggests that weight gain may be an inevitable part of ageing into the 50’s and 60’s, even in people who exercise seriously. Not the best news! Those of us who continue walking and running will still gain weight, though not as much as their sedentary peers.
You can compensate for ageing by becoming more active. The bad news is that this may be around 2 kilometres per week of activity per year of ageing. It doesn’t take long for this figure to build up and become unsustainable. Hence the need for concomitant reduction in kilojoule consumption. The news isn’t getting much better but it is how it is.
The loss of lean muscle mass conspires to reduce our metabolic rates and thereby reduce our energy consumption. The basis for this is believed to be hormonal but it is not understood entirely. The great likelihood is that it is multi-factorial with contributions from genetic as well as societal reasons.
For women the years after menopause can have significant weight gains. It is a familiar story. The weight gains, of around 3 kilograms each 5 years, tend to occur around the waist and can be difficult to control.
No doubt changing hormonal status has a role to play in this weight gain but other factors are making contributions as well. Studies indicate that menopausal women are more likely to exercise less, eat more and have a body that, due to compositional changes, burns fewer kilojoules at rest.
Some impacts can therefore be made through kilojoule consumption, exercise levels and exercise that retards the loss of lean tissue. All is not lost.