Conversations on Healthy Aging

Sierra Gray

April 10th, 2020

When looking into and dissecting the topic of healthy aging, I l believe that different people have different opinions. It not only depends on their personal opinions but how they view the world as a whole. According to John Davy, writer, “Individuals are successfully aging if they are: free of diseases; can function at a high physical and cognitive level; are socially engaged; and are productive.” Although this is the common textbook idea that most people have of healthy aging, I view healthy aging differently. I believe that healthy aging is not only being physically capable of doing the things you love but mentally capable as well. Healthy aging is more than just being able to walk, run, and workout. Healthy aging is being able to do mentally be there, every day, while doing the things you love and being around the people you love. Whether it is spending time with your family, working out, playing with your pets, or even being genuinely happy. The key ingredient to life is being genuinely happy in everything you do, regardless if you are sick or your physical state is steady declining, happiness and being content always outweighs the cons. Although, healthy eating and physical exercise play a major role in being healthy, they are not everything. It is important to eat your fruits and vegetables and get the nutrients that you need to live a strong and healthy life. It is important to maintain a healthy weight as well as participating in the activities that you enjoy. At the end of the day healthy aging means different things to everyone, but the things that won’t change is having a healthy mind and body. Having a good mindset as well as a strong outlook on life can change everything. It is up to you to be healthy and as long as you can continue to do the things you love and be around the people you love, I think you are off to a pretty good head start.

To me healthy aging depends on a number of factors such as where you come from, and I also think depends on how well you try to take care of yourself. The way healthy aging in the United states looks drastically different from the way healthy aging looks in Japan. They are completely different cultures and they have completely view points on how older people should live. For example Japan culture works hard to stay healthy at a younger age so when they get older there body’s will be better equipped to handle old age. While in the United States we have a much more reactive way of handling health instead of proactive like Japan. Also in Japan they focus on community and have such respect for the elderly. But in the United States often healthy aging is you live for as long as you can on your own or with a loved one, and then you progress from living o your own to living with a nurse or a family member until it comes to the point where you have to move to a nursing home.

For me I think healthy aging is staying connected to the things that make you feel young going out and enjoying life, spending time with your friends and your family, and staying active. Healthy aging is realizing that yes you may be getting older but that dose not have to stop you from living and experiencing life. When I get older I hope I can be as active as my Grandma she is 68 and still helps to take care of her grand children, still volunteers at church and still cooks dinner for my Grandpa every night she won’t let old age get her down and I ask her why she always has so much energy, and she says ” I won’t let the fear of dying keep me from living.”

To me, healthy aging is doing what you love to do, with modifications depending on your ability level. For example, I love to knit. When I was younger, I had to use shorter needles and easier patterns because that was what worked for me at that time. Now I can use many different types of needles and complicated patterns. However, I am predisposed to arthritis, so in the future I may have to find a way to adjust my knitting to my ability level.

My thoughts on healthy aging have been molded by seeing my family members age. On one end, my older sister has graduated college and gotten married. I have seen her go through the experience of transitioning from being a teenager to an adult successfully. She planned for her future and overcame challenges and things she didn’t plan as they arose. I am entering that same period of time in my life, and I hope to adjust to the new challenges life throws at me as gracefully. On the other end, I have seen my grandparents age. They are adjusting to retirement and different limitations because of their health. However, they also adjust to the new things in their lives and keep doing what they love. My nana watches my cousins (ages 3 and 5) once a week. She cannot play with them like I would, but she finds other activities to do with them and ways to connect with them, because spending time with them is something she is passionate about doing. She is aging as gracefully as my older sister, as she is making adjustments to the challenges that her age brings!

         As I age, going from being a young adult, to a middle-aged adult, to an older adult, I hope to adjust to the challenges that I face and continue to do what I love. That is what healthy aging looks like to me. 

Every person is made up of genes in DNA. These genes impact every part of our life. In this context some genes decide how “well” we age. I use the quotation marks because the wellness of our aging is option based. Some people do not like aging, so they see good aging as looking younger than you are. My idea of healthy aging is that if you are happy in your old age and if you are happy with your life and what you did with it. I feel like a lot of people think that healthy aging is just about physical things. Who doesn’t have wrinkles, who can still do everything that they used to be able to? I think that this is part of healthy aging. I think if you look better you feel better and will be happier with yourself and if you can do everything you used to is a bonus to that. Being active can improve overall health so that is also important. Overall, I think the most important part of aging is being happy with yourself and how your life turned out. If you are not happy with how your life turned out are you going to put as much effort into yourself as you should? Probably not. There are multiple things that have contributed to my perspective of healthy aging. One of the things that contributed is my grandparents. My grandparents live next door to me and my family, so I get to see them very often. Being able to do that has gave me the opportunity to watch as they have gotten older and what that intel’s. Another thing that has contributed is my parents. As I am getting older, they are too. Being so close to my parents and grandparents has given me the opportunity to see healthy aging in different stages of life.

Healthy aging looks different for everyone. Healthy aging to me consists of social engagement, the ability to be mobile, to have cognitive functioning, and physical fitness. The level of all of these  would obviously vary. We can see differences in cultures and environments. Some individuals may not have access to some of these things. Healthcare is a primary example. Not having healthcare could lead to some physical health conditions, or disease. In these cases, individuals could still be considered healthy. You might see individuals with a disease still participating in society, maintaining relationships, being mobile, and meeting basic needs. Also, some individuals may need a little more of these characteristics than others. For example, someone might not need a ton of social engagement to be considered healthy. Healthy aging also depends on biology and our genetic makeup.  The World Health Organization says that healthy aging involves functional ability, then they state that “functional ability is about having the capabilities that enable all people to be and do what they have reason to value.” (https://www.who.int/ageing/healthy-ageing/en/) This would mean meeting basic needs, the ability to learn and grow, to be mobile, to build and maintain relationships, and to contribute to society. 

I have learned a lot about healthy aging in the past year. I started learning about the topic in a biology class I took in the beginning of the year, it has expanded to a couple more classes. Everyone’s definition of healthy aging is different and I can definitely say that my idea of healthy aging has changed over the past year. I believe that aging is mostly portrayed in the media (movies, news, social networking) as scary with a bunch of declines in different functioning. This isn’t the case and there are steps you can take to make sure that you are aging in a healthier manner.

Healthy aging to me looks like the twinkle in one’s eye. No matter the many hard years that have passed. No matter if the body and mind are breaking down. When I see someone who has a twinkle in their eyes after decades and decades long past, that to me is the healthiest thing you can see in old age. If someone can retain their sense of humor and that spark of joy, then life truly must indeed be something special. Whenever I encounter someone who is elderly who looks me kindly in my eye like this, it makes me think that there is purpose. In any circumstance, if someone can still smile, then they must be truly free. It’s more of a mindset than any vocation that one follows after retirement. It’s about what makes them happy and at peace. And it seems to me that happiness and peace seem to follow someone’s purpose. I think purpose in the smallest things. But I think when you get older you realize that those small things are in fact, big things. These small things are savoring the sunrises and sunsets. They are chatting with your local baristas when you get your coffee in the morning. They are the moments filled with banter around the dinner table with friends. They are parting hugs. So, whenever I encounter someone who is older with a twinkle in their eye, I aspire to be like them some day. If one can love those around them and still laugh, that’s what counts.

Kristen Foss

Healthy aging looks different for each person. I believe if you are aging the right way you should be able to do the things you love. If you love golf, you should be able to go and play. If you love walking your dog, you should be able to go outside and walk your dog. If you like going out to eat every Wednesday with your friends, you should be able to. If you love to stay at home and watch Jeopardy, that is fine too. You may need to be in a pretty decent physical state to golf or walk your dog. You also need to be mentally strong as well. Jeopardy keeps people thinking and reassures them they still know things. You need to keep in touch with people to satisfy your social needs. Being able to do physical, mental, and social is a big part of healthy aging. As long as you are able to do the things you love, keep doing them.

Unhealthy aging is when people give up on social, physical, and mental tasks. People stay inside without any exercise, fresh air, mental challenges, or social interaction. This is when people start to trail off with life. People need to keep socially active with those they love and care for. People need to be physically active so their muscles do not weaken. People need cognitive tasks to keep them thinking and pushing. Having a daily routine is good for people to stay on track and age healthily. Getting up early and doing a crossword puzzle is good. Going on a walk is good. Meeting up with a relative for breakfast is good. Keeping up with people’s lives only benefits you.

If you know someone who is aging, keep up with them. Talk with them, encourage them, and just overall support them.

Healthy aging is a concept that I did not really think much about before choosing a career path of being a physical therapist and coming to college. Through work and school experience I have developed a greater idea on how I define healthy aging. To me, being healthy means being free of disease, staying active and having a balanced diet. Working in healthcare for two years I have seen greater outcomes from strokes and other medical issues when older adults are active and healthy before their admission to the hospital. Those individuals who are not as active, smoke and have other co-morbid conditions have a harder time through the recovery process and have longer stays in the intensive care unit and the hospital. I think staying active both mentally and physically is the best way to remain healthy while aging. In one of my other classes, we looked at the nun study and basically, the premise of this was that these women stayed active and still taught well into late adulthood and lived to be in their late nineties with no signs of serious medical conditions such as Alzheimer disease. These women donated their brains to science and while some of them had the brain pattern of having Alzheimer’s, they did not have any signs or symptoms of the disease. While declines such as sarcopenia and osteoporosis (loss of muscle mass and bone density) are likely to happen with age, staying active and meeting the moderate activity level recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine can help to slow the degradation of these issues. A ten minute bout of exercise (3x/day) is enough to gain health benefits and even lessen the severity of chronic health conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The classes I have taken thus far in college and working as both a physical therapy tech at a hospital and medical assistant at a weightloss clinic has added to my perspective that healthy aging begins and is greatly reliant on being active physically and mentally.

Many people have different definitions of healthy aging. Very few people meet the actual standard of healthy aging. The definition states ” Individuals are successfully aging if they are: free of diseases; can function at a high physical and cognitive level; are socially engaged; and are productive.” (John Davy) Healthy aging to me is being able to maintain the physical and mental health that enables your wellbeing in life. Meaning being able to do what you have reasons and value for. Also being able to maintain happiness throughout your life. Some ways you can achieve healthy aging is by eating healthy because when you age your dietary needs change and it is important to eat food with a lot of nutrients because as you get older you tend to eat less. This can also help you stay at a healthy weight. One of the biggest things to me that you can do is participate in activities that you enjoy. This can make you overall more happy in life and could even improve your thinking abilities. The number one thing to me about healthy aging overall is to find a reason and find a purpose. Whether it be grandchildren, animals, or friends. In our class we watched a video on healthy aging and it has really stuck with me ever since. The Secret to Successful Aging | Cathleen Toomey | TEDxPiscataquaRiver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPBJJ-lxsXA Cathleen Toomey has shaped my perspective on healthy aging in many different ways. Having older parents has also shaped and contributed to my perspective on healthy aging as well. It has really highlighted the importance of finding your reason and purpose and maintaining good enough health to be able to participate in the things that mean the most in life to you.

As we all know, we all have a different genetic code. As humans, we do not have the same physical make-up to determine a set health code. Healthy aging can look different to different people. We don’t all look the same, so how do we expect to age the same? However, we do have our typical trends, but they are not always set in stone. One example can be cancer. Yes, it is common that this disease occurs later on in life. But what about the percentage of young children that have the same disease? How is that young child different from an older adult that has that same disease? The thing that we can compare towards healthy aging is our everyday interactions and what we put into developing ourselves and successes. We talked about how in the older ages, the elderly begin to drift away from their loved ones and even themselves. That is what makes aging unhealthy; stopping yourself from developing and getting better. What has contributed to my perspective is not only the many science courses that I have taken, but also the fact that I do have social media and I have grown up in this generation that thinks that perfection is the impossible. We go online and we see the perfect bodies and the extremely attractive celebrities that look younger than they actually are. Healthy aging should be about each individual and each individual only. Not only do we look at perfect human beings, but we also try to act like them. We have role models and people we look up to. If we stick to the status quo, we will all be marching along together. We should not be set to standards. When it comes to our obesity epidemic, however, the only standard that we should probably have is BMI. Other than that, as long as we are mentally stable and keeping ourselves alive and well, we are healthily aging. Each day we come across many encounters with others (besides corona quarantine) and we learn knew things whether it is about ourselves or society. Whether we know it or not, we are growing and developing each day. That is healthy aging.