Reaping the Benefits of Relaxation...

Nothing feels quite as good as sitting down after a long day, breathing in deeply and just letting yourself relax. With age comes change, whether it is the state of your health, the loss of friends, moving, or financial instability. One way or another, the “golden years” can have their own stresses. Stress, as many of you know, is a quiet killer. It’s not just a feeling that lives inside your head, a harmless emotion.  Stress causes a physical response within your body. It causes your blood pressure and heart rate to rise, and releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline into your bloodstream. A little bit of stress can be good, it can keep you alert and motivated, however, chronic stress and the physiological changes it causes can put a serious strain on your health. This is why it’s so important to make time in your daily life for some sort of relaxation. Here are some of the benefits you can gain from learning how to relax: Be Happier It comes as no surprise that stress affects your mood. If cortisol, also known as the “stress hormone”, is present for a prolonged amount of time, it can deplete you of serotonin and dopamine, which in turn can cause you to become depressed. Stay Healthy By relaxing, you can potentially avoid many of stress related diseases and health problems, including heart disease, asthma, diabetes, digestive problems, weakened immune system, Alzheimer’s, accelerated aging and premature death. Make Better Decisions A recent study showed that stress actually changed how people weighed their decisions. It is surprising that those who were under a lot of stress tended to focus on the potential positive outcome of a situation rather than the negative. This may...

You are the Center of Your Medical Team...

Sometimes it can seem very daunting when you go to your doctor It is important to remember that you are the one who can best describe what is going on with your body.  You are the one who knows the history of your health. You hold so many of the clues that your doctor needs to help with making a correct diagnosis, and determine what course of treatment is needed. You also are the one that needs to understand as much as possible about your health care. What do you want to accomplish? When you go to the doctor, what is the purpose of your appointment?  Are you going with a specific problem that you want to get taken care of?  Is this a periodic wellness check?  Do you need to have a check of your medicine?  It is very important to plan for your appointment.  Go with a list of questions that you want to ask your doctor, or things you want to talk about. Write these down – go with a plan, and with questions. Take information with you that will help the doctor. If you take medications, vitamins, and any other supplements, your doctor needs to know about all of them.  If you have any allergies to medications, be sure to let your doctor know. Take a list of what you use, listing the dosage, strength, and what time(s) of the day you take them. Sometimes patients take the actual bottles with them to the doctor, which could work for you. Be sure to include everything you take.  Sometimes vitamins and supplements can interact with certain medications, and the doctor can adjust the medications accordingly.  Ask about side effects of any medicines, and if there are...

Is Yoga the Exercise Program You’ve Been Looking For?...

Over the last twenty years, yoga has become a household name. Celebrities and health gurus alike have been praising it for years. Now, you may think to yourself,  “Of course I know what yoga is, but there’s no way I’m able to do any of those crazy poses at my age”. If you, like many others entering the second half of their life, think that you’ve missed the ball when it comes to reaping the benefits of yoga, you couldn’t be more wrong. More and more studies are proving the positive effect of yoga for senior citizens, even those practicing for the first time. Read on to find out more about yoga, and the benefits you could be gaining by incorporating it into your life. Why Yoga? Senior citizens can improve their mental and physical health by incorporating yoga into their daily routine. Here are some of the proven benefits: Exercise Without the Strain Yoga’s slow, gentle movements, allow you to get the exercise your body needs without putting an unnecessary strain on your body. Regular exercise decreases the risk of death by a third and cuts the chances of getting a chronic disease by 40%. Adding yoga into your daily routine could literally save your life. Keeps Your Mind Sharp and Your Heart Happy Yoga is quite meditative, helping you calm your mind and find your center. Studies show that yoga can help better the quality of your life, lifting your mood and giving you the energy you need to move through your day easily. Improve your Flexibility One study showed that yoga increased lower-body flexibility by 34% in older people. Flexibility plays a huge role in mobility and independence, and by stretching certain muscles on a daily...

How to Use Pinterest

How to Use Pinterest on Your Tablet or iPad   Pinterest is an online bulletin board which gives you a way to discover, organize and save objects (pictures, websites, and ideas with visuals) that inspire and inform you. It is a great way to save ideas for projects that you may want to do later, gather perspectives, discoveries and innovations of other people to make creative leaps in your own work. Or, just find out a non-toxic way to clean Aunt Joy’s silver teapot. Pinterest was started in March, 2010 by Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra as a tool for discovering inspiration. Today there are 100 million users. In the US, there are about 47 million users on Pinterest at any one time, and a third of the users are 40 or older. Between 2014 and 2015, there was an increase of 81% in those who did searches on Pinterest. The number of men who use Pinterest is the fastest growing segment of users. The good thing for those in the Second Half of Life is that Pinterest is a great way to stimulate your brain (you’ve been reading and hearing about the more we use our brains, the less likely we are to have memory problems as we age), expand your creativity, plan an important project or discover a new hobby. And, it can be really fun! Fun is good for your brain and your outlook on life. In 2014 Millennial Media told us that an increasing number of people are using 2 or more devices to access the Internet. Second-Half-of-Lifers (50+) have increased their use of mobile devices and decreased their use of PCs. Four Lessons in Setting Up and Using Your Pinterest Accout Setting Up...

Creativity Can Empower Your Second Half of Life...

There are many ways to uncover and develop your creativity. The great thing is … it can help all aspects of your life. Every day we hear of amazing creative people who are active well into their seventies and eighties. One of the most famous was Grandma Moses (1860-1961), an American folk artist, who started her art career when she was 79 and continued well into her 90’s. People view her as remarkable because she started her art career so late in life. She is not unusual in terms of people who continue to their creative endeavors to the very end. George Burns (1896-1996), the American actor and author so many loved, started out in the days of vaudeville and acted well into his 80’s. Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the detective novelist, wrote up until her death at age 86, her books selling over 100 million copies. In your own life, you probably have friends who are always trying some new creative endeavor, so it’s not just the famous who nurture this aspect of life. Many changes occur as we enter the older years, and they are often factors that can release aspects of creativity that have lain dormant. When families have been raised there is often more time to pursue creative activities. At some point, careers come to an end, and a person can pursue creative hobbies, or even start an encore (encore.org) career that enables them to use their creative talents. The brain is different in the later years, and many of the ways are amazing and wondrous. It is conceivably part of our evolution as mankind. So many are living to be so much older, not only in the United States, but all over the world....

Put “The Conversation” on Your Calendar Soon...

The conversations about what we would like at our end-of-life are so avoidable … and so important. Anyone who has been through the experience of being with a loved for their final months, weeks, and days know how very difficult and emotional this can be. One type of experience leaves a feeling that a loved one having died a “good death”, living life on their terms, surrounded by loved ones and with a sense of peace. The other experience can be when there have been medical heroics and the loved one had no quality-of-life. They may not have had any of the aspects of life that make life worth living. In these cases, there can be a sense it was a “bad death”, with a lingering sense of sadness and guilt for the survivors. The difference between these experiences can be having had “the conversation” about end-of-life choices. During my lifetime, I have had the honor of being a part of this process with loved ones a number of times. Recently I heard that one of our very elderly cousins was in the midst of her transition. I was able to be there with her and her daughter as she passed away very peacefully. In talking to her daughter, I saw how beautifully her family had listened to their mother and honored her wishes for how she wanted to live her last days here on earth. My cousin had been on a feeding tube because of the danger of choking but this was not the way she wanted to live. When all three of her adult children were in town, they had the conversation with her, exploring the medical options, and how that would change how she could live....

Having a Purpose is Vital in the Second Half of Life...

People have a desire to feel and know that their lives make a difference. In the second half of life, this desire becomes even more pronounced. At the first of each year, there is often a focus on having resolutions for the New Year. The majority of New Year’s resolutions quickly go by the wayside, often because they are not connected to something that has a deeper meaning, and that really connect to their purpose in life. Research has shown that having purpose helps you live longer, healthier, and happier, and even help brain functioning in the later years. Some people are aware from a young age what it is that they uniquely offer this world, and are able to pursue it throughout their lifetime. For others, this may begin to evolve in their thirties or forties, and may even become a deep longing in their career choices. In the second half of life we want to know we are effectively supportive to others in our lives. We have a deep desire to make sense of our lives. If this is something you want to gain clarity about, there are ways to explore this. The well-known developmental psychologist and Pulitzer Prize winner Erik Erikson described the eight stages of human development in his book Identity and the Life Cycle (1959). The last stages are ones that concern us in the second half of life. According to Erikson, in adulthood, if a person has adequately matured through the earlier stages, the seventh stage of development is that of either being ‘generative’ in one’s life or ‘stagnating’. Generative is the ability to be supportive of others. Often it can be of a younger family member and others of the younger generations. It...

Humor Yourself to Lead a Happier, Healthier Life...

“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.” – Michael Pritchard A couple of days ago, I was spending some time with friends, and one of them made a joke that made us all laugh so hard that we could barely breathe. It was an infectious sort of laughter, and every time we’d calm down, one of us would start giggling again and within seconds we’d all be in stitches. After about 15 minutes of this, the laughter finally died down, but the mood in the room was joyous and elevated. Personally, I felt as though my mind had been wiped clean, leaving me calm and relaxed. There’s a reason they call laughter the best medicine.  As you enter the second half of your life, laughter can be paramount to enhancing your relationships and keeping you healthy, both physically and emotionally. Here are some ways laughter can invigorate your life: Laughter Helps You Connect Socially Laughter is a great way to bond with new friends and to strengthen old friendships. When you laugh with friends it unites you and keeps relationships fresh and healthy. Resentments and disagreements are effectively healed through humor and lightness. Incorporate more play and humor into your daily interactions with your loved ones, and watch how your relationships change for the better. Laughter Increases Your Life Span (and the Quality of Life You’re Living) A Norwegian study has shown that adults with a sense of humor outlive their more somber contemporaries. By having an optimistic outlook on life, and being able to laugh at difficult situations when they arise, you not only create happiness for yourself, but for the people around you as well. People are drawn to laughter,...