Is Your Aging Body Starting To Betray You?

“I feel like my body is betraying me,” is the comment someone made to me at the end of a recent workshop on arthritis. She went on to tell me how she retired and then everything went downhill physically. She used to be so active and now she’s struggling to walk without the assistance of a walker. How did this sneak up on her? How did it happen so quickly?

The normal aging process, known as senescence, does not account for a rapid decline in your mobility. With normal aging you can expect to experience a slow and steady decline of about 3% per year in all of your body systems. Since this process happens so gradually, most of the time we don’t really notice these changes until we reach a certain threshold, known as the disability threshold.
Once you reach the disability threshold, you now struggle with one or more of the tasks you need to perform to take care of yourself in your daily life. This could be difficulty going to the grocery store, preparing meals, doing laundry, or taking out the trash. It could also be trouble with bathing, dressing, walking, stairs, or getting up and down from a chair. The end result is that you now require assistance for one or more of your daily tasks and have begun to lose your independence.
Usually these things don’t happen overnight. Usually there are “warning” signs that your body is weakening, that your stamina is decreasing and that your balance is declining. The problem is most people, including healthcare providers, just brush these changes off as “normal aging”. So how do you know the difference? When should you take action?
One way to monitor changes in your fitness is to undergo an Annual Check-up with a Physical Therapist. During this physical, we perform tests on your strength, balance, posture, endurance, flexibility and look at functional tasks like your ability to get up and down off of the floor. Then we compare your scores to others your age to determine if you are where you should be, or if you are starting to experience declines faster than you should at your age.
By being proactive and having an annual visit with a Physical Therapist, you are able to identify any deficits before they turn into a bigger problem. The sooner you recognize a weakness, the easier it is to develop an exercise routine to correct it. Often times when clients undergo an Annual Check-up, we are making 1-2 small tweaks to their current fitness routine. This way we make sure to address the area of concern and course correct.
On the other hand, if we identify a big deficit or multiple areas with excessive loss, then we may need to consider a bout of Physical Therapy to get you back to where you should be.
As always, we like to remind our clients it’s “use it or lose it”. In order to improve your fitness and maintain your independence we recommend following the CDC guidelines:

• 150 minutes a week of moderate level cardio.
• 2 days a week of whole body progressive resistance training.
• 2-3 days a week of balance training.

These recommendations may seem like a full-time job, and even feel over-whelming. The goal is to build up to these guidelines, not necessarily where you have to start. If you need help creating a personalized routine, or you want to make sure yours covers all the bases, we can help. It’s so worth it to find a way to add the right types of exercise into your routine. It will keep you further away from the disability threshold, allowing you to live a full and active life!

HouseFit Newsletter

​Stay up to date on information for healthy aging, special offers and events at HouseFit.​ Click on the button above and subscribe for our free monthly newsletter!