What’s Your Biggest Worry As You Get Older?
We each have our own individual worries.
But there are common worries for those of us over 60.
I did a poll a few months back and chronic illness and dementia or Alzheimer’s came us as the two biggest worries.
The risk of developing a physical and cognitive illness does increase with age.
And especially if we don’t look after ourselves.
It’s essential to all of us that we can keep doing what we love with the people we love.
So, new exercise approaches and nutrition programs are coming out regularly. To address the specific needs of us older women.
A few years back, I discovered an amazing way of exercising that has changed how I teach my group fitness classes. Dual-task physical and cognitive training.
It’s a combination of cardio, strength training, cognitive skills, balance, and mobility.
This new way of exercising captured my interest as it includes all the elements we need as older women to keep fit and healthy.
So we can continue to do what we want and need to do.
It’s the type of exercise I offer at Prime Active here in Fremantle, W. Australia, and now online via Zoom.
This dual-task physical and cognitive training is an effective way of ameliorating the possibility of getting dementia or a physical chronic illness. And also managing these if they do happen.
Combining exercise with brain exercises is one of the best ways of ensuring you can live your life your way, as you get older.
As we get older, we become less concerned about how we look. Although this is important, we worry more about how we will age.
Whether we can keep doing all the things we love.
Whether we’ll have a fall and get injured, or develop a chronic illness. Limiting our independence into the future.
Whether we lose our memory, how switched on we’ll be with the passing years. How our vision and hearing will be.
Combining exercise with brain exercises is the ultimate way you can invest in your present and future self.
Reducing the chances of physical and cognitive decline.
Impacting your life quality and quantity.
It used to be the case that we thought we had to accept the inevitable decline of old age.
And exercising less or not at all was part of that…
This is not true.
We now know that the brain has an incredible capacity for change over a person’s lifetime.
Why is this important for you?
Well, it means the brain can grow and regenerate. It means our cognitive and also physical capacities can expand and thrive.
Even in (especially in) our later year. If we optimise our lifestyle for it.
One way to do this is to exercise regularly and get the blood pumping.
It doesn’t matter how old you are.
Exercise has powerful positive effects on our brains and our bodies.
Recent research shows that exercise makes structural changes to the brain. As well as how it functions.
And when you combine exercise with specific cognitive activities (dual-task training), you get more targeted benefits. Improvements in specific cognitive abilities and physical functions.
These findings were most encouraging when the workout was in a group or social context.
Gheysen, F., Poppe, L., DeSmet, A. et al. “Physical activity to improve cognition in older adults: can physical activity programs enriched with cognitive challenges enhance the effects? A systematic review and meta-analysis.” Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act 15, 63 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-018-0697-x
So what this type of dual-task training does is streamline the development and maintenance of our cognitive & physical reserves.
Cognitive refers to the activity of our brains so we can interact with the world around us and live our lives well.
Cognitive involves mental processes like memory and thinking. And learning new things through our experiences.
Building cognitive reserve means that we have enough healthy brain cells in good working order.
And physical reserve means we have the good muscle strength, power, and cardiac health we need for our future health & well-being.
If you’d like to start dual-task training you can with my Prime Active classes here in Fremantle.
If you don’t live near, I now offer online Zoom classes twice a week.
Here’s a link to my website where you can find all the info.
Thanks
Penelope