Simple Hacks That Can Keep You Alive Longer
The photo below was taken this summer in Strawberry on my way home from a dog walk. Taken from behind, my gait is not pretty:-) Actually, it’s not pretty from any angle. But it works. As I walk my dog team on the back roads, I am moving along at quite a smart pace on uneven terrain. I am actually proud of the work I have done on mobility this summer.
There is research that mobility is a predictor of longevity. You probably don’t know this (I didn’t either), but the National Institutes of Health has a National Institute on Aging, probably because the Boomers won’t “go gentle into that good night.”
‘Older adults who lose their mobility are less likely to remain living at home; have higher rates of disease, disability, hospitalization, and death; and have poorer quality of life.
Researchers are working on this issue because it’s not only a matter of physical health, but also the social and emotional well-being of older adults.
NIA-supported researchers are identifying risk factors for physical disability and developing and testing ways to prevent or reverse loss of mobility to help older adults maintain independence. For example, long-running observational studies, such as the Women’s Health and Aging Study II and the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study, examine functional decline and how it differs by race and sex.
“One of our goals is to continue focusing on research aimed at maintaining independence in mobility in old age,” said Sergei Romashkan, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the NIA Division of Geriatrics and Clinical Gerontology Clinical Trials Branch.
Ummm… yeah. “There needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us that…”(Hamlet)If you look at my MRIs, the images tell you I have severe spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis (vertebrae sliding around), and scoliosis.