What Does it Mean to "Age Well"?

What does it really mean to age well? In this episode, we explore how staying active, connected, curious, and healthy can help us maintain our independence and quality of life as we get older. With people living longer than ever and growing pressure on care systems worldwide, we discuss why your 50s can be a pivotal decade for future health, and the simple habits that can make a big difference in helping you stay strong, resilient, and thriving for years to come.

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Hello and welcome to Age Compass, where we're navigating aging and dementia together. Today I want to talk about what does it actually mean to age well? Like we hear that term a lot more these days, but I just want to dive into what it actually means to age well. So going through notes and literature and talking to people and reflecting on aging myself, I I I would wrap up to age well being maintaining your physical, mental, and emotional health as the trifecta. Because when we're physically strong, we're generally mentally strong and we're emotionally healthy as well. But it's if one of those falls out of balance, it can be very hard to navigate back through to balance in all three. When I was reflecting about aging well, I went back to last year. So last year I did a crazy silly thing and dropped a huge chopping board on my foot. And that resulted in a little fracture in my foot. But consequently, I was in a boot for six weeks. You know, it definitely taught me some life lessons, and it made me think of aging and you know the whole experience quite differently. So let me explain. So that's my driving foot in my car, and that meant that I was then reliant on people for lifts, and oh, that definitely, oh I struggled with that. So I was basically at the mercy of someone giving me a lift to and from work, to and from the shops, and you know, I found that I did withdraw a lot because I just didn't want to ask for help. I didn't want to ask her a favour. And trust me, I was pulling in favors left, right, and centre, trying not to wear just one person out. But it definitely made me really sit down and think about how tough it would be if you could no longer drive yourself around and be independent because it was definitely a loss of independence. And to be honest, there was a day when I was finishing work and I was waiting for my lift, and it really hit me that I actually felt really, really vulnerable. So it's like I I'm just sitting here waiting for a lift, and you know what, if my lift forgets me, it wasn't gonna happen. But I'm just saying it it goes through my mind of like this this absolute vulnerability, and it made me walk with a lot more caution and grace and patience for any of the older adults that I was working with that had had to give up their driver's license. And I'm pretty sure I needed to learn that lesson so I I could be humbled and really have an understanding about how much more it is to have lost your driver's license. I mean, look, I could only drive, not drive for six weeks and and I was like losing it. So, you know, it did it did actually affect my emotional health. I I did get quite down because that loss of independence, uh, I wasn't able to be as active because I was in the boot, it does affect my emotional health. I, you know, and that's what I mean when I say it's like I guess three points of a triangle, and it's a fine line to keep them all balanced. And what I did learn was when I relaxed into actually accepting help, everything did flow a lot more, a lot easier. But it was just this stubbornness of having to ask and accept help, but that was on me. That was like a lesson I needed to learn, but it's made me really aware about being gentle when offering help that that person may really struggle accepting the help. So I definitely think I needed to learn that life lesson. So, anyway, back to aging well. The other thing that I did learn as well is that being injured, it it did take me a little longer to get back moving again. So that's one thing I've learned to have as well is a bit more patience with myself and my body because that injury when I could get going again, you know, I started with just running back 100 metres, 200 metres, 500 metres, 1k. But I needed to have that patience to build up to it again, you know, and I, you know, in my 30s, piece of cake, no worries, you can recover quite quickly, you get through your rehab quite quickly. But I just did need to learn some patience. But the thing that I needed as well was persistence, and and that did take, I guess, the team effort uh from myself, my partner, my daughter, to to really like keep me motivated and push through and get going and really follow the physios, I guess, plan back just to make sure that I could get going again. But it was a life lesson for me. So I definitely believe staying physical is the is the number one key. We have so many happy, healthy hormones that are released. When we are physical, we feel better, we we just look we look better because we are feeling better, we're stronger. So I think to age well means to stay strong, stay active, you know, stay social, and that way our physical, mental, and emotional health, though that triangle is gonna stay nice and tight and and and even. So if we look at it, I guess the the key pillars to aging well would be our physical health, like we said, our mental health. So, and when I say the mental health, it's more as well about you know cognitive mental health as well. So keeping our brain busy and engaged and continuing to learn things, and then social connection and personal independence, and that's that independence to make sure that in our 70s, 80s we can maintain living at home because we've looked after these things. So, you know, our physical health, we think of eating well, being active, just keeping weight training going, make sure our muscles are still strong, and that's literally like things as picking grandkids up, picking shopping up, like twisting out of a car. Like if you look at the movement of picking a bag out of a car, you're reaching across a body, you're picking it up, you've got a weight in one hand. So you really want nice strong balance to be able to do that. But in our 30s and 40s, no one gives that a second thought. But it's what we need to be aware of to not lose because people, and I've seen people around me do this actually, people can get lost in their workplaces and the busyness of family life and then kind of neglect their own sort of health. And an interesting one that I have figured out in the last month is that people are losing the ability to jump, and hence why we played hopscotch on the weekend in our social group. That was absolutely unreal. Total tangent there, but um, it was very cool. Everyone older than 40 just jumped straight over the hop stop hopscotch. It was very cool, they knew exactly what to do. But surprisingly, people under 40 didn't really automatically do it. But being sorry, having our physical health is very important, so it it's so important just to stay active. And if you if you have parents that aren't very active, I would definitely encourage you to get them active because you know when I reflect about my parents, they definitely were not active at all. And I know now that I've learned all this stuff that I could have pushed more, I should have encouraged more because their decline in their physical health declined in their mental health and their emotional health, and it just made them vulnerable for diseases because they were indoors all the time. And then that made them enjoy indoors more and more and more. So it is much harder to get out and do things when you're used to not doing something. So I definitely encourage your 30s, 40s, and then especially in your 50s and 60s, stay active, keep that physical health going, make sure you're just keeping an eye on your diet, nothing pro nothing too processed. It's the golden rule. We eat as clean as we can, as often as we can. Not to say we don't enjoy, you know, treats here and there. It's about the majority of the time we want to eat nice and clean, as clean as to nature as possible. So less processed foods. And like I said, staying strong, we've got to lift weights. We just have to do it. We've got to keep our muscles nice and strong. And they've definitely linked grip strength and leg strength to longevity. So that's 100% proven that our leg strength is a predictor of how old we're gonna live to. So maintaining nice strong legs, super important. And I know you all can do it. And the other exciting thing that always makes my day light up is it's never too late. It is never too late to start moving and getting physically active. I promise you. Even if it's just walking around your house and you don't often do that, just walk around your house, get moving. If you can't do that, start marching in your chair. There are chair exercises out there on YouTube, like it's incredible. There is so much you can do just to be active, even whilst sitting down. So I definitely recommend it. We're a team here, we have to stay active and encourage each other to stay active. And as we said, mental sharpness, so keeping our brain nice and busy. So new hobbies. I've tried to learn to crochet. I'm not terribly great at it, uh, but I will persist. Uh, the other thing I've done is picked up my guitar again. So re-reading music. I haven't read music since high school, but it was amazing that I could still read music. It was so cool. So I can read bass clef and treble clef still, like I'm reading a book. So that's been actually really cool re-re-getting into a and my instruments again. So that was very cool. And I'm also starting to learn Auslan, so that's an Australian sign language, just to make sure my brain is always being challenged and learning new things. And the other thing that I like to partake in, because it's crossing hemispheres in your brain, is juggling. So, you know, if you can't juggle, start with one ball, then start with two balls, then add that three. So, and I promise you, you'll be able to juggle if you just persist at it. And the other interesting thing is that to there's things that we can do to combine that mental sharpness and our physical health, and it's things like dancing. So if you learn a dance routine, the cool thing is you're actually stimulating so much of your brain because your brain has to remember the new steps, it has to be aware of where you are in space, like your spatial awareness, and you're actually being active doing it. So learning dance choreography is actually super, super cool for your brain and your body. It's just, I love when things are fun and good for you. Makes it so much easier to keep going. And then we've talked about this a fair bit is social connection. So, you know, spending time with family and friends and just people in the community, it's so good for your brain because so much of your brain is being stimulated, but then it's also good for your emotional health because you you're less lonely and there's more support for you. So definitely social connection is one to be very aware of. Like, and I know it's very easy to fall into the your own company vibe, but really got to push to maintain social connection, and then just making sure that you will you can be independent also. So it's that desire and drive to maintain independence to stay living at home. Now, you're probably asking why I'm banging on so much about this, and it's not all doom and gloom. I see the positive result as a whole generation of people being able to be super mobile, super independent, and super strong. Because unfortunately, the global population above 65 is gonna be 1.6 billion by 2050. Now, what does that mean? That means it's gonna double by 2050 to what it is now, and that in turn means that there's going to be a huge shortage of anyone able to care for those people in 2050 because there's less people being born. So there's not as many people that are going to be around to care for people who are in that older adult era. So that's why it is so important to maintain our strength and mobility and independence because there aren't going to be as many people around to care for us. So it's kind of up to us. And I think our 50s is kind of a bit of a make it or break it. So we can really work on it, particularly in our 50s. You know, the groundwork's done in 30s, 40s, but 50s is where we can really save ourselves and make a huge difference. So I would encourage parents, like I said, at any age, it's never too late, never, never, never, never, never too late to get moving. You know, and we really want to work on that mobility because that will keep us strong and independent. But we want to look after our brain health and our cardiovascular health. Plus, you know, remember, I've still remind everyone we've got to look after our hearing. Our hearing is a huge one that we have to look after. So I think the goal of aging well is independence. So that trifector of physical and mental and emotional health, it it that trifector will make sure that we are strong and able to live independently for as long as possible. So there we go. Positive outcome, even though it's a bit of a thing to be aware of for the future. We're a team, we're all in this together, so we all know how to age well. And we will be a team and we will walk the path together. Thanks so much for listening. Take it easy.