Healthy Living

By Mark Van Tol

Think keeping fit at a retirement community is only about aqua-fitness classes and walks at the local mall?  Think again. Mature adults are living active and healthy lives and retirement communities are at the forefront of providing them with innovative fitness programs, healthy nutrition, and brain exercises. The retirement communities that do this best are those that take a holistic approach.

Here are some tips on how to stay fit and age gracefully:

Some of the greatest artists of our time faced limitations as they grew older. Claude Monet had cataracts. He continued painting. Pierre-Auguste Renoir had rheumatoid arthritis. He had assistants place his brush in his hand. Edgar Degas had macular degeneration. He turned to sculpture so he could rely on his sense of touch. As their experience shows, you can't always choose to be healthy, but you can choose how you respond to changes in health.

It's a fact of life. It takes a strong back to be a caregiver. You can easily find yourself lifting hundreds of pounds in a single day, including, from time to time, your loved one. Since your ability to continue helping your loved one depends on your ability to keep your back healthy, it only makes sense to take precautions when lifting or bending.

We may not expect it, especially considering many of us work towards it for most of our adult life, but retirement can be a challenging and sometimes frustrating experience. For many of us it is the first time in a long time we have had both the financial resources and time freedom to do what we really want. The challenge is . . . we often don’t really know what that is.