Number one is finding an exercise you enjoy so it becomes part of your routine.
My wife and I (we add up to 162) found mountain biking 20 years ago when I retired and we clock up about 200ks a week on our ebikes in Booderee NP,every ride includes forest bathing and a picnic under a Gumtree
I read a good quote recently "if you are exercising to lose weight you need to change your diet".
"we add up to 162" - gold!!!! As you know, it's impolite to discuss a woman's age 😉 so you handled that one beautifully.
Mountain biking is a fantastic form of exercise. You get cardio and lower body strength training, and most importantly you do it outdoors, in nature! I recommend adding in some upper body strength and balance training, as well as something that involves impact, like skipping or box jumping, to build bone density.
Your quote is excellent. It reminds me of that old maxim, "you can't outrun a bad diet".
In my retirement I have taken up tennis. For many years I chauffeured, catered, cheered, consoled, and celebrated while the rest of my family actually played what I now understand to be a very challenging sport. Thankfully, my tennis playing family members are also very good teachers, extremely patient, and have put up with my "this is too hard, I give up" tantrums and encouraged me along to the point where I can play well enough for it to actually be worthwhile exercise - and I love it! (I'm with Davo - the more you enjoy it, the more the habit will stick.)
I am constantly appreciating new benefits - it's outdoors, it's social, and when played well involves observation, concentration, strategising, problem solving, large muscle groups (watch how the pros move around the court almost in a half squat), balance, coordination, core muscles, even eye exercises - changing focal length while tracking the ball, and cardio interval training. I can get my heart rate up significantly while having a ball (pun intended) and I'm so busy paying attention to all those other aspects and having fun, I don't notice how hard I'm breathing till I stop!
Since I have been playing I have noticed improvements in my glute strength, quad strength, and cardiovascular fitness.
Unlike some other forms of exercise, though, it helps if you have an opponent of a similar standard, and I should add that doubles provides less cardio benefit than singles but, in my experience doubles played well still has many of the above benefits.
- "For joggers, we found a multivariable-adjusted increase in survival, with a U-shaped association between dose of jogging (calibrated by pace, quantity, and frequency of jogging) and all-cause mortality. The dose of running that was most favorable for reducing mortality was jogging 1 to 2.4 h/wk, with no more than 3 running
days a week, at a slow or average pace."
- "the health club activities group had the longest total duration of all the sports combined, at 599 min/wk" - so my speculation that this group may have done quite poorly due to low participation was completely off-base.
And this may be the money shot: "Possibly, the observed differences in mortality benefits were due to the differing social aspects of the various sports studied. Interestingly, sports that require 2 or more individuals to play together and socially interact - tennis, badminton, and soccer - were the sports that were associated with the best improvements in longevity, whereas the less inherently interactive forms of PA, such as jogging, swimming, cycling, and health club activities, were associated with less impressive longevity benefits. This is in line with previous studies consistently showing that social isolation is among the strongest predictors of reduced life expectancy."
Good for you, Anita! It's wonderful to see you stepping out of the 'supporter' role and into the 'active participant' slot. Tennis really is a top-notch sport for physical, mental and social health. Do you think there's any hope for me, with my total lack of eye-hand co-ordination??? My rare ventures onto a tennis court have produced nothing but embarrassment, I'm afraid. I always find that both the racquet and the ball are too small for me to get them to connect with each other 😉.
That's a fascinating paper, BTW. Looks like you picked the right sport to take up in retirement! I wonder whether the dismal impact of 'health club activities' on life expectancy gains is due to the fact that most people with gym memberships don't actually go there??
Oh if I can learn it, there is definitely hope for you! Re the size of the ball and the string - it still fascinates me that, given the surface area of the stringed area on the racquet compared to that of the frame, I still manage to hit the ball with the frame (on the odd occasion)!
The fact that you get any part of the racquet to connect with the ball puts you way ahead of me 🤣 . But I shall draw courage from you, and promise to check out the local tennis club to see if they have classes for the severely eye-hand coordination deficient.
To "You can't outrun a bad diet" I add "Having an exceptional diet is not enough!". And something along the lines off, just because you are fitter that 'most' people your age is nothing to crow about because that's a pretty low standard. ; )
Ok, 1), 2) and 3) make total sense to me. Stonemasonry is a VERY physical occupation; retirement is an abominable concept (at least the way most people do it) and walking your dog in the countryside is terrific - outdoors, in the sunshine, with tons of microbiome enhancement from all those plants, trees and soils. But 4) has got my mind racing and what it has raced to, is perhaps not what you were intending to convey 🤣 .
Yeah, too many horror stories about people just wasting away once they retire. I don't want to end up like this.
Never thought about my walks in terms of the microbiome although it probably helps in that regard, too. What recharges my batteries and brings joy into my life is watching (and listening to) the birds - red kites, swifts, nightingales, wrens, blackbirds, robins, starlings, crows, herons, kingfishers, cormorants, moorhens, just off the top of my head - plus the occasional sighting of beavers, squirrels, foxes, badgers, etc. the cows grazing in the meadows, watching the river flow, the trees, the seasons, the big sky, sunsets and sunrises - well, you know the drill, Nature.
Being an old-school French woman, my wife is a terrific cook, she tends a huge vegetable garden, she takes very good care of our home and yes, I was trying to convey what you had in mind as well, which helps a lot with feeling like a man and being happy about it, too. This all helps me stay grounded and not go insane, a distinct possibility in today's world.
It sounds like you live in paradise! If you ever want to share some photos of the birds and wildlife that you see on your walks, I would love to see them.
And I'm so glad you raised the incredibly important issue of sex, and the role that it plays in health - both an individual's health, and couples' health. I'm shocked by how many marriages and other long-term relationships are sexless, or virtually so. And not just in older folk; I have quite a few clients in their 30s and 40s who have sex with their long-term partner once a month or less. I can think of a handful who quite literally haven't had sex in years. More often than not, this is at the woman's instigation, and the man just puts up with it. (Probably, he satisfies his urges with porn and masturbation, which is not exactly a healthy outlet.) I don't think this is good for either partner, and it sure as hell isn't good for their relationship. As you wrote, having sex helps men feel like men. On average, women's sexual desire is lower than men's (obviously, there are many exceptions!!!!) but lack of sex affects women too. Men become depressed and angry when deprived of sex in the context of a relationship; women go neurotic. It's yet another example of how messed-up relations between the sexes have become.
I hold third-wave feminism largely responsible for this mess - and unfortunately, this monstrosity was created by Gen X women i.e. women of my generation, who were told that they not only could have it all (patently untrue) but that they were failing to live up to their potential if they weren't getting it all. How's that working out for them? Pretty terribly, from my vantage point.
Yup, paradise, just a ten-minute walk away. Sorry, I don't have anything that takes pictures. My wife does, so I'm sure she has some. I'll ask her.
I couldn't agree more about sex being essential for health. In my experience, it's the best and most natural way to balance energies between man and woman, the old yin-yang thing. Cats are also well-known to suck up your negative energies - or chase demons, which amounts to the same thing - so I have five - all female but that's a coincidence, I guess.
I won't go into too much detail - at least, I'll try not to - but although it beats out any old root canal, I don't actually have sex for the pleasure part. If it's a deep connection (the key word being "deep") I swear (to God) I feel like I'm in direct contact with the core energy of the Universe. Also, climax used to be my only laugh-out loud moment in life for years - I'm a bit of a deadpan by day. So, this is just to get the idea across that we're not exactly sex-crazed loonies. We just like peace and harmony, and our favourite moment together is holding hands on a walk.
You're absolutely right about the Gen X having lost its way, but I have an even bigger beef with the boomers - I'll write a whole article about that later. The wife and I are also supposedly Gen X but she's a Catholic - I'm sort of a nondescript man of faith - and wouldn't you know it, she's not only living up to her potential, she's the most sensual woman you can imagine, which has less to do with sex and more to do with being humble and grateful for life.
I suspect that many men who a) have matured past the hedonistic phase of young adulthood and b) are in a loving, committed relationship, would share your sentiment that the real 'joy of sex' is not the transient pleasure, but the deep sense of connection. I've often wondered what the impact on relationships would be, if men and women could somehow trade places with each other just once, to have an experience of sex from the other's end of the encounter. But I guess the only way to do this would be some revolting AI-powered virtual reality headset, so I'll just have to wait and see whether reincarnation is a real thing ;-).
Yeah, some say that being a woman is the ultimate reward - I believe that - so I hope for your sake you don't get demoted next time around. As for me, I'm pretty certain I'm not nearly deserving enough. I'm not sure what I could come back as, but I expect difficulties ahead. It's not so much that I fear God but I'm a bit wary of His sense of humour.
Regarding dementia, in addition to appropriate exercise, I have found the information by Head of Pharmacology at Oxford University, Professor David Smith (maybe now retired) and his studies on the link between nutrition and the prevention of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. How B Vitamins & Omega 3s Reverse Cognitive Decline. I did read how this was confirmed by another study with the addition of something else; but, I can't find the link or recall what the added item was. Thanks for your work.
I found this study coauthored by David Smith (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26757190/) which analysed baseline omega-3 status as a variable explaining the efficacy of supplementing with B vitamins to lower homocysteine.
Hello Robyn,
Another great post full of useful information.
Number one is finding an exercise you enjoy so it becomes part of your routine.
My wife and I (we add up to 162) found mountain biking 20 years ago when I retired and we clock up about 200ks a week on our ebikes in Booderee NP,every ride includes forest bathing and a picnic under a Gumtree
I read a good quote recently "if you are exercising to lose weight you need to change your diet".
Thanks again Robyn,
Davo 😊.
"we add up to 162" - gold!!!! As you know, it's impolite to discuss a woman's age 😉 so you handled that one beautifully.
Mountain biking is a fantastic form of exercise. You get cardio and lower body strength training, and most importantly you do it outdoors, in nature! I recommend adding in some upper body strength and balance training, as well as something that involves impact, like skipping or box jumping, to build bone density.
Your quote is excellent. It reminds me of that old maxim, "you can't outrun a bad diet".
In my retirement I have taken up tennis. For many years I chauffeured, catered, cheered, consoled, and celebrated while the rest of my family actually played what I now understand to be a very challenging sport. Thankfully, my tennis playing family members are also very good teachers, extremely patient, and have put up with my "this is too hard, I give up" tantrums and encouraged me along to the point where I can play well enough for it to actually be worthwhile exercise - and I love it! (I'm with Davo - the more you enjoy it, the more the habit will stick.)
I am constantly appreciating new benefits - it's outdoors, it's social, and when played well involves observation, concentration, strategising, problem solving, large muscle groups (watch how the pros move around the court almost in a half squat), balance, coordination, core muscles, even eye exercises - changing focal length while tracking the ball, and cardio interval training. I can get my heart rate up significantly while having a ball (pun intended) and I'm so busy paying attention to all those other aspects and having fun, I don't notice how hard I'm breathing till I stop!
Since I have been playing I have noticed improvements in my glute strength, quad strength, and cardiovascular fitness.
Unlike some other forms of exercise, though, it helps if you have an opponent of a similar standard, and I should add that doubles provides less cardio benefit than singles but, in my experience doubles played well still has many of the above benefits.
Interesting - https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(18)30538-X/abstract
Got the full text of this paper: https://www.wellesu.com/10.1016/j.mayocp.2018.06.025. Some interesting passages:
- "For joggers, we found a multivariable-adjusted increase in survival, with a U-shaped association between dose of jogging (calibrated by pace, quantity, and frequency of jogging) and all-cause mortality. The dose of running that was most favorable for reducing mortality was jogging 1 to 2.4 h/wk, with no more than 3 running
days a week, at a slow or average pace."
- "the health club activities group had the longest total duration of all the sports combined, at 599 min/wk" - so my speculation that this group may have done quite poorly due to low participation was completely off-base.
And this may be the money shot: "Possibly, the observed differences in mortality benefits were due to the differing social aspects of the various sports studied. Interestingly, sports that require 2 or more individuals to play together and socially interact - tennis, badminton, and soccer - were the sports that were associated with the best improvements in longevity, whereas the less inherently interactive forms of PA, such as jogging, swimming, cycling, and health club activities, were associated with less impressive longevity benefits. This is in line with previous studies consistently showing that social isolation is among the strongest predictors of reduced life expectancy."
Good for you, Anita! It's wonderful to see you stepping out of the 'supporter' role and into the 'active participant' slot. Tennis really is a top-notch sport for physical, mental and social health. Do you think there's any hope for me, with my total lack of eye-hand co-ordination??? My rare ventures onto a tennis court have produced nothing but embarrassment, I'm afraid. I always find that both the racquet and the ball are too small for me to get them to connect with each other 😉.
That's a fascinating paper, BTW. Looks like you picked the right sport to take up in retirement! I wonder whether the dismal impact of 'health club activities' on life expectancy gains is due to the fact that most people with gym memberships don't actually go there??
Oh if I can learn it, there is definitely hope for you! Re the size of the ball and the string - it still fascinates me that, given the surface area of the stringed area on the racquet compared to that of the frame, I still manage to hit the ball with the frame (on the odd occasion)!
The fact that you get any part of the racquet to connect with the ball puts you way ahead of me 🤣 . But I shall draw courage from you, and promise to check out the local tennis club to see if they have classes for the severely eye-hand coordination deficient.
To "You can't outrun a bad diet" I add "Having an exceptional diet is not enough!". And something along the lines off, just because you are fitter that 'most' people your age is nothing to crow about because that's a pretty low standard. ; )
Ain't that the truth!
My fitness program:
1) I used to work in an office and changed to a stonemason 23 years ago;
2) I'm not retired (although I could have been last year) and probably never will be;
3) I live in the countryside and I have a dog, so daily walks on top of everything else;
4) My wife is French.
Ok, 1), 2) and 3) make total sense to me. Stonemasonry is a VERY physical occupation; retirement is an abominable concept (at least the way most people do it) and walking your dog in the countryside is terrific - outdoors, in the sunshine, with tons of microbiome enhancement from all those plants, trees and soils. But 4) has got my mind racing and what it has raced to, is perhaps not what you were intending to convey 🤣 .
Yeah, too many horror stories about people just wasting away once they retire. I don't want to end up like this.
Never thought about my walks in terms of the microbiome although it probably helps in that regard, too. What recharges my batteries and brings joy into my life is watching (and listening to) the birds - red kites, swifts, nightingales, wrens, blackbirds, robins, starlings, crows, herons, kingfishers, cormorants, moorhens, just off the top of my head - plus the occasional sighting of beavers, squirrels, foxes, badgers, etc. the cows grazing in the meadows, watching the river flow, the trees, the seasons, the big sky, sunsets and sunrises - well, you know the drill, Nature.
Being an old-school French woman, my wife is a terrific cook, she tends a huge vegetable garden, she takes very good care of our home and yes, I was trying to convey what you had in mind as well, which helps a lot with feeling like a man and being happy about it, too. This all helps me stay grounded and not go insane, a distinct possibility in today's world.
It sounds like you live in paradise! If you ever want to share some photos of the birds and wildlife that you see on your walks, I would love to see them.
And I'm so glad you raised the incredibly important issue of sex, and the role that it plays in health - both an individual's health, and couples' health. I'm shocked by how many marriages and other long-term relationships are sexless, or virtually so. And not just in older folk; I have quite a few clients in their 30s and 40s who have sex with their long-term partner once a month or less. I can think of a handful who quite literally haven't had sex in years. More often than not, this is at the woman's instigation, and the man just puts up with it. (Probably, he satisfies his urges with porn and masturbation, which is not exactly a healthy outlet.) I don't think this is good for either partner, and it sure as hell isn't good for their relationship. As you wrote, having sex helps men feel like men. On average, women's sexual desire is lower than men's (obviously, there are many exceptions!!!!) but lack of sex affects women too. Men become depressed and angry when deprived of sex in the context of a relationship; women go neurotic. It's yet another example of how messed-up relations between the sexes have become.
I hold third-wave feminism largely responsible for this mess - and unfortunately, this monstrosity was created by Gen X women i.e. women of my generation, who were told that they not only could have it all (patently untrue) but that they were failing to live up to their potential if they weren't getting it all. How's that working out for them? Pretty terribly, from my vantage point.
Yup, paradise, just a ten-minute walk away. Sorry, I don't have anything that takes pictures. My wife does, so I'm sure she has some. I'll ask her.
I couldn't agree more about sex being essential for health. In my experience, it's the best and most natural way to balance energies between man and woman, the old yin-yang thing. Cats are also well-known to suck up your negative energies - or chase demons, which amounts to the same thing - so I have five - all female but that's a coincidence, I guess.
I won't go into too much detail - at least, I'll try not to - but although it beats out any old root canal, I don't actually have sex for the pleasure part. If it's a deep connection (the key word being "deep") I swear (to God) I feel like I'm in direct contact with the core energy of the Universe. Also, climax used to be my only laugh-out loud moment in life for years - I'm a bit of a deadpan by day. So, this is just to get the idea across that we're not exactly sex-crazed loonies. We just like peace and harmony, and our favourite moment together is holding hands on a walk.
You're absolutely right about the Gen X having lost its way, but I have an even bigger beef with the boomers - I'll write a whole article about that later. The wife and I are also supposedly Gen X but she's a Catholic - I'm sort of a nondescript man of faith - and wouldn't you know it, she's not only living up to her potential, she's the most sensual woman you can imagine, which has less to do with sex and more to do with being humble and grateful for life.
I suspect that many men who a) have matured past the hedonistic phase of young adulthood and b) are in a loving, committed relationship, would share your sentiment that the real 'joy of sex' is not the transient pleasure, but the deep sense of connection. I've often wondered what the impact on relationships would be, if men and women could somehow trade places with each other just once, to have an experience of sex from the other's end of the encounter. But I guess the only way to do this would be some revolting AI-powered virtual reality headset, so I'll just have to wait and see whether reincarnation is a real thing ;-).
Yeah, some say that being a woman is the ultimate reward - I believe that - so I hope for your sake you don't get demoted next time around. As for me, I'm pretty certain I'm not nearly deserving enough. I'm not sure what I could come back as, but I expect difficulties ahead. It's not so much that I fear God but I'm a bit wary of His sense of humour.
Regarding dementia, in addition to appropriate exercise, I have found the information by Head of Pharmacology at Oxford University, Professor David Smith (maybe now retired) and his studies on the link between nutrition and the prevention of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. How B Vitamins & Omega 3s Reverse Cognitive Decline. I did read how this was confirmed by another study with the addition of something else; but, I can't find the link or recall what the added item was. Thanks for your work.
I found this study coauthored by David Smith (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26757190/) which analysed baseline omega-3 status as a variable explaining the efficacy of supplementing with B vitamins to lower homocysteine.
Observational studies of high omega-3 intake suggest benefit (https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)46320-4/fulltext) but so far the intervention trials have been somewhat disappointing (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22696350/). Personally, I don't think omega-3 supplementation is ready for prime time yet when it comes to dementia prevention.