5 Healthy Living Tips For Women Over 50

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Healthy living over 50 can seem like the holy grail of midlife but can be easier to achieve than you think.

It’s a fact of life that we live in a society that seems obsessed with looking and acting young.

With the rise and rise of the consumer culture, we are bombarded with images of with our gorgeous youth demonstrating the latest must-have trends. T

his spectacle may even sadly have the effect of making our older generation feel that their best years are past. I call bollocks! As long as we have health, living a vital life after 50 can be a gloriously fun time. Check out these four tips for making the most of life after 50.

Improve Flexibility And Muscle Tone

Our bodies are one of the first things to “let us down” as we hit midlife. The joints start to get a little stiff, many of us have acquired extra weight around our middle and our core strength is often weaker thanks to a loss of muscle mass. From here it can be a slippery slope to inactivity and being tied to the couch. 

Want a natural and currently trendy way of reducing the effects of ageing? Try yoga. This is an activity that does wonders for your body; it can make you feel and look young again. Yoga is a good all-round exercise that physically will improve energy as well as tone and build muscle. 

As yoga is a mindful practice that marries the breath with the body it can also teach us how to better relax and cope with stress. 

Regular yoga practice reduces inflammation, and improves circulation and digestion and helps significantly with wellbeing.

Mind Your Bones

It is a well-known fact that as women age their bones become more brittle. This is once again thanks to the declining levels of estrogen.

There are several things we can do to help improve our bone density:

• Take a calcium supplement
• Take a vitamin D supplement to help our bodies absorb the calcium – which can also help with mood swings
• Lift weights – this is by far the best way to keep our bones healthy and prevent osteoporosis,
• Limit alcohol, caffeine and definitely no smoking.

Lifestyle Issues That Can Derail Healthy Living 

Our mind and spirit might be on top of the world, but if we are experiencing niggling problems on a regular basis, healthy life can seem out of our grasp.

After menopause, our estrogen levels have dropped off leaving the door open for issues such as gout, constipation and digestive issues.

Eating whole foods with plenty of soluble and insoluble fibre and a good exercise routine will go a long way to preventing niggling health issues in later life. However, when estrogen declines, cortisol levels rise. This can slow down the digestive process and in turn the break do food in our system. Constipation and digestive issues become more common and can seriously derail our day. Movicol is a beautifully easy way to relieve constipation particularly if it has become chronic.

 

Connection Is Important For Longevity

When we’re younger, we’re always out and about, meeting people, doing our thing, essentially exploring life. By the time we’re fifty while our your explore we are often tucked up in our bed with a hot drink and a good book (and believe me that is where I would much rather be!). 

But, for our wellbeing, it is important to connect with others on a regular basis. Who says we have to do that at some ungodly hour of the day though?

Have a coffee break with a friend, meet someone for a quick glass of wine before dinner, catch up with friends for breakfast – while our youths are sleeping it off. 

“One study, which examined data from more than 309,000 people, found that lack of strong relationships increased the risk of premature death from all causes by 50% — an effect on mortality risk roughly comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and greater than obesity and physical inactivity.” – extract from Harvard Health Publishing article.

Hobbies For Brain Health

A feeling of irrelevance and worry that time has passed us by is common among older women. Look at developing a hobby.  A hobby can have a myriad of health benefits including feeling confident, activating your brain in a different way, and being a creative outlet. Plus, if your hobby is an active one, such as yoga or golf you get the added benefit of increasing your fitness and strength at the same time.

As with everything adding new practices into your life can be easy if you do it one small tweak at a time.

And before you know it…

You are a shining example of healthy living over 50.