Ageing and Loneliness

After the previous blog we need to get more serious, and loneliness is serious indeed and often the inevitable accompaniment of the old age. Often it’s because someone you dearly loved has died. Katherine Whitehorn was writing about the experience of losing her husband in a recent newspaper article. Marriage’ she says, ‘is the water in which you swim, the land you live in: the habits and assumptions you share about the future, about what’s funny or deplorable, about the way the house is run- or should be….You don’t ‘get over’ the death; but you have to learn to live in another country in which you are an unwilling refugee.’

This refugee status typifies much of what it’s like to be elderly. You can feel lonely at being at the end of a generation which many people feel is out of touch with contemporary life and culture. As you try to relate to younger people you realise that you speak a different language and hold different values. The very words you use are different. You may be rated as someone with skills so limited and fragile that people speak to you as if you were a backward child, to be humoured and jollied along. It used to worry me when I visited people in hospital geriatric wards, that the staff called old people only by their first names, whereas in happier and more formal days they were known to others only by their family name.

And there is the loneliness of belonging to a reduced social group. When you were still working there were activities to share in the various communities you belonged to. Now you have less energy and are in touch with fewer people, and you may lack the stimulation they once provided. The horizons are more limited than they were and often we feel uncomfortable – lonely – as we live within them.

But all is not lost. Of course not. We’ve mentioned friends before and they deserve to be cherished especially younger ones whose future is as important to us as our own is limited. We can seize the initiative in our use of time of which we have more than ever before – routine can be boring but some pattern to our life that takes us out of ourselves is important. For some of us, reading becomes a precious resource as we are introduced to imaginative or researched worlds; history and biography have become more and more interesting to me I find, and there are some wonderful novels around. And reflection is one of the gifts of old age, as we survey the past and try not to range too widely in our thoughts, but delve deeply into the meaning and the value of life.

Bryan

Ageing is for Kicks

I must be fairly general and non-prescriptive on this blog – one person’s pleasure can be another’s invitation to boredom. But as we address the fact of ageing and the accompanying loss of various more youthful activities, it’s important to be positive about a way of life less hectic and adventurous than it used to be, but by no means at its end. Vegetation of body, mind and spirit is the adversary we battle with in these mature years and needs to be faced and faced down. So, let’s get wild!

The great thing for me (and I am not that good at kicks) is to embrace the good things of life that surround us but not so that we pretend to be what we no longer are. People do what they want, but acting young when you are clearly at the other end of the scale seems to me to be a denial of the truth and a bit sad.

So what’s up for us? Here are some suggestions.

*Tell someone you love how important they are to you. It could make their day. And yours.
*Go and see the sort of film you would never normally see and surprise yourself. (If it’s a children’s film take earplugs with you)
*Throw away healthy eating for a day and just eat where and what you want.
*Get the car out or catch a bus and have a day to yourself in the country (or the town).
*Buy something you don’t need.
*Phone up an old friend you have lost contact with and catch up on their news and tell them yours.
*Plan a holiday.
*Go for a walk in the rain (wrap up well though).
*Smile at rude assistants in shops.
*Enjoy the company of children and try to understand them a bit more.
*Have a week when you only watch the TV programmes that entertain or engage you.
*Stay up late and see how long you can manage before you struggle off to bed.
*Celebrate anniversaries - I am taking my wife out for lunch to mark the second anniversary of my successful heart operation (she doesn’t know it yet...she does now!).

Bryan

Ageing and Aching joints

‘As long as I can get around I shall be alright’ is the plea of older people as they keep at bay the fear that one day they will be confined to home, a wheel chair, or even bed. When there’s a twinge in the knee, a sharp shooting pain from the shoulder to the elbow and creaky, aching joints we can panic that ‘the one’ day has dawned. The joints of the body – cushioned with the soft connecting tissue called cartilage - can be summarised under four headings.

* There are the ball and socket joints found in the shoulder and the hip. The ball is part of the long bone in the top of the arm (the humerus). The socket is formed by the shoulder blade (the scapula) The muscles joined to these bones allow a circular movement when they contact. Similarly in the hip, the femur provides the ball and the hip bone of pelvis provides the socket.

* Hinge joints are found in the elbow and knee

* Semi-moveable joints can only move a little – more and you are in trouble. These are the vertebra of the backbone.

* Immovable joints as the name suggest don’t move at all! You find them in the complicated jig-saw puzzle of the skull, the bones soft when a baby is born, gradually growing stronger and knitting together within a few months.

The advice from the specialists is not to grin and bear pain without knowing what it is, and that means consulting your doctor. A recent American survey suggests that 19% of those interviewed had chronic pain, 50% of them didn’t know what caused it and 84% were getting pain killer drugs from a chemist. Knowing what’s wrong can be good and the prelude to an appropriate treatment. (When I told my doctor about stiffness in my knees and he told me I was in the early stages of osteoarthritis, I felt better already!)

Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate can help relieve pain from osteoarthritis. In addition, research has shown that these supplements, particularly glucosamine, can slow, or even stop, progression of osteoarthritis. Experts suspect that other joints would benefit as well. Derived from crustacean shells, glucosamine supplements are thought to replace missing fluid and promote the growth of cartilage, thereby helping to repair joints.

Bryan

Ageing and health

H is for Health
As you get older health has a new agenda and often it’s a question of settling for second best, but not I suggest dismissing the matter altogether. ‘I’m afraid it’s because you are getting old’ the doctor may say, and you mutter to yourself ‘one day my friend the same is going to be true of you’. Doctors may be a bit tired of us but the elderly have given rise to a new academic/medical area of study. It’s called Gerontology – there is some interesting material on the ‘Help the Aged’ website, including useful advice on staying healthy. We have met several of these points before but it’s worth looking at the list from this perspective of general good health.

Take more exercise
Give up smoking
Keep socially and mentally active
Drink more water
Get outdoors as often as possible
Eat lots more fruit and vegetables
If you drink alcohol, little and often will do you the most good
Make your home safe
See your G.P. when you are not well
Be positive

Amongst other advice, the Help the Aged website makes the case for rest and sleep as part of the recipe for good health, which are different from lazing around or undergoing a sudden flop (surely both are allowed!). ‘In later life we tend to do too little’ the website says. ‘When we do rest, we can give it added value by learning a relaxation technique such as yoga, tai chi, meditation or prayer. These help to lower blood pressure, produce alpha waves in the brain (the mental state of relaxation), slow the heart and breathing and even enhance the immune system. This kind of deep relaxation is especially helpful for dealing with stress and anxiety’.
And sleep? Some say we need less than when we were younger, and even if that is not true for everyone, ‘good nights’ can make our days good as well. The important thing is not to be defeatist about those bad nights but to find ways of minimizing them.

Bryan

Ageing and grief

G is for Grief

One of the hardest things for an older person to bear is the death of a friend or close relative, often preceded by a period of prolonged illness. Grief is an experience all people have in common, but for older people death has a particular heaviness, for the gaps in our relationships are now not so easy to fill; and we become more conscious of our own mortality.

‘Of all the functional mental disorders almost the only one whose cause is known, whose symptoms are stereotyped and whose outcome is usually predictable, is grief’, writes a sociologist who has researched bereavement. He goes on to suggest that grief is so serious an experience that it can be compared to a mental disorder, associated with all the discomfort and loss of function typical of such disorders; ‘a mental wound’, he says ‘which leaves scars’. There’s no ‘grin and bear it’ answer to such loss, only a gradual realignment of your life which can be as painful as the healing of a wound, and which indeed leaves ‘scars’.

Anyone can die at any time, but as you get older the inevitability of an end to life- other people’s and your own- becomes inescapable. And that may cause a sort of grief for yourself, and a feeling that you may not have accomplished much in your life. ‘I wonder’ someone said to me the other day ‘what it’s all been about’. I didn’t know what to say but afterwards I thought – it’s been about you: the wonderful times you have known, the people you have loved and who have loved you, the places you have seen, the experiences you have shared, the people you have supported, the ways in which your interests and skills have developed. Elderly people often say ‘I can’t get around anymore, but I have such lovely memories’. Being greedy, I think I want more than memories, precious though they are. I want new experiences, compensating moments, new challenges – however daunting it may seem, these can be as open to older people as they are to the young.

Grieving honours the person who has died and is a way of celebrating a friendship. Grief needs perhaps to be accepted and received, its pain managed and its lessons learned. Once the numbness of shock has worn off, the pain which at first is acute, lessens. Gradually the attacks of sharp distress become less frequent, the despair eased, until at last the loss can be faced and incorporated into the rest of your life. Not grieving at all is unnatural; grieving for too long could be an indulgence. So, we carry the grief for as long as we need to, work through it and then with new perspectives, move on.

Bryan

Ageing and friends

F is for Friends

In her book ‘ Coping With Old Age’ Pat Blair writes ‘It is being loved, wanted and needed by others that often makes life worth living. Without the contact of other human beings, problems become larger, ailments assume greater proportions and there is no yardstick by which problems can be put into perspective.’ The trouble is there aren’t so many people around as you get older to whom you can relate. Some have died. You may have moved away from where you once lived. Moreover it is less easy to make new friends; you no longer have colleagues at work, you may have a less active social life, and now lack the advantage of that great forum of friendships – waiting for your children outside the school gates.

Old friends however, become especially valued and a common social language and history unites you. In recent years the internet has made it possible to contact people with whom you may have lost touch. Then there are clubs and societies to join in almost every community – where I live there are so many luncheon clubs run by local churches that you could dine out every week-day and meeting people becomes as important as the food you eat. There is always a demand for volunteers. You can hardly move in our local hospital for squads of smiling older people waiting to wheel you to your ward, serve you at the café run by the Hospital Friends, or guide you to some obscure corner of the premises which otherwise you might never find. In the process of helping others, friendships can develop.

A special friendship is one that exists across the generations. Grandparents and grandchildren have a very precious affinity to be quietly celebrated and cherished and if you lack that privilege perhaps you can become an adopted ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunty’. Children are intrigued by us– our wrinkles and creases and our stories of days gone by.

There are no encompassing rules about this. We are all different and some more shy than others. All of us perhaps find it difficult to ‘present’ ourselves to others as we get older – we are not sure what we have to offer in a relationship and fear the possibility of rejection. Making friendships can be hard work, but it may be harder still to be without them.

Bryan

Ageing and exercise

E is for Exercise

One of the most alarming things about getting older is that whilst the mind stays young the bounce that once went with it is no longer around. If you are a natural athlete you find you no longer have the capacity to run for the bus, never mind a half marathon. If you have always loved walking – up in the hills, along the coastline, claiming the right to ramble over some aristocrat’s acres, it’s a shock to discover one’s new limitations.

And yet all the experts say that exercise is the way to keep fit and ward off some of the unpleasant consequences of age. There will be no body-building for us – bulging muscles in peculiar places -it’s the heart muscle that requires our attention, and to keep it strong we need to test it by heightened activity.

Michael Beazley in his book ‘Boosting Your Energy’ says that if you increase your circulation:

• Your brain will be more active which increases vitality
• Your liver will eliminate toxins more efficiently
• Your muscles will become stronger so your skeleton will be better supported
• Your immune system will be enhanced making you less vulnerable to illness
• Mood enhancing brain chemicals such as endorphins and enkephalins will be released
• You burn more calories
• You strengthen your heart and improve bone density, helping to protect you against the likelihood of future heart disease and osteoporosis.

Beazley has plenty of good advice for setting up an exercise regime, such as don’t be over-ambitious, decide on doing things you really enjoy doing rather than setting up a system of self-punishment, buy some comfortable walking shoes and drink lots of water.

Following my heart operation I try to attend a rehabilitation exercise sessions once or twice. I surprise myself despite the fact that they are strenuous and I find myself doing things I would never have contemplated even when I was young (indeed would have done almost anything to get out of). We are told – ‘if you can’t get here, do some walking’. That seems to be the key exercise. Exercised legs and arms give energy and wellbeing to the whole body.

So, off you go?

Bryan.

Ageing and diet

D is for Diet

Only one posting on what has become a major industry?! The interesting thing is that despite the many books, the hosts of dieting gurus, loads of TV programmes that humiliate the obese, and ‘sensible’ food sold in supermarkets, there is now a strong consensus of what healthy eating consists of. For our purpose there is an important association between poor nutrition and deterioration in the physical and mental health of old people, so a carefully controlled food programme is vital.

The five portions of fruit or vegetable a day rule is a good beginning. Fresh rather than processed food guarantees that the vitamin content is intact. Whole grain food is good for essential vitamins and minerals and prevents constipation. If you are a meat-eater, choose lean meat, poultry and fish and eat protein-rich foods such as dried peas, beans and lentils which are vital for muscle and nerve function. Chose a sensible amount of low-fat milk products; they provide calcium which is needed for healthy bones, nerves and teeth. If you need to watch your cholesterol, you will have been advised to cut down on all animal fats which isn’t a bad idea for any of us.

Food to be kept at bay is meat with a high fat content, especially if you fry it. Of the cooking oils on the market, certainly olive oil is the most healthy and, as an advantage of a Mediterranean life-style, fresh fish – especially mackerel, salmon and herring which are rich in vitamins and the necessary Omega 3 oil. Keep away from too many sweet things (children and the elderly have this temptation in common, as my grandchildren will attest). There’s a recent claim, with which I unhesitatingly concur, that dark chocolate is good for you – but of course in moderation. Snacks and crisps with their high fat and salt content are not a good idea; if you are a nibbler, keep to dried fruit and unsalted nuts. And alchohol? There is the well-known guidance that women shouldn’t drink more that 14 servings and men no more than 21 a week. Recently there has been a researcher’s welcome suggestion that red wine is quite good for you, especially for people with cardiac problems. But for general health, the best liquid is water – though the 2 litres a day some suggest is a bit unrealistic unless you live in a desert region (when you couldn’t get it anyway).

Final thought – watch what you eat, but ENJOY it!

Bryan