Ageing and Sleep

Apparently we need less sleep when we are older, but then the experts say there aren’t really any golden rules about it: people vary so much on this one. It’s quality more than quantity that determines how you feel when you get up – a long restless night is worse than a short but deep and refreshing sleep. Worrying about sleeplessness is the really awful thing – and I have experience of that. In the early hours of the morning I have been known to give up on the struggle and the day that has followed hasn’t been nearly as bad as I feared, though a little unreal. The next night is wonderful! But those hours when all the hidden thoughts that are normally buried float before you uncontrollably and the responsibilities of the next day haunt your partial consciousness is – if I believed in it – a presage of hell.

Some good ideas on preparation for a good night’s sleep in a book by Hilary Boys (‘Boosting your Energy’) are worth taking note of:

• The bed should be firm and comfortable and according to the Chinese fung shui philosophy should face north
• Pillows should not be too fat or hard and the covers keep you warm but not sweaty
• If you wear nightclothes they should be neither restrictive nor voluminous
• The bedroom should be well aired, dark and as quiet as possible
• Reduce electronics in the bedroom to as little as possible
• Have a glass of water near at hand

A little oil of lavender on your pillow before you settle down can be helpful, or a warm ( not hot ) bath before bed, a drink of valerian tea or one of the relaxing pills that you can buy from most herbal stores can also help to prepare you for a good night’s rest. Exercise during the day and not going to bed too early so that you are really tired can help as well. I haven’t found this aid for a proper night’s sleep anywhere, but keeping a diary could be useful. Getting down some of the events of the day could reduce some of the unreflective stress that otherwise you might take to bed with you.

Bryan

Ageing Remedies

Woody Allen, now 70 years old, said recently ‘I haven’t mellowed. I haven’t gained any wisdom. You don’t wanna get older. There’s nothing going for it’. These blogs in their modest way suggest a different attitude to ageing, but without ignoring it. So, this is new territory and the challenge is to learn how to live in it positively. An elderly friend said to us the other day, ‘ageing is not for wimps’. Regular visits to the doctor can make us feel very wimpish. Some doctors compound the feeling by appearing to agree with it. But keeping track of our health means making those visits and accepting prescriptive medical advice. But looking after ourselves by supplementary remedies can be helpful too.

First, what about the prescriptions? Wisely when we have health problems we consult our doctors. I think it important to consult, rather than to accept treatment without explanation. Too easily we just take what we are given without sufficient knowledge of what the treatment or more usually the drug is intended to achieve. Similarly any likely side effects should be explained, rather than leaving us to read the list of possibilities when we open the packet. Our relationship with doctors should be as open as it is between any two human beings, however dependent we are on them. Only once have I had occasion to feel ill treated, otherwise I am grateful to the profession. But we should never allow doctors to intimidate us.

And the supplementaries? Apparently as many as 43% of British people regularly take vitamin and mineral supplements. There has also been some recent research that a sensible diet is all you need and supllements are unncessasry. I am not qualified to advise on this, and there is a whole market run by enthusiasts many of whom come up with something new every day, often gathered around a single theory, such as the book I saw in our local library’s health section with the title ’The Ultimate Cabbage Soup Diet’. (If that’s the route to good health, I think I’d rather be unhealthy). But as we get older we do need to look after our joints, watch our level of cholesterol and be sure we have a proper intake of basic vitamins – we will have a look at that later. Most of all, as we’ve already said, it is so important to get regular exercise and to have a good balanced diet in which the nutrients we need can be consumed naturally and pleasurably, without much additional or alternative medicine.

Keep well!

Bryan

Ageing and Quietness

Surely this is one of the positive gifts of old age – the appreciation and enjoyment of quietness. That saying from an elderly sage – ‘sometimes I sits and thinks; sometimes I just sits’ - is how it is for many of us. You can have an active life and the days are filled – at whatever age - but then at the end or in the middle of the day, for us older people, you find yourself moving into an interior world that belongs only to you. And you are quiet, as you contemplate your being and the beauty of the earth and the skies, and celebrate your life and all that has enriched it over the years.

‘Oh! she’s in a world of her own’ is usually meant as a criticism by people frustrated or amused by the distance we create when we are lost in our thoughts. Never mind. This is the world where we are ourselves and from which we test and challenge the world around us, and we need to feel at home and safe there. ‘Retreats’ have been popular amongst religious people for many years and more recently there are many similar opportunities for rest and recuperation; they point to everyone’s need to move inward before they can continue to move onward. For older people their age provides the opportunity to do that on a daily basis.

In the stillness and the silence we enter into a haven of memory and reflection that is all our own. It doesn’t cut us off from others – or at least we don’t wish it to -and, fair enough if you are young, rushing around and being noisy is what life is for: sorting out the world in great fits of enthusiasm and going to gigs where the amplified music assaults the senses.

But not for us. This is not a protest at noise, though we have been known to complain! The quietness is not an escape but an invitation to affirm and value all that is permanent and sustaining in our lives. And in the stillness there are sounds that only we can hear – perhaps Wordsworth’s ‘intimations of immortality’, or just the birds outside which otherwise we might not have noticed or the neighbours talking over the garden fence, which we can’t escape noticing and in this moment don’t wish to. And from the deep reservoir of our stillness, every sound we cherish.

Bryan

Ageing: pause for thought

We are more than half way through the Ageing alphabet and I thought this would be a good time to reflect on these blogs and catch up on what I may be missing and, as always, comments will be welcome. A friend had a quick look at us the other day, read some of the titles and glanced at some of the content and said ’ it is very serious’. I take his point and sometimes have felt some of the things that I was writing were a bit grim. There are people I know who deny that they are getting older, and seem very happy about pretending it isn’t happening, whereas people like me perhaps watch too closely a process which they find irksome and mysterious. I have been trying to identify the ‘irks’ and end some of the mystery.

Older people often say that they still feel young and that’s fine – and no doubt true. Our personalities are formed in our first years and we remain in that context all our lives. One of the most painful things about age is that, as you live at the same dynamic as you have always done, you find that your reactions are much slower – so you drop things, knock things over and, moving quickly as you have always done, need to check your balance before you move on. ‘Slow down’ a bit is the advice we ought to take I suppose, but that would be like becoming someone else which is neither easy nor desirable. Its natural to get old but at the same time it's against our nature!

We are all very different but have many things in common. Ageing is one of them but again as we have said, people age at different levels. We need to laugh at some of the things we do or when we struggle to find words that refuse to obey our thoughts, especially when we come out with the wrong ones! Sometimes other people are laughing at us and we either grin and bear it or go into mental corners and sulk, and that’s no fun for anybody.

But I suppose I followed up the Euroresidentes team’s challenge to have a go at this because I thought the ageing process was in fact very serious indeed. An important matter, but not too heavy I hope.

Bryan

Ageing and its oddities

Odd things happen to our bodies us as we get older. Liver spots ‘lentigines’, usually on the back of our hands, appear. They occur when you are over 40 and exposure to the sun can make their brown colour darker. Harmless and painless, say the experts, but we could do without them. Another oddity is our body shape, caused by the tide of fat which coats the stomachs of men and the hips of women.

Wrinkled skin is another major sign of old age. Exposure to sunlight and smoking are thought to accelerate the process. Old people have thinner, less elastic skin than young people because the skin loses the proteins collagen and elastin over time. And the continual flexing of facial muscles leaves deep lines on the face.

Baldness is another treat in store for the elderly. Men's hair thins before women's because of the ebb and flow of the hormone testosterone. Women's hair becomes more sparse after the menopause, when they lose the female hormone oestrogen and gain a little testosterone. However, men's hair doesn’t just disappear – often from strategic places - it comes back with a vengeance in the ears and nose.

Bodily changes may include loss of hearing. As the years pass, the minute hairs in our ears which vibrate to produce sound die off. Sadly, we reach our hearing peak at 10 and it’s downhill after that. Similarly there is a condition of the ageing eye where the lens loses elasticity and finds it harder to focus.

The loss of our sensory alertness makes it harder for our brains to function clearly, which can lead to confusion and memory lapses. And then there is the loss of physical strength and the onset of the medical problems associated with wear and tear. By the age of 70, most people have lost a third of their optimum muscle strength, although, if they exercise regularly, that need not be the case.

So, our ageing bodies present us with unwelcome changes. However we are also mind and, even more, we are spirit. Graham Greene when he was 75, said in conversation with John Mortimer, ‘I suppose as you grow old, life becomes easier. Less unhappiness, less despair, less fervour and manic moods. Only the problems of living become more difficult’. But, also perhaps inviting. Inviting us to defy the evidence.

We can meet old age in a positive way and practice an oddness of our own! The delightful and well known poem ‘Warning’ by Jenny Jones proposes a new cult of eccentricity. ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple….I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves…and say we have no money for butter..’ (Put the first line on Google and you can get the whole poem). Great stuff. This could be the time of our life!

Bryan

Ageing and Nostalgia

Apparently the word ' nostalgia' was coined in 1678, by a Swiss physician to express ‘the pain a sick person feels because he is not in his native land, or fears never to see it again’, and was used to explain a serious medical disorder. In the following two centuries the illness was named as ‘maladie du pays’ (country sickness) in France, ‘heimweh (home pain) in Germany and ‘mal de corazon’ (heart pain) in Spanish. Now we use the word more generally and often very personally, as we look back to moments that have become idealised in our memory – the so called ‘good old days’! It can be a generational thing with a sociological dimension. Thus in Germany the word ‘ostalgie’ refers to life in East Germany when the old communist regime was swept away to embrace the new freedoms of the west. Apparently many Germans in the east miss the everyday life of the GDR and regret the dominance of capitalist values.

With a limited future ahead and perhaps losing the social perspective that has affected if not actually shaped our lives, it’s inevitable that older people will look back. There is tremendous refreshment in doing that. Our life is continuous and we take our past with us as we travel. There is much to cherish and affirm in that process. A characteristic of old age is the desire to identify the years of our life and many people put together a simple autobiography for themselves, and even in some cases go on to publish the result as a friend of mine has recently done. There’s a line from an old song - ‘my living has not been in vain’ , and we would like to have a bit of evidence that this may be true of us.

But perhaps the earliest use of the word still has some relevance. As older people we are, of course, in favour of fulfilment and wellbeing but too much nostalgia can favour myth over reality, perhaps reduce our pleasure in living, and even erode our health. We have a past – no one can deny it! – but our life surely belongs to today and tomorrow. The indefatigable Wikipedia website – to which I am indebted for some of these notes - suggests that nostalgia can carry with it symptoms that are real and physical and include pain in the pit of the stomach, tightening of chest or throat and nostalgia that leads to despair. So, be careful about nostalgia? Too much of this good thing – like so many others - might be bad for us!

Bryan

Ageing and Memory

Researchers claim that poor memory may have nothing to do with age and that if this is a problem for older people it may be because of poor health, fear of failure or lack of motivation. Even so, for many of us it can be a problem. Calling it a ‘senior’ moment is a nice camouflage. For me it’s been around for a while and doesn’t get any better. Names, places, bits of personal history and connections between the past and the present just won’t come out of the store to the shop-front of the mind. Embarrassing to us, it can be the same for others as they see us struggling to remember something or try not to prompt us with the word which eludes us but is clear to them.

There are over 50M. references to age and memory on Google – so it is an issue! Apparently there are three sorts of memory. There’s sensory memory – smells, sights, sounds and when this memory is limited by age, the other memory banks may be affected. Then there’s short-term memory which is generally unaffected by age, although older people may need to manage new information– by rehearsing and reminding. Thirdly, long-term memory, There are different opinions about whether age-associated memory problems are centred in encoding, storage or retrieval.

There’s plenty of advice on the net for people with memory loss, like making notes of things that need to be remembered (and not forgetting where you have put them?) The suggestion is also made that minimising anxiety, fatigue and stress helps to sustain memory. General health – our familiar theme – is advocated as a way of keeping mentally fit. Here are some of them –

*If you need glasses and a hearing aid – get them.
*Keep medication to a minimum
*Eat a well balanced diet
*Keep mentally alert, doing things that require the use of memory
*Maintain a clearly defined home environment
*Think backwards as you trace your movements in search of something lost
*Don’t drink too much alcohol
*If you are suffering from depression, see your doctor or counsellor

Memory loss, then is everyone’s problem though it may become acute as we get older. The strange thing is that whilst it’s a general problem for some older people, for others it seems hardly to exist. In his ninety first year, a friend of our’s is only now beginning to show signs of forgetfulness. Lucky man!

Bryan