Healthy lifestyle changes for seniors are as important as making those improvements at any age. That said, making the right tweaks to your diet and exercise, among other core components of wellness, can greatly improve your quality of life. This is the age in which you are most likely to be able to feel and enjoy the benefits enhanced wellness can provide.
Conditions such as arthritis, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), high cholesterol, diabetes, depression, dementia and even some kinds of cancer can be prevented, slowed, or improved by making the right healthy lifestyle changes for seniors. That said, tweaking your lifestyle habits doesn’t have to be anything dramatic in order to enjoy these large advantages.
Healthy Lifestyle Changes for Seniors
Healthy lifestyle changes for seniors to improve wellness to a point that there are measurable upgrade in quality of life can be substantial, but they can also be simple and barely noticeable. They can involve altering your daily habits or simply swapping one product for another.
Consider the following healthy lifestyle changes for seniors that you can use to enhance your own quality of life.
Big Changes to Little Tweaks
- Quit smoking
- Keep your alcohol use to one drink per day
- Take care of your skin with gentle moisturizers and sunscreen
- Keep up your dentist appointments and remember to brush and floss at least twice a day
- Keep up your doctor appointments, review your medication lists together to prevent drug interactions, and make sure you understand the latest studies and side effect discoveries
- Keep up your health care screening, vaccinations and preventive measures
- Keep up your eye doctor visits (this is important for more than vision care as an optometrist may also spot conditions such as diabetes)
- Get the sleep you need, making a priority of regular bedtimes and waking times
- Take vacations at least once per year, if not more if you can afford it
- Be social
- Volunteer
- Keep active, even if it’s just a walk before dinner every evening
- Choose the healthier versions of the foods you already love, from dairy to pasta sauce
You don’t have to overhaul your entire life to make the right healthy lifestyle changes for seniors. Try changing one thing until you get used to it and then tweak another. With that perspective, your quality of life will only continue to gradually improve.