4 attitudes you need for a wonderful old age
In order to greet a mentally rich old age, we need to change our perception of the elderly. However, the same is true for the elderly aged 65 or older, and the middle-aged, who are pre-seniors, also have a negative perception of the elderly. Louise Aronson’s , the best book on geriatric medicine and old age, says that if you change the four perceptions of the elderly, you can enjoy a wonderful old age.
Positive mindset about aging
According to a study of people aged 61 and older, the body improvement effect of a more positive mindset about aging was greater than that of regular exercise. Exercise is powerful enough to be said to be a panacea for health, but what is more important for the elderly than that is a positive mindset about aging itself. In addition, those who positively accepted aging were more active in healthy activities such as taking correct medications, exercising regularly, and eating right. Positivity makes a wonderful old age.
Recognition that ‘elderly people are diverse’
What Louis Aronson, the master of geriatrics medicine, is consistently talking about in is the fact that ‘elderly people are more diverse than any other generation’. Elderly refers to those over 65 years of age. In other words, it consists of people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s or older. However, while we recognize the generations under the elderly, such as infants, elementary school students, middle school students, and high school students in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, there is a strong tendency to ‘budge’ the elderly. However, the elderly are not only different by age group, but also have different accumulated life values, so individual differences are very severe. Recognizing that the elderly are diverse will not only lead to a more detailed look at the elderly and build a social system suitable for it, but also individuals will be able to draw their own life in a more detailed and unique way in the future. If I draw the life of the elderly that I dream of, not the clichéd prejudice against the elderly, I will be able to live a wonderful old age.
Don’t take degenerative diseases for granted
There is an interesting episode in . An elderly man visits a doctor because of pain in one knee. After the examination, the doctor asks what to expect when he has a knee that has been worn for 95 years. Then the old man strikes back nicely. Why is the other knee with 95 years of use okay? Many recent medical studies continue to point out the possibility that heart disease and brain disease, which we commonly call, are not degenerative diseases but autoimmune diseases. In other words, heart, brain, and joint diseases do not come as a matter of course when you get older, but if you continue to eat the right diet and exercise regularly, there is a high probability that you will not get degenerative diseases even when you are 70 or 80 years old. When you get older, don’t think that it’s broken, but before it’s too late, let’s enjoy a healthy old age through three things: a healthy diet centered on vegetables, regular exercise, and enough sleep.
Life satisfaction increases with age
In a large-scale study conducted in the United States, life satisfaction draws the letter U. Happiness is said to fall as you get older, hit the bottom in middle age, and rise as you get older. In particular, survivors in their 90s and older reported higher life satisfaction than those aged 35 to 59 in the study. Of course, it is difficult to apply the results of this study to Korea. This is because the suicide rate of the elderly in Korea is the highest, which means that the life satisfaction of the elderly in Korea is not so high. Although not mentioned earlier, the basic condition for a wonderful old age and satisfaction is that one should not be threatened with minimal livelihood. Suicide among the elderly in Korea is closely related to poverty. In that sense, it is important to prepare for the future so that one’s livelihood is not threatened. However, if you get out of the problem of eating and living, the second half of your life is never unhappy. It would seem that simply being close to death reduces life satisfaction, but research shows that this is not the case.
Satisfaction tends to increase the more you expect satisfaction. If you look at aging positively, recognize the diversity of the elderly, do not take degenerative diseases for granted, and have the perception that life satisfaction increases as you get older, your old age will be wonderful.