Keeping yourself active is a great way to maintain your health and well-being. An In-home caregiver can assist you in achieving your health goals. As we age exercising is important to our wellbeing and keeps the blood flowing. Physical activity can prevent or delay complications that come up from age-related decline. Exercising will make your muscles stronger so you can carry out everyday activities.
Moving around, sitting less, and doing moderate to vigorous exercises throughout the day can provide you with many health benefits. The more you exercise, the more you’ll see the benefits that affect your body and mind.
What are the Benefits?
From getting the blood flowing to mental improvement, there are a lot of ways that exercise can benefit your overall health and well-being.
Improves Your Mental Health
Physical activity produces endorphins (“feel good” hormone), which acts as a stress reliever. Endorphins make you feel happy and satisfied. Exercise can also aid in improving sleep, especially for the elderly who suffer from irregular sleeping patterns and insomnia.
Prevents Disease or Sickness
Exercise improves your overall health and can prevent you from getting sick easily. This is important for seniors whose health is compromised. It can help with preventing diseases such as diabetes and heart problems. Doing light physical activities such as walking can prevent sickness and diseases.
Maintain or Lose Weight
As we age, our metabolism slows down. Maintaining a healthy weight could be a challenge for many people, but regular exercise can help support a good weight. Being physically active can help increase your metabolism, aiding you in burning more calories.
Improve Mobility, Balance, and Flexibility
Exercising regularly can aid in improving your strength, mobility, balance, flexibility, and posture which contributes to the improvement of your balance and coordination. It can reduce the risk of accidents such as falls.
Improves Mental Health
Seniors can face illnesses or disabilities that can lead to anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues. Exercising has mental health benefits such as reducing anxiety and depression.
Longevity
Lack of physical activity is one of the leading causes of death around the world. Living an inactive lifestyle can lead to health complications such as obesity, cardiovascular problems, diabetes, increased risk of colon cancer, and other possibly fatal health conditions.
With all the benefits listed above, what can you do to stay physically active and get the blood circulating?
How to Start Being Physically Active
Start with a Warmup
Warming up before a workout dilates your blood vessels and ensures that your muscles are well supported with oxygen. It slowly raises your heart rate and muscle temperature, therefore, minimizing the stress on your heart and providing your muscles with optimal flexibility and efficiency. Here are some simple warm-ups that you can do before exercising:
Hip Circles
Arm Circles
High-Stepping
Lunges
Let’s Work Out!
Aerobic Activities
You can start doing aerobic exercises at varying intensities. These exercises could be as simple as walking, jogging, and climbing steps to more challenging workouts such as running, biking, hiking, kickboxing, and using the elliptical or the treadmill. For a moderate-intensity aerobic workout, try brisk walking for 150 minutes a week.
Muscle-Strengthening Activities
Exercising all your major muscle groups such as the hips, back, legs, abdomen, shoulders, chest, and arms for 2 or more days a week is very beneficial in building muscle strength. These exercises include lifting weights, cycling, push-ups, sit-ups, or squats. Hobbies can also become workouts like heavy gardening.
Balance Activities
Exercising improves your balance and is essential in reducing your risk of accidental falls. Workouts such as standing feet together, tandem stance, single-leg stance, and leg lifts are examples of balance activities you can do at home.
Cool Down
Cooling down after a workout is just as important as warming up. After exercising, your heart rate and body temperature are higher than normal. Stopping too fast could make you pass out or leave you feeling nauseous. Cooling down after working out will slowly return your body to its normal state.
Here are some cool-down exercises and tips:
Walk for 5 minutes until your heart rate returns to normal (below 120 beats per minute)
Upper Body Stretch
Child’s Pose
Knee-to-Chest Pose
Health is Wealth
Working out is one of the best ways to keep our bodies healthy and active. Its benefits to our body and mind are sure to keep sickness at bay, saving you money from visiting the doctor’s office often. A good balance of a healthy diet and regular exercise will ensure a positive state of mind and longevity.
Unified Pledge is a leading provider of in-home senior care solutions in Palm Beach County and Broward County. We offer free, no-obligation in-home consultations, cost estimates, and insurance policy benefit reviews
We also provide other types of home care services such as in-home nurse care, long-term care, and physical therapy.
Give us a call at 561-800-4581 so we can help you create a custom home care solution for yourself or your loved one.