Healthy Ageing

Image by Chalmers Butterfield

“99 ABC’s of Wellness” Article Credit: The original article 99 ABC’s of Wellness is by Mylene Mendoza-Dayrit, which has appeared on the Philippine Star on January 12, 1999.

Principle #3: Age

"Age is a risk factor. Just like an old car, people need more maintenance and when we miss regular check-ups, we just get surprising breakdowns in various systems or parts." (excerpt from the original article)

For the longest time, diabetes and osteoporosis have been linked to aging. There may have been cases that seem to say that you will surely get those diseases when you grow old however, there is also such thing as successful aging.

According to experts, successful ageing consists of three components:

• Low probability of disease or disability;
• High cognitive and physical function capacity;
• Active engagement with life.

Successful aging includes psychological and sociological factors. The idea is:

• No physical disability over the age of 75 as rated by a physician;
• Good subjective health assessment (i.e. good self-ratings of one's health);
• Length of undisabled life;
• Good mental health;
• Objective social support;
• Self-rated life satisfaction in eight domains, namely marriage, income-related work, children, friendship and social contacts, hobbies, community service activities, religion and recreation/sports

There is no such thing as a perfect life but we can enjoy the natural aging process by taking care of our health early in life and having a good social life. We cannot escape getting old but we can enjoy the process of aging. Those of us who are young can help make the remaining years of our elderly pleasant and livable by sharing our time and love unwaveringly.

Image and data courtesy of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing