Browsing through some articles on the internet, I found one called “44 Secrets to Feeling Younger at Any Age.” Well, I’m “any age,” and I want to feel younger, so I read the article.
For once, I found that I am doing many things right already in my quest to remain forever young and healthy, and I didn’t even realize it!
According to the article, reading reduces your stress and heart rate more than any other activity, including walking. This is good to know, since I read constantly and walk as little as possible. In fact, as much as I read and as little as I walk, I must have the stress level of a dead sloth!
Another thing I’m doing right to avoid aging is socializing. Loners have twice the early death rate of obese people (another proven aging factor). So I learned from this article that if I socialize a lot, which I do, I can eat twice as many Little Debbies! Did anybody say “party”?
At a party you are likely to laugh a lot, which is another proven way to delay the onset of old age. Researchers say that 15 minutes of laughing provides the same vascular benefits as 15 to 30 minutes at the gym or taking a daily statin—without the side effects of sweating or reaction to the statin.
I laugh at least 15 minutes every day, mostly at myself. Finding yourself with two legs in one pajama pants hole would irritate some people. I just laugh about it. Staring at the Dixie cup, wondering if it’s wet because I took my statin or because I just drank the water and forgot the pill is hilarious, if you think about it just right.
Add watching my husband trying to get a cat disengaged from the skin of his arm (which led to a less-amusing case of cellulitis) or listening to Gavin Newsome try to sound like a reasonable person, and I can laugh for a full 30 minutes some days!
Another study showed that older adults who join a choir are in better health, use less medication, are less lonely and have fewer falls than non-singers their age. Singing in unison with a group also slows your heart rate, which is healthy, unless it gets too slow and requires medical intervention, of course, which will raise that stress level for you.
I participate in this age-reducing activity with my church choir. But I have to be careful. This choral benefit could go wrong if I (1) did fall out of the choirloft, which is entirely possible as I climb up to my third row perch in my Sunday heels, or (2) can’t hear my pitch well enough to get into unison.
These possibilities would provide lots of laughter for the rest of the choir, however, thus reducing their stress and making them feel younger. Though providing them with those benefits would be altruistic of me, I’m not sure a fall would be worth raising my own stress level.
The article quoted a fashion stylist who said that as we age we may feel that we have to cover more of our wrinkling bodies, but that we shouldn’t always cover our ankles. She said, “Elongating the leg with a cropped pant is flattering... and the ankle doesn’t tend to show age.” I would add - “unless you have a lot of broken veins down there.”
I would also add that you aging men out there should skip the cropped pants suggestion. Somehow on a man, pants dangling just above the ankle don’t say “young and spry.”
Even the way you sleep can determine the problems you may or may not have in old age. Sleeping on your side, the article said, seems to be associated with a lower risk of neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s. I’m doing that right too!
I do sleep on my side, but not deliberately. Buddy the Chihua-Mutt and Betsy the Shih-Tzu-Wannabe sleep with us. Buddy sleeps under the cover to my left. Betsy sleeps on top of the cover on my left. My husband takes up the rest. They leave me approximately one and a half feet of sleeping space on the right, so the only position I can get into is on my side. I can change from side to side if I spin quickly from left to right without waking either dog. When awakened, Buddy gets grumpy and growls, and Betsy has to go outside to tee-tee.
At least my nightly calisthenics are keeping me young.
The best news in the whole article was that plump people live longer than those of normal weight. I have long touted the advantages of being chubby, and now research done on 3 million hefty folks all over the world has proved me right!
Of course, extreme obesity still shortens lives, but being just a little overweight (which is all I’ll admit to) makes me less likely to die than people who don’t eat cheesecake.
So take that, you anorexic high fashion models! You’ve made me feel guilty for years, strutting the runway in your size 0 pants, but all you’ve done with your strenuous weight control and your size 0 Halstons is to move up the date for your funeral, and I’ll be there in my size— well, none of your business— pants, waving bye-bye as your long black car hauls you to the cemetery!
