Having passed my 29th birthday—several times—I’m spending more time these days thinking about getting old, and I’m not so sure I want to do it. My last column in which I shared my dismay at those pesky Senior Moments. So I’ve been reading about ways to stay young longer and trying to put these ideas into practice.
If you no longer buy green bananas and you’re checking the obituaries every day to see if you’re featured there, I’ll give you some suggestions I’ve read for prolonging our lives.
Of course, you have to stay active. Every “Live Longer” article opens with that one. By the way, you have to do more than waddle to the kitchen to get a Moon Pie to count as “active.” But “active” isn’t just exercise. Join groups, be more social. Call someone you’ve lost touch with. Keep your mind engaged as well as your body.
My exercise consists of at least two aerobic sessions a week. My parts creak and complain more now than they did 28 years ago when I started this program, but if I can ignore complaining people, which I do, I can ignore complaining knees.
The second suggestion is “always eat right.” It depends on what you call “right.” My translation of that is “Always Eat.”
The third idea is to stop smoking. While there is some benefit to eating if you don’t overdo it, there’s no benefit to smoking. It will shorten your life, and it nasties up the days you have left.
In an attempt to try to blow a cool-looking smoke ring, I did take up the cigarette habit briefly long ago, but I gave it up. It made me dizzy, it gave me bad breath, it cost too much, and I never perfected my smoke rings.
Recent research says sleeping eight hours a night will help you live longer. Tell that to my hormones. If you’re hormonal, you either can’t go to sleep, or you can’t stay asleep for anything approaching eight hours. Add two twitching dogs on the bed with you to those twitching hormones and a husband whose phone keeps dinging, and you’re lucky to get a solid three hours a night.
And don’t tell me to throw the animals off the bed. They’re smart. When I first turn off the light, they’re dead still. They wait until I’m getting my three solid hours to start moving. I don’t realize it’s a dog draped across my leg that’s cutting off my circulation. I just wake up and worry for the next two hours about being so old that I can’t feel my feet anymore.
But I’ve learned that another major way to extend your years is to laugh, which research indicates may be linked to the healthy function of blood vessels. So I try to laugh a lot.
One way I do that is to consider every negative thing that happens to me (like a dog cutting off my circulation) as a subject for this column. I just think, it’s okay that I’ve slammed my hand in the car door— one day it might make a funny story for my column. So keep reading ‘Life Lines’ for the week I write the one I’ll call “The Day I Slammed My Hand in the Car Door.” Maybe I can write something funny about it when I can move my fingers again.
Other suggestions I’ve come upon are to get sun (they haven’t seen my sunspotted hands), eat tomato sauce (does that mean I can step up my intake of pizza?), drink more coffee to prevent Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s (if I step up my intake of coffee, you’ll have to scrape me off the walls, since I already drink enough to keep the entire population of Sri Lanka awake and disease free), and reach out more to friends (especially the ones who cook and invite me over to eat).
That’s a lot to do, so apparently it’s going to take all my time from here on out just to avoid old age.
When do I get to sprawl on the sofa, stream old movies and eat bon bons? If my whole life has to be spent trying to live longer, what’s the point exactly?
Honestly, I think you stay alive longer if you do a few things you really like to do. I like to have animals in the bed with me, even if they interrupt my sleep, hog the cover, cut off my circulation and wake me up scratching their private parts in the middle of the night.
I take my creaky old knees out shopping as often as I can. No use staying in shape if I can’t walk the malls and the discount stores and use my sagging muscles to lift all those bargains I find!
My maternal grandfather bought himself a fiddle and learned to play it in his 90’s. He also was optimistic enough to ride a motorscooter at 93—but that didn’t work out so well. Anyway, his attitude toward life inspired me, and I’m trying to follow his lead — except with the motorscooter.
I really think you’ll live longer if you don’t worry about consequences so much. Every once in awhile, forget the rules, eat what you want, do what you want and say what you want. After all, you aren’t going to live forever.
Pass the bon bons!
