When you’re 20, 30, 40, 50 and maybe even 60, you don’t think about becoming frail. You don’t think about losing almost all of your muscle mass. But you should think about it, because it’s at those ages that you can take steps to prevent scenarios like this one:
I was at the BlogHer Food conference on Saturday when Jeff texted me that he just helped an elderly lady who fell into the street. It turns out that he was out for a run with Dug, and this very nice lady in her 80s–I’ll call her June–happened to be on the sidewalk in front of her house with her little dog on a leash. The little dog lunged at Dug, and pulled this poor woman right over, and she tumbled into the street.
Jeff stopped to help, and a woman who was an occupational therapist came out from her house across the street to help. June wasn’t hurt, surprisingly, but she was unable to stand. She was so tiny and frail, and she couldn’t bear her own next-to-nothing weight on her legs, because along with being frail comes having almost no muscle. She said that if she could just get back to her house, she’d be fine, and she could crawl around!
Well, that was not acceptable, so Jeff called 911. His text to me included this “Note to self: Don’t get old without keeping muscles.”
How are your muscles? Are you actively working to keep them? If not, start now. What about your parents or grandparents? Are they working on keeping their muscles? Send them to the Go4Life website from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. I’m serious. Do it today.
There are free sample workouts, and other information that will help people regain or maintain the four facets of fitness: Endurance, strength, balance and flexibility. If your grandma doesn’t like going online, there are a bunch of PDFs you can print out and give to her. Do you want you grandma falling in the street? Then do this, please!
As for me, I have extra time this week to walk, run, lift weights and do yoga…and I intend to do all of those things (well, maybe not the running), for the rest of my life.
