5 Unexpected things you should know how to do

The wise and brilliant Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Learning never exhausts the mind.”

When it comes to ageing, you can find wisdom and learn more about yourself from the lessons of a few unexpected (and helpful!) activities:

Monitor Your Vitals

Staying on top of your health takes a balanced diet, exercise, and surprising to some, monitoring your own vital signs. Being able to read, understand, and track your pulse, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure can come in handy as you age, establishing a baseline for healthy levels and alerting you to potential changes that may require a doctor’s attention.

Wearable fitness technologies, like FitBit, can track some of these vital stats for you, but stocking your own self-monitoring kit with a thermometer, digital blood pressure cuff, and pulse oximeter is a good idea as well (and potentially more cost-effective).

Self-Defense

While the gradual wear and tear which accompanies ageing may take a bit of a toll on your overall strength and flexibility, that doesn’t mean it needs to make you weak. Strength, confidence, and alertness are important to staying safe as you age, especially as older adults often become the targets of petty crimes or abuse.

Self-defence for seniors may include everything from learning to use your mobility aid to defend yourself, like with “Cane Fu” (a play on kung fu), to practising martial arts adapted for older adults. Learning mental defence tactics like how to control spikes in adrenaline and how to verbally de-escalate a situation are all part of self-defense as well.

Crawl

The latest fitness fad, crawling, is a bonafide health-boosting exercise all seniors should be trying out! What is crawling? Exactly what you think. Hands and knees on the floor, crawling along like a small child would, has been shown to engage multiple key muscle groups as well as hone balance and coordination skills.

Grouped with other low impact activities like rowing, taking brisk walks, cycling, and swimming, crawling is a great way to burn calories, get the heart rate up, break a sweat, and loosen stiff joints and muscles. Make crawling even more challenging by lifting knees and elbows off the ground and working towards more of a “bear crawl.”

Use Technology

Not only will digital solutions revamp the way you connect and communicate with friends and family, but it can be a huge help when it comes to managing your own health and wellness. Learning to live video chat with family near and far is simple with free services like Skype, Google Hangout, and Facetime (for iOS), and staying connected helps combat social isolation and stressful feelings of loneliness many seniors feel.

When it comes to your well-being, storing vital information in one central place, like your smartphone, can save you time and help you (and your family or caregivers) keep track of your health. Many smartphones have a special place for naming emergency contacts, maintaining medicine lists, and scheduling doctor’s appointment reminders. Downloadable apps from your pharmacy could also give you quick and easy access to refilling and checking the status of prescriptions.

Self-care

Basic self-care may be completely out of mind as you age, and it’s not quite what you might think. Self-care isn’t the excuse to spend your retirement savings on a shopping spree, but instead, the impetus you need to show yourself some love and care. It might be making a point to find time to soak in a warm bubble bath, to listen to peaceful and relaxing music, or get a massage. Doing things which benefit your mind and body that are simple, easy, and effective rarely cost a tonne of money and can give your sense of purpose and worth a big boost.

From self-defense to self-care, growing older is full of new and exciting lessons to learn. What unexpected thing do you know how to do that might benefit others?