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The 69 tips — one for each year of the author's life — are thought-provoking, challenging, eye-opening, manageable and fun to read. And all provide practical guidance for intelligently designing your own life-style evolution.
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by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Senior Adults and Falls -- Suggestions

Wednesday March 14, 2001

Even if you are the wellest person on earth or a serious candidate for such an award, if ever one should be created, the fact is you are still going to grow old, eventually -- assuming you don't get hit by a bus or carry genes programmed to do you in before you reach a state of semi-frailty, senility, or worse. And no matter how much you exercise to build bone and cardiovascular strength, remain flexible, work out vigorously on a daily basis to insure muscular support for bones, and otherwise do all that self-management skill building and behavior invites, at some point the CDC suggestions will prove beneficial.

In addition to the lifestyle habits I have already mentioned, I'll offer these suggestions for your consideration relative to minimize the dangers of falls to susceptible senior adults:

Quality medical care, when needed
A safe home environment that reduces the risks of falls
The installation of devices that make life a bit easier for frail senior adults, such as grab bars and railings in strategic locations
Brighter lighting
Vision checks
And plenty of Viagra on hand

I have taken to watching my own steps lately, for I suspect I have become a senior adult, as people have been telling me I look so young. At any age, it is worth reminding oneself that the best reason for choosing a self-management lifestyle is NOT to avoid falls, illness, doctors, pills, drugs, and pain. Nor is the best reason to try to live forever or even longer than your neighbors or, for that matter, the as long as the storied Vilcambabas, the Hunzas or the Abkassians!

No, the best reason for choosing self-management is and always has been to enjoy a better quality of life. A lot better quality of life. If you plan to become or remain a senior adult in the years and decades ahead, you should be especially interested in wellness, as I suspect you are.

The opposite of a wellness lifestyle is a "worseness" lifestyle. OK, that is not a real word, at least not yet--I made it up 25 years ago when I wrote High Level Wellness: An Alternative To Doctors, Drugs And Disease (Rodale, Bantam and Ten Speed). But, by any name, a high-risk lifestyle is a mighty dangerous way to live. The National Institute on Aging states that sedentary habits are right behind smoking as the leading underlying cause of death among aging baby boomers. Of course, I said it better but then I am more into the self-management idea than the folks at the National Institute on Aging!

The leading cause of PREMATURE functional senior adulthood, in my view, is the failure to live lifestyles that are healthy, satisfying, and meaningful as one's potentials/heredity/environment and fortune (luck) permit. Self-management is a precious tool for life, without which your prospects for a good senior adulthood are not so good.

As Alexandra Robbin said, The aging aren't only the old; the aging are all of us. The quality of aging is what distinguishes some from others.

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