Getting older can be a real rollercoaster ride. Surviving old age isn’t for the meek.
More Comfortable Pants
Even if you are blessed with those amazing genes that you only see once in a while, the kind of genetics that gives you the ability to eat a normal amount of food that will both keep you satiated as well as looking healthy well into your 40s, you will begin to tire of clothing items that suck your flab up and in, squeeze you to the point of breathing issues anywhere in your trunk, or any other “helpful” temporary body modification garment that achieves what it promises you by the application of lots of elastic, underwires, stiff fabrics or even rigid inserts of some kind.
The vast majority of fortysomethings start to notice that even if they have worked hard to stay close to younger goal weights for a decade or more, genetics begin to betray even the hardest working health nuts. Suddenly, middle age hits, and some people long for the days when the biggest problem with aging was a stray gray hair or two.
Most spend a period of time where the struggle to hold on to what is quickly slipping away becomes a challenge to the death to stay young. Many, many others will admit defeat and just get some more comfortable pants. Being hot and young is great, but one perk of getting older is the need to fit the constraints of other people’s idea of what you should look like or be like falls to the wayside, and there is a sort of peaceful happiness in just being happy — even if happy means you have a beer gut or a big ol’ butt.
…And More Comfortable Shoes
Women might understand this more than a lot of men. The facts about what fashionable high-heeled shoes do to the feet of the wearer is less than healthy. Any shoe that temporarily cripples the wearer after a few (amazingly hot looking) hours of wear makes that shoe more of a torture device than it is a vessel whose purpose is to protect the feet and make walking less painful and tiring.
While there is no need to go to the full-blown “nurse shoes” of yore, there are lots of pretty amazing looking orthopedic shoes out there now that allow women (and men) to get out there and feel sexy while not sacrificing the long term health of their muscles and bones. Shoes made by engineers who design them with orthotics in mind have managed to put out stylish options that can serve us well into the golden years without causing bunions, hammertoes, plantar fasciitis, corns, and other miserably painful foot disorders.
Healthy Food and Drink
Aging bodies throw curveballs at their owners, as glands, organs, and other problems with human plumbing cause people to get sick from poor diet and other lifestyle choices like smoking and drinking too much alcohol. One of the most common ailments that strike at middle age in the United States and Latin America is adult-onset Diabetes Mellitus. A whole lifetime of unchecked amounts of sugary foods can eventually wear out the body’s natural mechanisms to keep blood sugar at a healthy level.
Because of this, people struggle to change lifelong poor dietary habits after having a harsh realization about what diabetes can do to the kidneys, eyes, and nerve cells that transmit pain and sensation impulses. Thankfully, there are legions of scientists and entrepreneurs alike who are dying to capitalize off of the industry that helps us all eat healthier without having to stop eating everything we enjoy. Items like meat-free cheeseburgers, Bev sugar-free wine, and other delicious foods and drinks that help people stick to healthier eating patterns.
Intelligent Doctors
Having smart health care workers around you becomes a real priority if you’ve ever had a health scare or two. Stuff gets real, really fast when you are 46 and start having chest pains. Heck, it might be that chili you had for lunch… or it could be “the big one”. Getting fast medical attention when it is needed is a huge priority of aging adults. There are times in life when moving to cities that have the best doctors and hospitals would not occur to someone, but that time is not after aging begins to set in.
The US highest-rated hospitals, (reported by Newsweek) as of 2021, are the following:
- Rochester, MN: Mayo Clinic
- Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Clinic
- Boston, MA: Massachusetts General Hospital
- Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Hospital
- Stanford, CA: Stanford Health Care
- Los Angeles, CA: Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center
- New York, NY: Mount Sinai Hospital
- Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Hospitals
- Boston, MA: Brigham And Woman’s Hospital
- New York, NY: New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell
- Durham, NC: Duke University Hospital
- Phoenix, AZ: Mayo Clinic
Time Off Work
By the time middle age hits, most people have worked their fair share, and time off becomes something that is highly prized. People who have been lucky enough to accumulate paid vacation time have begun to enter that magical time they have dreamed about when they can enjoy a few weeks off of work without having to work, while also still getting paid to stay home. While other countries enjoy this without having to accumulate vacation time over multiple decades, that’s just how it is in the majority of the US, and sadly jobs with paid vacation time are becoming rarer and rarer. As time goes on, it becomes clear to many that they may never reach a point in their life when a retirement is a real option for them.
Therefore: time off for resting as the body becomes more worn out from hard work every workday is becoming a thing of the past. Even though especially in physically stressful jobs, an older worker may need a little more time off to physically recuperate, they might have to do it without getting paid in the future. Saving money from a young age to plan for the elderly years has never been more important than now.
Things to Look Forward To
Most people need some kind of motivation to stay mentally upbeat and to keep the everyday grind from getting to them after a while. Vacations and weekends away are almost always good for mental health. If life has nothing else to offer but a never-ceasing future of work, most people tend to get depressed, and they also start to develop physical health issues because of depression. They might begin to drink or abuse drugs as a means to temporarily escape.
Vacations and days off aren’t just a nice optional bonus in life for most people. It is essential to most aging adults to get a break from the monotony of work and home stressors occasionally.
Getting older is a scary concept to the young, and in reality, most aging adults feel as if it was only yesterday that they felt scared of getting old. As wrinkles and saddlebags creep in, old age sneaks up like a thief in the night. Inside, many people feel just the same way as they did at age 20. When ageism rears its ugly head in social and works situations, it is especially painful to middle-aged or older people who can’t understand how young people don’t realize just how much the gray-haired person that they are unable to relate to on any level feels a lot like they do on the inside, and expect to be treated like a person with feelings, desires, fears, and all of the same emotions as any young person in the room.
While it is unlikely that the young will ever really understand how much their elders are no different than they are in most circumstances, it is the hope of elders everywhere to be treated with the same respect as someone who isn’t physically as old-looking.
