As We Age

I have never been an advocate of dieting. Not that I haven't put on my share of pounds in my 64 years of life, it is just that I have always resisted letting someone or something control my life by telling me what to eat or drink. After all, you are what you eat. Besides, who in the world would want to be me??

Lately I have found myself doing loads of research about the aging mind and body. Here is some information I would like to share with you. It came my way through a bulletin called "Health 2 You". It is very much to the point and should rattle our branches.

* Our metabolism SLOWS DOWN by approximately 5% each decade.

* WE NEED FEWER CALORIES, but often do not adjust our eating habits. Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and our youthful habits still rule our brain.

* Needing fewer calories PLUS burning fewer calories results in WEIGHT GAIN.

* MUSCLES BURN CALORIES

* After age 45 we lose about 10% of muscle mass each decade.

* The good news is that IT IS NEVER TOO LATE to build muscle. Weight training is a powerful weapon in the fight against middle age spread.

* Results of being overweight, especially at this time in our lives have nothing to do with looking good...forget about looking like you are in your 20s. Health problems arising from being overweight are:
HEART DISEASE, HYPERTENSION, SLEEP APNEA, STROKE
DIABETES, DEPRESSION, SOME CANCERS(BREAST, COLON, ENDOMETRIAL), OSTEOARTHRITIS.

Looking good from weight loss is good, but nothing can take the place of being healthy and feeling good.

Aging is a daily habit

I used to think that I knew everything about aging, so I started this blog. My plan was to encourage my friends, family and any others interested in this life we share to open up about our encounters with aging. It appears that most want to just read, and that is fine with me, but it is hard to interact with you when I am the only one speaking. However, I do enjoy the personal emails that I receive from you and try to honor your anonymity.

I have found that aging is a daily habit of mine. I think about it almost all the time. This is not necessarily a bad thing or an obsession. I just think about it. I wonder why I do not want to accept it as a part of my life, even though it is something we do every day. Some days, I think that I just live in denial and expect that I will be happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise until the end of time. But then there are days when I know better.

I know this probably sounds crazy, but as you know, I am a school bus driver and am inundated with youth. I adore my little elementary school students because they are in total awe of life. I love their awe and wish that I could be just like them. They are learning to read and their worlds are taking on new shapes for them. Their social skills keep me laughing as I watch them change boyfriends and girlfriends almost daily. At the same time, I am amazed at the ones who realize that I...the bus driver..am a real human and do a real job and they actually take the time to look me in the eye and thank me when I deliver them to their destinations. There isn't a day that goes by that I do not learn something from them.

Then there are the high school teenagers. I shudder to think that I was ever that worldly and naive all at the same time. Then I realize that maybe I was and maybe I still am. I have learned a few things along the way, but my initial reaction, my gut instinct to life and its offerings is still pretty much the same. I try to treat life with a great deal of patience and accept people for what I think they are. I also try to remember that The Golden Rule rules the heart and mind of most of us.

Thoughts of my mom

Yes, I miss her. I miss her much more than I want to admit and probably more than I ever thought I could allow myself to miss her. Our final hours together were not the best. Certainly nothing that would bring tears to ones eyes. Our final hours were strained, to say the least. Maybe I am still grieving even though it has been over a year since her passing. Maybe I am still angry that she didn't last forever or at least last until I was ready to let go.

Sometimes I think that she was trying for months to tell me that she was dying, but I preferred to live in denial and not hear her. I can remember feeling exhaustion when trying to talk to her. I would call her to tell her something fun and good that was happening in my life. Before I could finish with my news of the day, she would enthusiastically interrupt me with her story about experiencing the same thing years ago or with some tale about how she had hurt herself and wasn't healing properly. I wish I had given her more of my attention and listened with more heart. She certainly deserved that from me.

My mom was very frail. For several years before she died she struggled to keep 95 lbs on her less than 5 ft frame. She ate like a horse, but just couldn't put on the pounds. She struggled with CHF(congestive heart failure) for years and was convinced at the end that she had CA(what my Register Nurse mom called cancer) of the lungs. My mom smoked all of her adult life and for years feared that she might have lung cancer so maybe that is true. She certainly had the cough to verify her fear. Close to the end,she was too fragile to do a biopsy on the spot that XRAY showed on her lungs. The doctors feared that her lung would collapse or that she could bleed to death. So, considering her fragility, age and lifestyle, the biopsy was ruled out. We will never know if the cancer is what got her.

The strongest thought that lives in my brain is that the Doctor told my mom that she would probably live about 6 months longer. My mom came home, sat down and made a plan to die. She planned her hospice care, her chosen place of departure, her cremation and her preferred place for the scattering of her ashes. Six months later she died. The day before she died, she went out to eat at Luby's with my little sister, Leslie. When they came home, she put on her pajamas, went to bed, slipped into a coma of sorts and died 24 hours later. I helplessly watched it happen.