Life is a terminal sexually transmitted disease. So says Dr Kirsten Holst, a geriatrician in Palmerston North.
However, she says we should be pleased we are ageing day by day and that growing older is a privilege.
Although she agrees our early twenties are the pinnacle of our bodies functionality, she strongly believes older people can have an excellent quality of life if they approach it in the right way.
Photo: 123RF
Dr Holst tells Lately there are good and bad things about our average life expectancy increasing.
“As you live longer, you are more likely to develop health problems… there’s a game called kerplunk where you have a Perspex tube with holes in it and you put pick up sticks in it and a handful of marbles at the top. As we go through life, the pick up sticks get pulled out and sometimes it doesn’t take much to have everything begin to fall to pieces.
“Working out ways of boosting resilience is the name of the game.”
Dr Holst says that, as our bodies and cells change, we do lose reserve.
While people might be sick of hearing about it, she says mental and physical activity is very important to aging well.
“If you build up knowledge and keep learning… those things are positive for stopping decline in later life.
“You need to think about exercising. It is really good for you, it seems to be good for everything which is a bit disheartening for those of us that are slugs.”
She says there’s more and more research suggesting that what we feed ourselves, and therefore the microbes in our gut, is increasingly important.
“We have an important interaction with them and can develop problems like auto-immune diseases where our bodies begin to attack themselves… we might be able to influence some of those things more than we thought with diet and gut health.”
Dr Holst suggests trying to come up with relaxation techniques and avoid stress, which puts too much strain on the heart.
She also suggests not fighting, literally as in boxing, not playing rugby to avoid concussion along with wearing a seatbelt and helmet when appropriate.
“You don’t want to damage your brain any further.”
