Staying Strong to Maintain Your Independence and Your Health by:Ron Stone

Yesterday on Oprah Winfrey she interviewed a writer who has been studying people who live the longest in the world

. He has written a book called the "Blue Zones" about people who live to be 100 years old or more. They generally eat healthy diets made up of local foods and get plenty of low impact exercise.

There is a trend happening in human health in the US. People are ending up needing long-term care just because they are not physically strong enough to care for themselves.

It is even happening to people who are relatively young, substantially younger than retirement age.

And believe me this is no fun. Living in a nursing home or having relatives care for your intimate needs is embarrassing at best.

But it can be nightmarish if your caretakers are not "kind and gentle".

It's one of those things we all want to avoid if possible.

And it is possible to avoid this in many if not all cases, just by staying strong.

Maintaining physical strength can help you stay strong and independent into old age.

But there is another issue to which we should pay attention. People who are getting a good amount of exercise look better, too. And, in fact they are frequently significantly healthier than their peers. They may also be much healthier and better looking than people who are many years younger.

But many people are doing nothing to stay strong. They sit down in the car, at work and in the evenings at home. They don't do their own cooking, shopping, or home maintenance, much less put in the time and effort to grow a garden.

It really is true that the more privileged your life is, the more likely you are to end up too weak to care for yourself. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to guess how old people are just from their appearance? Many people who are 80 look 60 and many people who are 40 look 60, too. A healthy lifestyle requires more than money and/or medical care and insurance. You have to live a healthy lifestyle or pay the consequences.

It happened to a friend of ours. She was married to a wealthy man who died recently shortly before she turned 65. And she drank a bit too much and took a lot of meds. They had the money to pay for anything they wanted. He was retired (the most deadly of lifestyles, according to some researchers) and when he died she didn't have either the knowledge or the physical strength to manage on her own.

Additionally, her health had been severely compromised by her sedentary lifestyle. She had such serious osteoporosis that she suffered several falls and fractures within 6 short months and ended up in nursing care.

This type of disability does not have to happen. Inactivity contributes to the loss of bone density and strength in both men and women. And working out with gentle, load bearing, low impact (walking) exercise helps prevent it, even if you start exercising late in life.

So don't think it's OK to let other paid employees do all the work you don't want to do. Physical exercise, the kind you can get walking, keeping your house and gardening, is good for everyone. So is the fresher food you can grow. That type of activity is good for all of us.

George Vanderbilt built the largest house in the US, Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. He did not live very long after all the effort and money it required. He died in 1914 at 52 of heart complications after appendix surgery, just 19 years after the house was officially opened in 1895. But the house was still incomplete.

And he's not the only person to give his all to building a big old honking house.

Don't copy him. Don't make a house your life's work. It's just a building. What makes it a home is having good relationships with people you love and enjoy.

Find good relationships with loved ones, do good things in the world, eat right, stay slim and exercise to keep up your strength. It will keep you feeling younger and having more fun, even when you are old. Best of all, you can lie about your age and people will believe you because you look great.

About the author

Ron Stone is a lifestyle and financial professional. Among his companies is an insurance agency specializing in business health insurance. Learn more about the affordability of business health insurance at, http://www.small-business-health-insurance-specialists.com or http://www.business-health-insurance-specialists.com

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