4 Best Exercises for Older Adults Improve strength, balance, flexibility and endurance

For older adults and seniors who want to stay healthy and independent, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommend four types of exercises:

• Strength exercises build older adult muscles and increase your metabolism, which helps to keep your weight and blood sugar in check.
• Balance exercises build leg muscles, and this helps to prevent falls. According to the NIH, U.S. hospitals have 300,000 admissions for broken hips each year, many of them seniors, and falling is often the cause of those fractures. If you are an older adult, balance exercises will help you avoid problems ar you get older. And if you are a senior, balance exercises can help you stay independent by helping you avoid the disabilities that could result from falling.
• Stretching exercises can give you more freedom of movement, which will allow you to be more active during your senior years. Stretching exercises alone will not improve your endurance or strength.
• Endurance exercises are any activity—walking, jogging, swimming, biking, even raking leaves—that increases your heart rate and breathing for an extended period of time. Build up your endurance gradually, starting with as little as 5 minutes of endurance activities at a time.

To get started, here are some basic exercises especially for older adults:
Strength Exercises for Older Adults
Lower Body & Balance Exercises for Older Adults
Endurance & Cardio Exercises for Older Adults
Stretching Exercises for Older Adults

Readers Respond: Senior exercise is important; tell us how you like to keep fit

Read responses (1) Inspire Us to Exercise

Basic Exercise Series

• Strength Exercises: Build Muscle, Increase Metabolism
• Lower Body Exercises: Improve Strength and Balance
• Endurance and Cardio Exercises for a Healthy Heart

Benefits of Exercise for Older Adults

• Aging Gracefully: Benefits of Senior Exercise
• Tips for Safe Senior Exercise
• Physical Activity Improves Life Expectancy and Heart Health

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• Health - Senior Living Health
• Aging Gracefully - Benefits of Exercise for Older Adults
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• Lunge With Twist Exercise - Lunge with Twist Builds Core Strength and Balan...
• Should I Do Cardio Before Weight Lifting - Does Exercise Order Matter

Tips For a Long Lasting Marriage

Why Long Term Marriages Last

In talking with couples who have been married for many years, these aspects of marriage (not listed in any type of priority) are listed as necessary for a long lasting marriage.

• Continue to build intimacy -- both sexually and emotionally -- throughout your marriage.
• Create passion for life and for one another.
• Forgive one another. Don't hang on to past baggage and past hurts. Be willing to let go and to move forward with your lives.
• Continue to be committed to each other and celebrate your sense of commitment.
• Like one another and be friends with each other.
• Have fun together, laugh together, and use humor in healthy ways.
• Comfort, encourage, and affirm one another.
• Be able to stand on your own feet as a couple and not be dependent either financially or emotionally on either of your parents.
• Respect one another's need for privacy and space.
• Parent together.
• Deal with a crisis and adversity together.
• Fight fair.
• Accept your differences and don't try to change your spouse.
• Keep romance alive in your marriage.

Recommended Book to Purchase

• The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts

More on Long Lasting Marriages

• Long Term Marriages

The Top 50 U.S. Cities for Senior Living

The Top 50 U.S. Cities for Senior Living
Ranked by Senior Living Needs: Health, Economics, Social, Crime and More

 Bankers Life & Casualty Company, which specializes in insurance for seniors, gathered a panel of experts on gerontology and senior issues to determine which U.S. cities offer the best quality of life for older adults.

The panel rated the top 50 U.S. cites for senior living, based on a number of criteria.

Bankers Life & Casualty Company’s Best Cities for Seniors 2005

   1. Portland, OR
   2. Seattle, WA
   3. San Francisco, CA
   4. Pittsburgh, PA
   5. Milwaukee, WI
   6. Philadelphia, PA
   7. New York, NY
   8. Boston, MA
   9. Cincinnati, OH
  10. Chicago, IL
  11. Cleveland, OH
  12. Salt Lake City, UT
  13. Detroit, MI
  14. New Orleans, LA
  15. Indianapolis, IN
  16. Kansas City, KS
  17. Los Angeles, CA
  18. Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
  19. Denver, CO
  20. Greensboro-Winston, NC
  21. St. Louis, MO
  22. Nashville, TN
  23. Providence, RI
  24. Houston, TX
  25. Washington, DC
  26. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC
  27. Austin, TX
  28. Columbus, OH
  29. San Antonio, TX
  30. Orlando, FL
  31. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
  32. Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA
  33. Newark, NJ
  34. San Diego, CA
  35. Phoenix, AZ
  36. Atlanta, GA
  37. San Jose, CA
  38. Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
  39. Baltimore, MD
  40. Charlotte, NC
  41. Las Vegas, NV
  42. Fort Lauderdale, FL
  43. Oakland, CA
  44. Dallas, TX
  45. Sacramento, CA
  46. Riverside-San Bernardino, CA
  47. Orange County, CA
  48. Nassau-Suffolk, NY
  49. Miami, FL
  50. Passaic, NJ

The Top 50 U.S. Cities for Seniors

Portland, Oregon offers the best senior living benefits in the U.S., according to a survey released by Bankers Life and Casualty Company.
Seattle, San Francisco, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh are also at the top of the list.
How Was the Best Cities for Seniors Survey Conducted?
Bankers says the survey, released in 2005, was designed to identify the top 50 metro areas in the U.S. that offer the best overall qualities for senior living.
A panel of experts on gerontology and senior issues was asked to identify the qualities that create optimal senior living, and the survey was conducted by Sperling's Best Places.

What Makes a City Good for Senior Living?
Here are the criteria that the panel chose, statistically weighted toward seniors and their needs:

• Health includes criteria such as physician-to-senior ratio, gerontologist-to-senior ratio, hospitals per capita, and the availability of adult day care, assisted living facilities, continuing care (CCRC) facilities, independent living facilities, nursing homes, and senior meals.
• Disease covers life expectancy, age 85 expectancy, and rates of depression, heart disease, and cancer.
• Economics includes consumer prices, sales taxes, unemployment rate, and recent job growth.
• Social identifies the percentage of seniors in the community, and availability of entertainment opportunities, the arts, museums, education, recreation, colleges, and libraries.
• Environment assesses the number of sunny days, measurements of clean air and clean water, risk of natural disasters, and the presence of ocean coastline, rivers and lakes, and national parks.
• Spiritual looks at the percentage of the population belonging to organized religions, and the number of religious congregations in the community.
• Transportation rates the availability of public transportation and special access transportation, along with commuting times.
• Housing includes cost of living, median home price, property taxes and monthly apartment rent.
• Crime ranks incidents of violent crime and property crime.

Some Surprise Cities Made the List
In a news release about the survey, Bankers' Chief Operating Officer Scott Perry said the senior living survey results included some cities that are not often associated with senior living.
"That's because we weren't looking for the best places to be retired, but the best cities for seniors regardless of whether they are retired, working, active or not, healthy or not,” he said. “It's about more than golf courses and tennis courts.”

WHAT DO SENIORS LIKE TO DO?

COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET
40 percent - Percentage of seniors 65 and older who have a computer at home.
25 percent - Percentage of seniors 65 and older who use the Internet.

CARS
78 percent - Percentage of householders age 65 and older who own a motor vehicle.
3 percent - Percentage of households with a householder age 65 or older who have three or more cars available to use.

Related Articles

• Fun Facts About the Senior Population - Demographics
• Aging Population - Seniors Are Fastest Growing Population Worldwide
• Women in the U.S. - 1999-2000
• U.S. Median Age Highest Ever
• Census Offers Statistics on Older Americans

WHAT DO SENIORS LIKE TO DO?

WHAT DO SENIORS LIKE TO DO?
RECREATION
11.3 million - Number of seniors 65 and older who engage in exercise walking at least six times a year.

• Exercise walking is by far the most popular sports activity for seniors (and also for younger adults), followed by exercising with equipment, net fishing, camping, golf and swimming.

About 3-in-10 - The number of mass market, or “pocket sized” books purchased in 2004 by seniors age 65+, compared to the entire adult population.

CARS
78 percent - Percentage of householders age 65 and older who own a motor vehicle.
3 percent - Percentage of households with a householder age 65 or older who have three or more cars available to use.

Where and how the senior population chooses to live

WHERE DO MORE SENIORS LIVE?
17 percent - Percentage of Florida’s population that was 65 and older on July 1, 2004. Florida led all states in this category.

• West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Iowa followed closely, at 15 percent each.

4.2 percent Percentage increase in the number of seniors age 65 and older in Nevada between July 1, 2003, and July 1, 2004.

• This is the highest in the U.S. Alaska followed closely at 3.8 percent.

3.8 million Number of people 65 and older living in California on July 1, 2004.

• This is the highest total of any state.
• Florida came in second with 2.9 million.

Fun Facts About the Senior Population

VOTING
79 percent - Percentage of U.S. citizens age 65 and older who were registered to vote in the 2004 presidential election. Seniors make up the highest percentage of registered voters in any age group.

• 71 percent - Percentage of seniors 65+ who were registered to vote and reported that they voted.
• 19 percent - Of all voters in the 2004 election, this percentage was 65 and older.
• 41 percent - Of all votes expected in the 2040 presidential election, this percentage is projected to be cast by seniors 65 and older.

HOME OWNERSHIP
81 percent - Proportion of householders age 65 and older in 2005 who owned their homes.

• 43 percent of householders under age 35 own their homes.

Fun Facts About the Senior Population

EMPLOYMENT
5 million – Number of seniors age 65 and older who have jobs.

EDUCATION
73 percent - Percentage of seniors age 65+ in 2004 who have at least a high school diploma.

19 percent - Percentage of seniors age 65 and older in 2004 who had earned a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education.

47,000 – The number of seniors 65 and older who were enrolled in college in October 2004.

MARITAL STATUS
56 percent - Percentage of seniors age 65 and older who were married in 2004.
31 percent - Percentage of seniors 65 and older who were widowed in 2004.

Fun Facts About the Senior Population

What lifestyle decisions does the senior population make? For example, where do most seniors like to live? Are more seniors married? And what does the senior population like to do for fun?

I will be adding these comments following this post:

Take a look at these interesting statistics on the lifestyle choices that the senior population makes, courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau:

http://www.seniorlifeguide.com/

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Welcome to the Senior Life Guide blog

We would like to invite all visitors to the Senior Life Guide blog to share any helpful hints, information or concerns you may have relating to all aspects of Senior Life. We invite Seniors and all family, friends or caretakers  worldwide to leave your comments here. Your input is greatly appreciated.

Thank You, 
Senior Life Guide


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