Do you feel angsty when you wake up some mornings?
You feel something is amiss, or about to go wrong. But you don’t know what it is.
It burdens your heart but you can’t express it. What’s worse is you don’t have anybody to express it to,
I do. And my first time got me really scared.
Thoughts of a heart attack danced before my mind.
I felt a slight pressure pushing against my chest, breathing was difficult and painful, and my heart was going boom, boom, boom.
With haste, I immediately drove to the nearest hospital. The results came in after almost an hour of the usual tests. And the verdict was…
My heart was good but my mind was running wild. It was nothing but a severe case of anxiety.
Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress. While anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful events, the elderly are more prone to it because of the various issues that come with aging.
Here are six of the most common:
1. Mental Health
Mental health is the level of psychological well-being or an absence of mental illness. It is the state of someone who is “functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioral adjustment”. – Wikipedia
With old age comes a change in lifestyles. While most seniors handle this transition with ease, a few (about 15% of adults aged 60) struggle with it, consequently affecting their mental health.
Among the stressors that can cause mental deterioration among the elderly are:
- Retirement
- Depression
- Dementia
- Change in environment
- Effects of medications
- Loneliness and isolation
- Loss of a loved one
- Physical disability
- Chronic illnesses
- Alcohol or substance abuse
2. Physical health
If there is a scorecard on physical health, most seniors will fail. According to the National Council on Aging, 92 percent have at least one chronic condition, and 77 percent have at least two.
Physical health issues greatly impair your ability to perform daily tasks and other activities like sports. People with physical health issues can’t get by without taking several medications a day to keep them going. Often, they need someone to help them with ordinary activities like eating or personal hygiene..
A myriad of physical health issues can befall to people in this age range, including you and me. The most common are:
- Arthritis
- Diabetes
- Osteoporosis
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Respiratory diseases
Most of these can be managed to allow you live happy and productive life.
3. Health care costs
Politicians and medical practitioners define “health care costs” differently but this article is not going to give you a giant headache. So to cut through the chaff, it’s going to make it simpler.
“Health care costs are out-of-the-pocket expenses or the amount of money you regularly spend to maintain your health and overall well-being.”
For example, I am taking multi-vitamins and an anti-hypertension drug on a daily basis. They represent a portion of my health care costs, not counting tennis club membership and other things to keep me physically fit.
This amount can be huge even if you are covered by Medicare. A study done by the Center for Retirement at Boston College shows that an average retiree spends around $ 4,300.00 on out-of-the-pocket health care costs per year.
4. Financial security
Financial security refers to the peace of mind you feel when you aren’t worried about money matters; that you have enough money to cover your daily needs and emergencies well into the near future.
As in physical health, a lot of seniors will fail in the financial health category. Over 25 million Americans aged 60 + are living below the Federal Poverty Level ($ 29,425 per year per person).
They have issues on housing and health care bills, inadequate nutrition, access to transportation and diminished savings. And things due to normal rise in cost of living, their difficulties are expected to go from bad to worse.
5. Elder abuse
Elder abuse is the single or repetitive lack of action in a relationship or trust, and which causes harm or distress to an older person.
It includes physical, emotional, sexual, financial exploitation or neglect of their welfare by people who are directly responsible for the care of the elderly. This is a growing menace as most of the victims would rather suffer than report them. In fact, more than half a million reports of elder abuse reach authorities every year.
6. Loneliness and social isolation
Loneliness is a negative feeling resulting from unmet social needs in terms of quantity and quality, while social isolation is total or very limited social contact; to be cut off from your normal social network.
Social isolation and loneliness are often taken as the same. They are not. On one hand, loneliness is temporary and is often a choice, but social isolation is caused by factors like mobility, health issues, no access to services or community activities, or a total lack of communication with friends, family, and acquaintances.
Both are bad for the elderly. Isolation can result in serious chronic diseases such as lung disease, arthritis, and mobility problems, and loneliness can make some seniors engage in unhealthy habits like overeating, drug abuse, excessive alcohol consumption, and smoking.
Everybody wants to finish well – whatever we are doing. Retirement is no less. We all want to retire in good fashion – healthy, financially independent and with a vibrant social circle.
Things, however, don’t always turn out the way we want them to. No matter how good your plans are, these old-age issues can derail them any time. The above are just a few of them.
If not handled or managed well, your life will be a string of stressful events. It will be like battling one of those Australian brush fires. Instead of enjoying old age, you will wallow in a deep mire of suffering and regret.
Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be. The Internet is full of resources you can use to achieve your retirement dreams. This blog is one of them.
You can spend precious time searching them out or have them delivered to your email on a regular basis if you subscribe to this blog. The choice is yours.
But remember this – you need not walk the lonely path alone.
Image: Lovin’LIfe after 50
~oOo~
