9 What About Retirement Health?
As Martin approached retirement, he realized how poor his health had become. Martin’s later years of work had truly worn him down. He was both mentally and physically ailing, with both chronic and acute health issues. Martin’s severe decline was a big reason why he decided to go ahead and retire, when his employer would have let him hang on a little longer and his retirement savings could have used a little more help. Martin just didn’t think that he could last any longer. And he knew that his first years of retirement would involve getting into better shape and improving his health.
Health
Good health means a lot to having a good retirement. If all you do in retirement is deal with increasingly severe health issues, then you’re not going to find as much good to draw from retirement. Poor health can not only keep you from the activities you had hoped to enjoy in retirement but also from engaging fully in the family and friend relationships that you wanted to enjoy. We each approach retirement in our own way, from a health standpoint. Some enter retirement worn out from work, as the above story illustrates. Others, though, enter retirement in relatively good health, bolstered by a sound work schedule, only to ignore their health in retirement and suffer swift decline as a result. Ideally, you’d enter retirement in the best health that you can, having taken good care of yourself in your later work years, and then continue those good health practices in retirement. Whatever your situation is, do the best that you can for your health in retirement. Aging requires that you do so, or you will notice the swift decline. You might get away with a few bad health habits when you’re younger and working, but not so much in retirement.
Medical
Your good health in retirement should begin with regular medical checkups. The first year or two of retirement can be a good time to address health issues that you had to put off or chose to put off during your working life. If, for instance, you’ve long waited for a hip or knee replacement that you know you need and your physicians have firmly recommended, then getting that procedure out of the way early in your retirement may lead to greater health and activity during your retirement years. In other words, don’t continue to put off addressing health issues, when retirement gives you the time and freedom to address them. Fix things that you can fix. Especially address chronic health issues with new regimens that may control or even correct them. Retirement may, for instance, give you the time for extensive physical therapy, exercise routines, fitness training, dietary changes, or counseling in which you could not have engaged when working full time. Retirement also gives you more time to research your health issues, seek second and third opinions, and investigate alternative medicine. Use retirement to address and improve your medical health.
Nutrition
After basic medical care, nutrition is a good place to start with paying attention to your health because nutrition can be the easiest thing to control about your health. At least, you get to choose what goes in your mouth as food and drink, whether or not you find it easy to maintain that control. Your blood pressure, weight, and other health metrics you can only influence indirectly. Your nutrition, though, you get to directly control. Read and research nutrition information, not so much from advertising but instead from professional nutritionists and exercise and fitness trainers, especially those who work with the retired and elderly. Put into practice what you learn. You may have been eating pretty much one diet your whole adult life, a diet largely of taste and convenience. Retirement, though, is the time to eat smart. Your first few days and weeks may prove a little difficult to adjust, but the changes in how you look and feel generally come quickly enough to reward your discipline. Keep it up. You need good nutrition later in life just as much as earlier in life, if you want to maintain your best health.
Sleep
Retirement is also a good time to ensure that you are getting enough sleep. Remember the days of staying out late at night and then rising early in the morning for studies or work, running on fumes all day? That’s not good for your mental and physical health, especially as you age. Sleep can become more difficult for the aging. That difficulty makes keeping a regular sleep schedule all the more important. A steady sleep schedule and routine increases the likelihood that you’ll get enough sleep. In retirement, napping during the daytime can have its special allure. A nap now and then isn’t always a bad thing. But beware sleeping regularly during the day and then being unable to sleep well regularly at night. Pay attention to your sleeping habits. Ensure that you have comfortable bedding, keep the bedroom as dark and quiet as you can, and try keeping the room temperature lower at night. Avoid caffeine and other stimulants late in the day, and avoid screens just before you go to bed and certainly in the middle of the night if you wake up. If you have poor sleep and cannot figure it out, then do some research and get some professional help. A good night’s sleep can be the best thing for your health.
Movement
In retirement, the natural thing to do is to sit back and rest. Relaxation and rest are important to good health. But so, too, is movement and exercise. Getting up and moving around keeps the blood circulating, heart pumping, muscles exercising, and joints limber. Don’t get into the habit of just sitting, while staring at the television or scrolling on your cell phone for long periods of time. Sitting and relaxing for a spell is fine. But at least every hour or so, and better every half hour, get up and move around. You don’t, for instance, have to do all your household chores and outside errands at once, and then plop down in your easy chair for the rest of the morning and afternoon. Instead, sit a little, then do a chore, then sit a little more before doing your next chore. Don’t grumble over small chores but instead use them as an excuse to get up and move around. Get up and greet your spouse at the door. A day of mixed rest and activity is better than a day of concentrated activity followed by long inactivity. Wear a watch or carry a device that measures your steps, to help you monitor your activity throughout the day. Setting a steps goal for each day can help you keep moving and keep healthy.
Strength
Retirement is a good time to begin strength exercises, if you haven’t already done so. The natural muscle loss in your sixties and seventies accelerates and is substantial. Muscle loss in your early retirement increases your risk of falling, when for the elderly falls are a leading cause of injury, disability, and decline, and contributor to earlier death. When you lose muscle in your legs, hips, and core, a little stumble can lead to a prompt fall. Loss of strength in your shoulders, neck, arms, wrists, and grip can lead to more-serious injury in a fall or other injuries when gripping handrails, lifting and carrying items, or transferring into and out of vehicles, seats, and bed. You don’t have to join a health club to use expensive strength machines. A single barbell or kettlebell can contribute substantially to floor, chair, and standing exercises designed to increase and maintain strength. Keep a regular routine of strength exercises. Within days or weeks of when you first start, you’ll likely find it easier to get in and out of vehicles, get up and down from the couch, get in and out of bed, lift and carry groceries, and do other things that had gradually become difficult for you. Slow your loss of strength, especially in the legs, hips, and core. Develop and continually modify and improve your strength routine.
Exercise
Exercise can also contribute to your good health in retirement. You’ve already seen the discussion above of how important movement throughout the day can be to maintaining circulation, musculature, limberness, agility, and other aspects of good health. Raising your heart rate for a sustained period of at least twenty to thirty minutes most days, in some form of exercise, can further increase all those good effects of simple movement. Your sustained daily exercise may involve walking, running, biking, hiking, swimming, tennis, pickleball, canoeing, kayaking, or anything else that elevates your heart rate for a sustained period. A watch or other worn or carried device with a daily exercise challenge program may help keep you on track, especially if the device and its program also monitors heart rate and other activity and health metrics. Experiment with devices and routines as you approach and enter retirement, until you have a program that works well for you. Exercise doesn’t have to be arduous. Make it something that you either enjoy or can readily tolerate, so that you have the incentive and reward to continue.
Stress
Stress is something to especially avoid in retirement, to improve and maintain your health. A certain amount of stress is a given during your work life. Indeed, we sometimes work so long under stress that we seek it out in its absence. We can become addicted to stress, feeling as if we are not living to the fullest unless something is roiling our world. Yet long-term, severe stress can have severe physical health effects, leading to hypertension and other forms of chronic disease. Stress can also contribute to severe mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and addictions. In retirement, with a natural decline in your vitality associated with aging, it becomes critical that you not let stress run the show. Retirement isn’t necessarily all bliss. You can find sources of stress in retirement just about as readily as you can during your work years, whether from family strife, career regrets, neighbor disputes, politics, disrupted friendships, or isolation. Avoid the temptation to do so. In retirement, stop running on the adrenaline that stress can produce. Retirement gives you the excuse to withdraw from stressful situations that you know you cannot solve, manage, sustain, or address.
Screens
Beware the allure of cell phones, tablets, televisions, and other screens to hook you on entertainment and its tiny dopamine hits, adversely affecting your health in retirement. App and cell phone makers, and advertisers, design cell-phone scrolling to capture and hold your attention for as long as they can. You are surely aware of the allure of screens and their fanciful applications, even during your work life. Retirees, though, generally find more time and freedom on their hands, unfortunately readily soaked up staring mindlessly at screens. Yet continually exciting the mind with visual and mental stimulation is not the mind’s natural state. We need unstimulated time to relax, rest, and reflect. We also need time away from screens to pay attention to others near us, to engage in conversation, enjoy refreshments and pastimes together, or simply to be present together in relaxed company. Make it a discipline not to pull out your cell phone every idle moment in retirement. Instead, reflect fruitfully over your life, thoughts, soul, spirit, psyche, and day. Screens keep your thinking absent or on the surface. Reflection without screens can lead you to discover the fabulous depth and riches of your own self, soul, spirit, and mind. Company without screens can lead you to find equal depth and riches in your companions.
Adventure
One way to maintain or improve your health during retirement is to take a greater interest in what’s around you, even to engage in new adventures. Because retirement means withdrawing from full-time work, retirement’s momentum is toward withdrawal and isolation. The subtle effects of aging, gradually depleting one of energy and vigor, hasten the same momentum toward isolation. Yet isolation tends to have negative effects on one’s outlook and health. Your health can benefit from your making a deliberate effort to reverse the tendency toward isolation, through new adventures. Retirement brings freedom from the demands and schedules of work. Retirement thus brings new opportunities for adventure. Don’t let yourself get into the habit of believing that you are too old to do anything. Sure, a little caution about the things that you do may prevent an injury. But don’t use caution as an excuse to stop trying new things or to stop doing old things that you enjoy doing. Plan adventures.
Community
Even if you don’t pursue grand new adventures in retirement, at least maintain your social engagement with a community of friends and acquaintances. Social interaction is one of the strongest contributors to good mental and physical health, especially in retirement and in old age. As just suggested in the prior paragraph, isolation can lead to a lack of stimulation, activity, and exercise, and mental decline and depression. We are social creatures. Even those of us who are introverts need time around others who know and value us. We also need to take an interest in and care for others. You won’t generally make yourself happy thinking only about yourself. Find your community of individuals with whom you share at least some affinity. Your neighbors, network of service providers, and church members make natural candidates for healthy social interaction. You can expand your social network through volunteering at the local school, library, community center, soup kitchen, or other social-service agency. Value and pursue community for your good health.
Forgiveness
Grinding the axe over old grudges can ruin your mental health. Retirement is a natural time for reflection over careers and relationships. That reflection, though, may turn to recriminations and regrets, even to remembering and rubbing old wounds, ruptures, and offenses. Obsession over past conflicts can lead to anger, anxiety, arrogance, bitterness, jealousy, pride, and rage, spoiling one’s mental state, character, reputation, and relationships. Retirement is an important time to let go of past grudges and offenses, if for nothing else than your own peace of mind and good mental health. Too many retirees spoil their last years in anger over long-past offenses. You may, though, be able to do more than simply let go of past grudges. You may be able to genuinely forgive. You might even be able to repair some old, wounded relationships. Don’t let someone else’s inability to forgive you keep you oppressed in your retirement years. But also don’t oppress anyone else with your judgment. When you forgive others, you not only relieve them from the weight of your judgment but also relieve yourself of its burden.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how good is your health? What are your major health issues? Which of your major health issues could you investigate and address in your first year or two of retirement? How good or poor are your eating and drinking habits? Do you know of a local nutritionist you could consult or a nutrition program you could complete to improve your diet? Are you getting a good eight hours of sleep most nights? If not, what can you do to improve your sleep? Do you get up and move around regularly throughout the day? Do you do any strength training to slow your muscle loss? Do you elevate your heart rate daily for a sustained period with some form of pleasant or at least tolerable exercise? How high or low is your stress level? Do you need to reduce your stress level by resolving or avoiding certain situations or subjects? Are you managing your screen time well so that you are not exhausting your attention and concentration? Are you maintaining a sense of adventure and engagement in new activities? Do you have a solid network of friends and acquaintances with whom you regularly engage? Have you let go of old offenses and grudges, or do you need to forgive someone? Have you repaired old broken relationships to the extent that you can?
Key Points
Pay attention to your good mental and physical health in retirement.
Get regular medical checkups and address medical issues promptly.
Improve your diet and nutrition with sound information and advice.
Pay attention to your sleep habits to ensure you get regular good sleep.
Move regularly throughout the day for circulation, agility, and mobility.
Begin regular strength exercises to reduce muscle loss and avoid falls.
Raise your heart rate for a sustained period daily in enjoyable exercise.
Reduce your stress levels to preserve your good health in retirement.
Limit daily screen time to avoid mental exhaustion and distraction.
Maintain a sense of adventure and engagement with the world.
Keep a network of friends and acquaintances for social interaction.
Forgive old offenses and seek to repair broken relationships.