Many seniors fear disability—not being able to feed or dress themselves, or to get around on their own—more than they fear death. Fortunately, there are things you can do to significantly reduce your risk of disability.
Social Activity Can Help Prevent Physical Disability
Staying physically active can help, of course, but a new study conducted at Rush University Medical Center shows that seniors who report a high level of social activity are about twice as likely to remain disability-free when it comes to activities of daily living such as feeding, bathing, dressing, using the toilet and walking across a small room.
Socially active seniors are also about 1.5 times as likely to remain free of disabilities that affect instrumental activities, such as using the telephone, preparing meals and managing medications, or that involve mobility and strength activities, such as walking up and down a flight of stairs, walking a half mile and doing heavy housework.
What Being Socially Active Means
To assess the effect of social activity on the development of disabilities, researchers studied the lives of nearly a thousand seniors with an average age of 82, evaluating how often they went to restaurants or sporting events, played bingo, went on day trips or overnight trips, visited friends or relatives, did volunteer work or attended religious services.
Social Activity and Healthy Aging
"Social activity has long been recognized as an essential component of healthy aging, but now we have strong evidence that it is also related to better everyday functioning and less disability in old age," said Bryan James, PhD, lead researcher and postdoctoral fellow in the epidemiology of aging and dementia in the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center. "The findings are exciting because social activity is potentially a risk factor that can be modified to help older adults avoid the burdens of disability."
So to stay healthy, stay active socially as well as physically, and remember to exercise your relationships as well as your body.