Visit http://www.americanacupuncture.com/ for more detailed information on controversial medical topics.
Slowdown Mr. and Mrs. America and act your age!
Unintentional overexertion is the second-leading cause of nonfatal injuries seen in emergency rooms. Since baby boomers are seeking medical care is record numbers for sports injuries, healthcare has become a big issue. All the health clubs have a boom in athletic activity. This increased exercise does help you prevent obesity and disease, build your strength and promote overall well being.
However if you are over 40, (a baby boomer born between 1946 and1964,) you start getting more injuries than ever before. Emergency rooms are seeing Injuries among seniors over 65 jump 54%, and baby boomer injuries has jumped 33%.
SAFETY IN NUMBERS
There are 78 million of you baby boomers (That's 25% of our population). 8000 of you turn 60 each day. At that time, you can start collecting retirement benefits without penalty. When you baby boomers were beginning to be born there were only 141 million people in the United States. Today that’s doubled to 300 million.
STAYING YOUNG FOREVER
You want to stay young forever, and strive to be strong and attractive. You stay fit through rigorous exercises that even put your teen-age kids to shame. To keep your marvelous body in shape, you put up with sore shoulders, inflamed tendons, and arthritic knees. It's important to h. With everyone getting old, it’s important to stay active and turn the clock back.
THE COST OF VIGOROUS EXERCISE
This vigorous physical activity comes at an expensive price. -- Every six months your body breaks down, you suffer upper body aches and pains, and painful knees and ankles. You are forced to see a doctor for a round of cortisone shots, or perhaps visiting an acupuncturist like me.
You can't really enjoy a run, when you run with an injury. You certainly can't waiting for the injury to heal completely because you love the thrill of exercising. Despite a torn knee or ankle ligaments, you expose yourself to danger and continue to exercise. Your body unconsciously changes its running mechanics. Now you get a secondary injury to your joints and tendons.
WHAT’S WRONG?
Medical experts agree that your skillful and muscular frame was designed for only 40 years of pounding activity. Since your life expectancy has risen more than 50% over the last century, to an average of 78 years, your warranty on health is quickly expiring.
EMERGENCY ROOM VISITS
Unintentional overexertion is the second-leading cause of nonfatal injuries seen in emergency rooms. Last year there were 300,000 injuries among baby boomers (a 47% increase from 10 years prior). While preparing for a 20-mile bike ride to raise money for a wonderful cause related to multiple sclerosis, or breast cancer, you fall off your bike and break your shoulder or fracture your pelvis. You may sprain your legs from vigorous leg lifts.
WEEKEND ATHLETES
As you age, your body is wearing out. By being a weekend warrior, and exercising fanatically, you visit an emergency room because of pulled muscles, sprains, and bum knees. You must come to the conclusion that you can't do the same things you did when you were 20. Getting a young person's injury in your old body can be devastating.
This does not mean that you should trade in your sneakers for a lazy boy chair, and become a couch potato. It does mean, however, that you should spend more time stretching, warming up, cooling down, and perhaps take a day off from the gym to allow your body to recover.
STAYING YOUNG
You maintain your health by regular workouts, managing your stress, and improve the quality of your life by exercise, much more than your parents did. You run, swim, and bike, but you are also visiting doctor’s offices and operating rooms much often.
BOOMERS PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
Your philosophy in life may have always been to break the rules, disregard authority, and defy Mother Nature. It's okay to play tennis, swim, and run marathons, but you must realize that diabetes, arthritis, and high blood pressure are in your near future. It's hard for me to see my friends having bandages, splints, and casts on their arms and legs, Many come to me for acupuncture, but don’t realize they are not as young as they used to be and can't do some of the strenuous things they did when they were 20.
ACT YOUR AGE
The problem is: As you get older the healing process takes longer. An injury as an adult can put you out of commission for an extended period of time. That's not very good if you have to earn a living, have to take time off from your job, and may even lose your job. It’s fine to play football or basketball with your kids, but many times your competitive juices forces you to over extend your physical capabilities. You don’t know when to quit.
Despite being older you are still macho. You overestimate your athletic abilities the same as when you were 20. You can’t forget playing great tennis and how you ran with a football, but you forgot that most of the time they really were just an average player.
Many of you are still exercising vigorously. This is great if you do it properly. However every year more than 170,000 adults, like you, are seen in the emergency room or in a doctor’s office, because you exercised to vigorously and have developed an injury. As you continue to exercise, be aware of your physical limitations.
Since they feel good and are in excellent health, you refuse to act your age. You don't give into their aches and pains, and are proud you do more than perhaps your teenager. children. There is no stopping you.
COMMENTARY
Since baby boomers are seeking medical care is record numbers for sports injuries, healthcare has become a big issue. You see that one third of seniors are obese and 70% of them never exercise, not even 30 minutes a day. You know over 35 diseases are impacted by failure to exercise. You are not going to be one of the 250,000 deaths per year that occurs to couch potatoes.
ADMIT IT! YOU ARE GETTING OLD
Over 60% of adults who are still working have been diagnosed with some chronic health condition as: arthritis cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol or high blood pressure. Muscle and bone ailments have replaced the common cold is the number one reason why you visit your doctor. Because of aging, your skeletal frame is vulnerable to biochemical changes occurring in your bones and joints.
Your life expectancy in the last hundred years has doubled, but your old skeletal frame has not kept up with father time. You stay active on an aging frame, and this has resulted in a great number of injuries to your muscles and bones. You go all out, ignore pain, and exercise vigorously staying physically active all the time. To be an excellent caregiver, you know you must first take care of yourself by a good diet, adequate sleep, and of course appropriate exercise.
You exercise more than your parents or grandparents, and you continue to eat out and party frequently. You find yourself overweight and workout obsessed. You have played, partied, and worked hard your whole life. You always look for intense gratification now, and seldom have saved to buy for anything. If you want it, you get it now, pay for it with credit cards and repay your debts slowly.
MENTAL ATTITUDES
You are financially secure, very active, healthy, and more active and adventurous than your parents were. As you retire you think about starting a small business, and volunteer for community projects. Despite the price of gas, you buy a bigger, heavier, and safer car. You look to relocate after you retire, and dream about moving to a warmer climate. You try to keep two family homes filled with all the home products, toys, and furnishings. You are always looking for new excellent dining places, good healthcare, shopping, interesting new friends, golf, and of course being close to an airport. Your social entertaining begins every evening as if it were Friday night. You intend to retire early, yet would like to work in a new area on a part-time basis, with a more flexible work time and better benefits.
Your parents who were born in the 30s, have saved for rainy days, and will soon pass this wealth to you by way of inheritance. Turning 65, you can expect to live another 30 years and live to be 90. With one third of your life in retirement, you hope your money will not run out.
THE JOY OF RETIREMENT
As you retire, you feel you could work for less, take an entry-level job that is now reserved for the young and lesser educated. You are now investing a lot of time and money to analyze where you want to play golf, where you want to be active, where you love to dine out, and where you can be energetic as you were when you were 30 (without kids).
You instinctively look for a warm climate with fun places. To reduce your living expenses, you move to a sunny community with cheap housing and lower taxes. As you buy a small winter home in Florida that was in foreclosure. Soon it makes no sense to have two houses and commute, so you sell your house up north and move to Florida, full time.
With a new location, you must now rebuild your entire support system: health and medical insurance, new lawyers new golf membership, favorite stores, and of course new friends.
PHYSICAL BREAKDOWN
As you age, you notice your eyesight is going, hearing is being lost, you can't walk as well, or play tennis as you did, and traveling is becoming more complicated. You find you can't drink as heavy as you did, your eyes tear up, the contact lenses you wore are no longer tolerable, you find you need cataract surgery with lens implants.
After spending several thousand dollars, you find you're back molars are replaced with a nice plate, and surprisingly your insurance doesn't cover it anymore. You use your Medicare card as much you use your Visa card.
Your gimpy knee injury from football is acting up, your old bones and support structures are giving away, and you get a brand new knee. After years of putting things off because of bad hearing, you get a new set of ears for the price you once bought a car.
Life at 60, 65, and even 70 is great. You feel guilty getting a senior citizen discount at the movies, you continue to dine out, workout, and spend recklessly.
YOU DEMAND GREAT HEALTH CARE
Your healthcare costs take more money from you then you had planned. Co-pays pharmacy drugs, and deductibles all add up. Your old employer eliminates most of your pension benefits. You're now paying for your aging parents who are now in a nursing home.
As you get older, your medical and health reform plans are things to fight for. Your old car is a repair shop often, and soon you must replace it with a new one.
WAKE UP MR. AND MRS AMERICA
Unfortunately, you can’t replace your body with a new one. Slow down, exercise in moderation, stretch before exercising, and don’t be as aggressive in your daily workouts. And above all, loosen up and smell the roses.
RELATED BLOG POSTS
SPORT INJURIES HEALED WITH PLASM THERAPY
DEFEAT IN SPORTS IS WORSE THAN DEATH
Visit www.drneedles.com for more information on controversial medical subjects
No comments:
Post a Comment