6 warning signs your healthspan won’t match your lifespan
When we read a news story about someone reaching their 100th birthday, we mentally give them a round of applause. That’s a real milestone, but after the applause, do you ask yourself if you actually want to live that long? What if we’re sick and unable to live fully for the last 30 years? Will life be worth living?
Longevity runs in my family – my grandparents were in their 80s when they died, and my mum was in her 90s. I watched them all suffer with poor health, and after Mum died, I decided that wasn’t going to be me: I’m determined my healthspan won’t fall short of my life span.
There are telltale signs that we might not live a long life, and signs we might not live a long and healthy life, but the good news is we can influence them.
1. Do you habitually sit down to put on your socks, pants, and shoes?
This can be a sign that your balance isn’t as good as it could be – you’re automatically doing what your body needs to protect itself from toppling over.
Poor balance leads to falls – but not when you’re dressing, because you’ve got that covered. Falls happen when you least expect them, like slipping on ice in winter, wiping up a spill in the kitchen, or tripping over a toy — basically, anytime the mind is elsewhere and has left the body with the job of navigating a space.
Fix your poor balance: We lose muscle mass and strength (called sarcopenia) after age 40. When we lose muscle, we lose our ability to right ourselves when we wobble or slip.
The leg, butt, and core muscles are our stabilizers, so we can work on these at the gym with a trainer, but start by simply doing squats in the kitchen while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil.
Stand with your feet hip distance apart, or a little wider. Put your arms out in front of you for a counterbalance, and slowly bend your knees, keep your back straight, and stick your butt out, as if you’re trying to close a cupboard door behind you. Go as deep as you can and stop if you have pain in your knees. Slowly come back to standing. Repeat up to five times and gradually increase your repetitions.
Push-ups from the kitchen counter also work well for the chest and abs.
If you like a class but not the sweat, or have impairments, try Tai Chi, yoga, and balance ball lessons.
2. You have blood sugar spikes or uncontrolled diabetes
We need the sugar from carbohydrates as the body’s fuel, but in the right amounts. In diabetes, the body can’t regulate sugar levels, but we all need to be aware that eating too much of some carbohydrates can make blood sugars spike, which stresses the body.
Too much sugar for too long damages the blood vessels, especially the small ones in our eyes, kidneys, heart, and brain. This damages the organs the blood vessels supply, putting us more at risk of heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes.
Fix blood sugar spikes:
You can get a glucose blood test with your doctor, or use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) for a couple of weeks and experiment with the food you eat and sugar levels. Some people are more sensitive to carbohydrates than others.
Even if you’re following a healthy diet, be aware of hidden sugars in ketchups, sauces, and other foods we think of as savoury.
Eat fruit as whole fruit or in a homemade smoothie rather than juice. The fiber in whole fruit slows down the release of sugars into the blood.
Love bread? Who doesn’t? Eat sourdough or wholegrain bread rather than white bread. Both are digested more slowly.
Love pasta and rice? Cook, chill, and re-heat it, as this stops the sugar spikes.
Shift your diet toward more protein, as it’s important in strengthening muscle.
3. You’re apple-shaped, rather than pear-shaped
I’m referring to our hip-to-waist ratio: in other words, where we store our fat.
Studies suggest that if we are apple-shaped — fat around the waist — we’re more likely to have it around our organs, known as visceral fat. And this can cause bodily inflammation linked to Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease.
We need a little visceral fat to cushion our internal organs, but storing fat around our hips is a healthier indication of what’s happening inside.
Measure your hip-to-waist ratio:
Stand straight and breathe out. Measure your waist with the measuring tape covering your belly button; then measure around your hips — the biggest part of the buttocks. Divide your waist reading by your hip reading to calculate your hip-to-waist ratio. The World Health Organisation recommends a ratio of 0.90 or less for men and 0.85 or less for women.
Overall weight loss helps reduce belly fat, as does building muscle. Work on the big muscles of the thighs and butt, as these will burn more calories, but all-over toning and muscle rebuilding is important.
4. You haven’t had a DXA test
Along with the muscle loss, we lose bone mass after age 40. The DXA scan looks at how dense (and therefore strong) our bones are. It can help diagnose osteoporosis or osteopenia. Osteoporosis is bone thinning, so instead of looking like a dense honeycomb, it’s full of holes. Osteopenia is the stage before osteoporosis.
Half of all women will get osteoporosis, which puts us at risk of spinal and hip fractures, but osteoporosis and osteopenia are reversible for most.
Fix it:
My mother fell and broke her hip, and life was never the same. She went from living independently to needing 24-hour care, her quality of life deteriorating every day of the 18 months she lived after the fall.
Ask your doctor for a DXA scan, especially if you’re over age 50 or have a family history of osteoporosis.
A good diet with plenty of protein, calcium, and Vitamin D helps improve and prevent thinning bones. So will muscle-building exercise, and some specific exercises, like jumping rope, put a shock wave through the bone.
Take specialist advice, as women with osteopenia/osteoporosis or other conditions need an individual, graded approach.
5. You have high blood pressure
High blood pressure (BP) has virtually no symptoms; you may not know you have it.
Blood pressure reflects heart health and pressure in the blood vessels. If it’s too low, we feel faint and feeble, but too high, and small vessels can rupture, meaning a stroke or a heart attack.
Fix it:
Ask your doctor or nurse to test your BP, or buy a home monitor and check it regularly yourself. The ideal is around 120/80. The first reading (120) is the force of the heart pushing blood out, and the second reading is how well it relaxes after.
Discuss it with your doctor if it’s too high (or low and you have symptoms).
6. You can’t get up off the floor (without grabbing a piece of furniture)
Muscle strength, agility, and freedom of movement are key to healthy aging.
Imagine you’ve fallen. Nothing’s broken, but after the shock of finding yourself on the floor, you need to get up.
You might have something/someone nearby to help, but if you haven’t, you’ll thank your younger self for putting in the practice to get you up easily.
Fix it:
Take a staged approach. This video explains it and encompasses all the actions we talked about above that will improve your strength and mobility: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7RWL8d5QF4
My old lady body is a work in progress, and my motivations are many — I want my clothes to fit, I don’t want to end up like my mother and grandmother, I want to age with strength and independence, and on my terms.
Treat exercise like cleaning your teeth or making the bed — just do it. I do squats and push-ups while I wait for the kettle or the microwave, and I made a small gym at home.
The best time to start this was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now: do it and your future self will thank you.
She sold everything at 47. At 59, Anissa Buckley is just getting started.
At 47, Anissa Buckley’s life came apart all at once. Both of her parents died. Her 12-year marriage ended. She exited her second company. And then she did something most of us would never think to do in the middle of so much grief.
She sold or stored nearly everything she owned, packed a backpack, and flew to South Africa.
“It was the beginning of learning about something called Hormetic Resilience,” she says now — the idea that strategic, appropriate doses of stress don’t just help us survive hardship. They make us stronger than we were before. Stronger, perhaps, than we ever imagined we could be.
