At age of 40, most men are very vulnerable to many chronic diseases. This period Is a time of caution and reassessment of life choices. There is a limit to what most men in their 40s can do unlike most men in their 20s and early 30s. Although some men in their 40s are almost as active as they were in their 20s and 30s, this can be linked to genetics, family history, or other biological factors.
There are restrictions to what men can do in their 40s compared to their 20s, foods that shouldn’t be eaten anymore, how early their bedtime should be, how much alcohol they can consume (if at all they do), and also how old age affects their sex life
DO: exercise
men in their 40s should engage in frequent moderate intense physical activities. They should engage in exercises like running, jogging, swimming, cycling, dumbbell curls, brisk walking, and leg extensions. It is recommended for older adults to do at least 30 minutes of exercise a day and five times a week. Exercise helps to keep the blood flowing and helps to burn excess fat in the body and reduce the accumulation of fat in the body which in turn prevents high blood pressure, stroke, and heart diseases.
Engaging in softcore physical and aerobic exercise helps to sensitize the body tissues to insulin, lowers blood sugar level, and also protects the body metabolism from the effect of age. Exercise also helps to improve sleep which is often important for older men and also helps in the production of endorphins (the feel-good hormone) which act as a stress reliever.
DON’T: eat fatty food with a high-calorie content
Older adults should avoid foods like bacon, sausages, potatoes, butter, and cheese. Due to the inability of an older adult to engage in more physical activities like they did when they were younger, their body tends to take in and store more calorie than it burns, and accumulation of calorie in the body causes clogging in the arteries and this is linked to many chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, stroke, cancer, and heart diseases.
An adult body has about 5.6 liters of blood that circulates through the body three times every minute. The heart pumps oxygen and nutrient-rich blood throughout the body through veins and arteries. When these circulatory channels are clogged due to excess accumulation of fat in the body, the heart is forced to pump blood faster and this will cause high blood pressure which is a major cause of stroke and heart attack in older men
DO: dietary change
Eating healthy food is important for all age groups but needed more for people who have aged a lot. When we eat, our body metabolizes the food we eat by breaking it down to provide sufficient energy for the body. As we grow older, our body capacity to metabolizes the food we eat reduces and becomes less active due to the aging of internal components in the body.
The rate at which our body breaks down food decreases by 10 percent each decade after age 20. Foods that help to boost your metabolism include green tea, coffee, legumes and pulse, cocoa, iron zinc, and selenium-rich food, spicy foods, foods high in protein content, spinach kale, and other leafy vegetables.
DON’T: engage in activities that increase your stress level
Negative emotions like anger, frustration, sadness, fear, distress, feeling of hopelessness, and helplessness can upset the body’s hormonal balance and affect the immune system. These emotions are also linked to stress and depression. These emotions also cause long-term damage to the organs e.g. anger affects the liver, anxiety affects the heart, sadness affects the heart and lungs, and fear affects the kidney and heart.
Older men above are more vulnerable to stroke and heart attack, these negative emotions are possible triggers. Avoid fights, quarrels, and other activities that can trigger fight or flight response in the brain.
loneliness triggers what psychologists call hypervigilance for social threat, studies suggest that there may be a link between loneliness and increased risk of developing dementia in older men.
DO: avoid strenuous physical activities
Strenuous physical activities are activities that require all your strength. The older we grow, the more our muscle relaxes, and the lower our endurance level for strenuous physical activities.
while we are young and in our20s and early 30s, our body can easily metabolize the food we eat for the production of energy, but as we grow older, the body metabolism capacity reduces and this causes a reduction in muscle mass and induces muscle relaxation.
COMMENTS