Two really important aspects of healthy aging are managing stress and getting adequate sleep and rest.
I don’t know about you all, but I really don’t deal with stress as best I can. In fact, I tend to let things get to me that I probably shouldn’t. In the first post I wrote for this blog, I presented an overview of the 6 “cogwheels” of brain health as a way in which to think about maintaining healthy brains to the extent that we can as we age. The concept was developed by Michael Patterson (formerly the main brain health resource at AARP) and Roger Anunsen, my professor in The Aging Mind, one of the courses in the aging studies program at Portland Community College (PCC). Roger and Michael have a consulting business, Mindramp. Basically, what they do is translate issues related to brain science into a language which those of us who aren’t scientists can understand. Their e-book, Strong Brains, Sharp Minds was the textbook for The Aging Mind.
To review, the 6 cogwheels are Stress Management, Sleep, Diet, Exercise, Mental Stimulation, and Positive Social Interaction. Each is crucial to the health of our aging brains. I’ll be writing about two cogwheels in each of the next three posts. In this post, I’ll be discussing managing stress and sleep.
There’s a lot written about managing stress, suggesting diverse methods to prevent stress from consuming us. Our bodies and minds are built to handle stressful situations, but adverse physiological and psychological reactions occur when we are in a life situation where stress is ongoing chronic stress. Chronic stress has is especially harmful to an older adult. Given that chronic stress is ongoing, our body and brain are on call to deal with it. As I understand the science, our bodies react to intermittent stressful situations by revving up to help us deal with those situations. After the situation is over, our bodies wind down and resume our normal functioning. During my days as a union staffer, intermittent stress was part of the job. Workplace issues, arbitration hearings, or contract negotiations amped me up. Once the issue was resolved my body would “come down”. The stress wasn’t constant, and my body could slow down eventually. Not so with chronic stress. I dealt with ongoing chronic stress four years ago when a close family member was going through troubling addiction issues. I would often wake up in the middle of the night, worrying and stressing about what was going to happen to the person and their children. It was often on my mind when I was awake. Now, when I have trouble sleeping it’s for different, less serious reasons. My health is better. I’m not laid-back, I never will be, but I am calmer and as a result, healthier.
Managing stress is truly an inexact process. So much depends upon who you are and what your life situation is. Each union I worked for hired outside consultants for stress management seminars; we had employer-funded wellness programs, etc. In the end, a lot of those suggestions or programs provided cookie-cutter answers, and with stress management, one size does NOT fit all. I believe that people who have strong faith (religious or otherwise), believe in something fervently or look to a higher power, are probably best positioned to figure out ways to manage their stress (prayer, meditation). Me, I’m neither, and I really am laid back, but a couple of things described in Strong Brains, Sharp Minds really got my attention and have helped me.
One wake-up for me was learning about the locus of control is the source of stress something I can control or is it something outside of my control? When I’m experiencing an acute, stressful situation, I have a tendency to “go with it”, to allow the stressful situation to control me. For example, a while ago, when I was still a student, I realized my Medicare advantage plan sent the wrong forms for me to have the monthly premium deducted from my checking account. When this happened, my time was really tight, and t sending the wrong form, someone else’s screw up, impacted my time management. I got really angry, but I had just read the section on the locus of control in text, so rather than “going with it” and calling customer service, my wife and I walked our dog. That helped me refocus enough to realize I can’t control the health plan’s mistake or their future mistakes. I can’t control the fact that I’ve got a lot going on, and that having to deal with this situation is messing with my time management. But, during the walk, I realized I can control my reaction to it. I also reminded myself that I need to hold myself accountable for not doing some of the work I needed to do during the time I set aside to do it (and instead of watching an additional hour of tv and then reading the newspaper rather than doing school work). Once I realized where the locus of control was, I calmed down and when I did call the health care plan, I was not calling in a stressed state and therefore was able to work with them to solve my problem.
Metacognition was another point the authors raised that resonated with me. Metacognition is simply thinking about your own thought processes. With me, I will overthink a situation, often constructing worst-case scenarios and envisioning outcomes that don’t end well. I learned that the worst-case scenario thinking allows the stress to control me. Trying to see the other side (for example, thinking of ways to resolve the situation) can help get off the worst-case scenario outcome. I have been trying to adopt this approach to check my thinking when it reinforces a stressful situation. It works, sometimes.
As I mentioned earlier in this post, stress can mess with a person’s sleep, which is a problem because getting enough sleep is a key to protecting and enhancing our brain health for people of all ages, but especially for those of us who are older adults. Strong Brains, Sharp Minds sets out three areas in which sleep is crucial to our brain health: cognition, memory consolidation, and what the authors call garbage disposal. In effect, cognition is getting our brains ready for the next day. As we sleep, our brain rests and therefore is better able to reason clearly, make the best decisions etc. A second critical function of sleep is that it consolidates memory: sleep ensures that we can retain those things we learned during the day. Finally, sleep enables our brains to remove “garbage”, gunk that forms inside and around our brain cells. This “gunk” inhibits brain function and can lead to the development of dementia and/or Alzheimer’s. While we sleep, our brains dispose of the gunk, helping to preserve our brain health. If we don’t get sufficient sleep or rest, the gunk remains.
There’s another important aspect to sleep besides brain health. It restores our physical selves. Sleep helps our body heal-when we’re sick, we’re best off if we sleep as much as we can. During sleep, our body repairs damage to the immune system, and it enables sore muscles and joints to heal.
I’ve never been a really good sleeper, even when I was a kid. I remember trying to get to sleep and often slipping my radio under my pillow to listen to a night baseball or basketball game.
As I’ve gotten older, I get to sleep easily enough but I wake up in the middle of the night several times. This may be oversharing, but I get up at least twice and often more often to go to the bathroom. I often can get back to sleep with little trouble but lately, I wake up around 5 and have a lot of trouble getting back to sleep. So, what to do? One thing I do without trying is I fall asleep while watching television. This is disconcerting, but I think I get back some of my lost sleep. I also try to nap, which hasn’t worked well. To compensate for feeling sleepy during the day, I drink a lot of coffee, and when you add to that the water I drink to stay hydrated (important), it’s no wonder I make frequent trips to the water closet, and unfortunately for me, that also means at nighttime too. So, I’m awake more than I want to be. On nights when I can’t get back to sleep, I feel it the next day-either my energy is low or I have difficulty focusing, or I misplace things more than usual. These are the days when I try hard to nap, or I end up drinking way more coffee than I want to. Another way I compensate is by resting during the day-I take a “brain break” several times during the day. A brain break is what it sounds like-you stop thinking or doing for a few minutes and do nothing: I just look at a tree, or I sit in a park, just sit there. Sometimes I take a short stroll around the block or hang out with my lunatic puppy. In the end, brain breaks, naps, and coffee are ok in the short run, but I would surely like to figure out how to sleep better and longer because that’s one of the keys, it may even be the touchstone, to a strong, healthy aging brain.
– Edward from McMinnville, Oregon, a FAR customer who is finding purpose in this new stage of his life.
Edward
Edward writes for FAR and is also a customer. He is 73-year-old, born and raised in and around New York City. After college and a little graduate school, he took Horace Greeley’s advice and went west. Edward lived in several cities throughout California and currently resides in Oregon. He practiced law for a few years as part of a law collective doing what they called “people’s law,” but spent most of his career working as an internal organizer for the unions.
When Edward’s career ended with the unions, he was determined to become an advocate for older adults. He enrolled at Portland Community College studying Gerontology. He learned a lot about aging and how it applied to his own life experiences and my own aging process. Much of Edward’s writing is related to what he learned in his Gerontology studies.
* The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the Finance of America Reverse (LLC).
This article is intended for general informational and educational purposes only, and should not be construed as financial or tax advice. For more information about whether a reverse mortgage may be right for you, you should consult an independent financial advisor. For tax advice, please consult a tax professional.
I WANT TO KEEP UP TO DATE ON RETIREMENT TRENDS
Follow Us.