Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

Seasonal Affective Disorder:  Tips for Keeping Senior Residents Active

GettyImages-1869419642Imagine a full exercise class, residents upbeat and ready to start, a packed schedule of personal training clients, or hallway conversations about how good the residents feel after exercising. I say imagine because during the cold months, these things aren’t always a reality.

There are many reasons why our group fitness classes have lower participation, why our personal training clients keep pushing off their session until next week, and why we don’t have as many conversations with seniors about feeling well and full of energy. As staff, we need to be prepared for these seasonal shifts and adjust as needed. Seasonal Affective Disorder can play a huge role in the lack of resident participation and engagement in the fitness center. Here are some tips that staff can implement to keep senior residents active.

Tip #1: Change the group fitness schedule.

NIFS staff collect data on class participation, and we use this data to enhance our group fitness calendar seasonally. If you know it’s too cold outside to continue your outdoor walking class, change it to a gym circuit class. You can entice those residents to take the new circuit class by incorporating use of the treadmill or other cardio equipment, along with strength machines and usage of the non-typical group fitness class equipment.

Take note that in the New Year it's great time to trial a new class with the uptick in New Year’s Resolutioners. Use that feedback to adapt and keep the excitement going through the next few months.

Tip #2: Call the residents or send them a personal note.

You know who the regulars are and when they come to the fitness center. Haven’t seen them for a week? Call them or send them a personal note that you miss them and would like to meet for a consultation to see if they need any assistance adjusting their personal fitness routine. This act of kindness goes a long way in keeping seniors engaged and staying active.

Consider creating a few handouts, such as balance and no-equipment total body workout, that can be given to residents who are struggling to come to the fitness center but are open to exercising in the comfort of their own home.

Tip #3: Run a wellness program or presentation and incorporate SAD facts and management techniques.

During the winter months, it can be easy for people to dismiss their feelings. Maybe they think they are tired after being busy decorating and baking and going to all of the social functions. But what about when the holiday rush is over? It is up to community and fitness center to staff to not only engage residents to stay active, but to also consider their overall wellbeing. Following the holiday or winter season may be a great time to focus on wellness and highlight ways to manage Seasonal Affective Disorder or be a helping hand to someone who expresses SAD symptoms.

Consider hosting the presentation or wellness social and offering a giveaway for complementary personal training, to help residents get back into an exercise routine, or a complementary massage, to help residents relax and decompress.

Put these tips into action and see how small changes can make big impacts for the senior residents and fitness center engagement!

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Topics: senior wellness senior living fitness center mental health senior living activities

Taking Time for Your Mental Health

GettyImages-1307095695Mental health has been a growing topic of conversation over the last few years, and for good reason. The first step of mental health awareness is being comfortable enough to talk about it. This topic is no longer taboo, and people are learning to prioritize their mental health. According to the CDC, “Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act.” Mental illness effects millions of people in the U.S. each year. It’s important to measure how common mental illness is so that we can recognize that no one is alone in their battles.

  • 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year.
  • 1 in 20 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year.
  • 1 in 6 U.S. youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year.
  • 50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, and 75% by age 24.
  • Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 10-34.

 

Mental and physical heath are equal components of overall health, and they often go hand in hand. For example, chronic exposure to stress hormones can cause an increased risk for heart disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure, strokes as well as many other negative health effects.

It is important that we take time to focus on our own mental health, and here is a list of ways you can prioritize your mental well-being:

  1. Get Active - Exercise has been proven to boost your mood, improve self-esteem, improve sleep, reduce stress, and diminish feelings of anxiety and depression.
  2. Establish Boundaries - If you agree to everything, you won’t have time to relax and decompress. If you say yes to everything and are constantly on the go, you won’t have time to prioritize your mental health. You need to set boundaries.
  3. Avoid Negative Self-Talk – Negative self-talk will increase feelings of anxiety and depression. It can cause an increase in stress levels and lower self-esteem.
  4. Create Support System - Keeping your mental health struggles from loved ones doesn’t help anything. The sooner you open up about these struggles, the sooner you can receive treatment.
  5. Become Aware of your own feelings – Many people will ignore and avoid their feelings and go about their day like nothing is wrong. If you don’t address your feelings, it will build up until you reach a breaking point.
  6. Eat nutritious meals – A healthy, well-balanced diet can help us think clearly and feel more alert. It can also improve concentration and attention span. A poor diet can lead to fatigue, impaired decision-making and attention span. It can lead to an increase in stress and depression.
  7. Reach out to a professional – Therapy is a great way to help identify your stressors, learn about your emotions, and receive a plan to address those issues.

Getting stressed out at work if perfectly normal, but when stress and anxiety is persistent and overwhelming, it needs to be managed properly. It is important to seek help when these feelings are taking over your daily life.

Topics: employee wellness mental health selfcare

The Impact of Physical Activity on Mood

GettyImages-1073381110The impact of physical activity on mood has been researched over the last few decades. There has been speculation that an increase in physical activity can provide a substantial positive impact on one’s mood, but to what extent? Let’s dive into the known relationship between physical activity and mood, how much of an effect physical activity can have, and finally will provide a few brief explanations over the mechanisms of which physical activity increases mood!

Multiple studies have shown clear consensus for the benefits that physical activity has on the symptoms of depression and anxiety. It has been shown that the increase levels of physical activity and exercise are inversely correlated with depression levels. Exercise is also being shown to improve other quality of life indicators for individuals such as improvement in self-esteem, vitality, general well-being, and satisfaction with physical appearance.

There has been a lot of speculation from the actual significance that physical activity has on mood. Physical activity has had similar effects on depression symptoms as compared to those of antidepressant medications. Even maintaining this “antidepressant’ effect that can outlast the exercise period. These findings can have a beneficial impact on even people that are not suffering from clinical levels of depression. In terms of what facet of fitness has an impact on mood, both aerobic and anaerobic methods of exercise have shown an immensely beneficial impact. Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise programs (where roughly 65% of a persons VO2 Max is reached) showed improvements in behavioral, mood, and anxiety responses. However, strength (anaerobic) training at low to moderate intensities produced the most reliable and robust decrease in improvements!

Now that I have shown the benefits of exercise, let me explain some of the mechanisms that can cause this improvement in mood. There are two different complex biological mechanisms that occur in your body that may explain the boost in mood with regards to exercise. Firstly, it may be due to a response within the body that has to do with inflammation. Physical activity and exercise reduce chronic inflammation in the body, which is then joined by a lower expression and usage of tryptophan. This limited usage of tryptophan will lead to accumulation, which then results in additional tryptophan being within the bloodstream for your central nervous system. Tryptophan has two major jobs for us in this case: it aids in the biosynthesis (creation) of serotonin, and it also seems to aid in the transmission of serotonin across the blood-brain barrier. As more tryptophan crosses the blood-brain barrier, consequently higher serotonin concentrations are found in the brain as well.

Another possible biological explanation is the endorphin perspective that physical activity and exercise can play on mood. Endorphins are produced by the hypothalamus and pituitary glands during strenuous exercise. They often resemble opiates in their ability to produce euphoria and analgesia. Exercise elicits the secretion of these endorphins in the brain reducing pain and cause general euphoria. Which then later, these same endorphins may reduce anxiety and depression levels.

Have you found that regular exercise affects your mood? Share below!

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Topics: physical activity exercise and health mental health

The Health Benefits of Being Outdoors

GettyImages-1189775053Every Sunday, I make a cup of coffee and head outside. I often just sit and listen to the sounds all around me. I take it all in. Even now I can feel the sun on my face, sense the gentle breeze, the sound and feel of the chair as it gently rocks back and forth. It is so easy for me to close my eyes and bring myself right back to that moment whenever I need to. There is something about being outdoors that feels so important to me. Every experience in my life seems more fulfilling while I am doing it outdoors.

For example, I love running outdoors. If you ask me to run on the treadmill, I have more of an attitude of I will do it because I know it is good for me, and not so much because I love it. The same goes for swimming. Put me in the ocean and I am in my glory but the same does not seem to exist for me when it comes to jumping into an indoor pool.

There have been studies that talk about the health benefits of being outdoors and perhaps these studies can more definitively describe the feelings and benefits most human beings experience when they are outdoors.

Research in a growing scientific field called ecotherapy has shown a strong connection between time spent in nature and reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.

It's not clear exactly why outdoor excursions have such a positive mental effect. Yet, in a 2015 study, researchers compared the brain activity of healthy people after they walked for 90 minutes in either a natural setting or an urban one. They found that those who did a nature walk had lower activity in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region that is active during rumination — defined as repetitive thoughts that focus on negative emotions.

"When people are depressed or under high levels of stress, this part of the brain malfunctions, and people experience a continuous loop of negative thoughts," says Dr. Strauss.

Digging a bit deeper, it appears that interacting with natural spaces offers other therapeutic benefits. For instance, calming nature sounds and even outdoor silence can lower blood pressure and levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which calms the body's fight-or-flight response.

The visual aspects of nature can also have a soothing effect, according to Dr. Strauss. "Having something pleasant to focus on like trees and greenery helps distract your mind from negative thinking, so your thoughts become less filled with worry".

As the weather changes and summer begins to roll back in, find ways to get back outside and enjoy the outdoors. The no cost key to living a happier, healthier life.

Topics: senior wellness mental health outdoor exercise

Active Aging: “We All Need to Be Needed”,Emotional Wellness and Dementia

When creating senior wellness programs, we often focus on the physical realm of wellness. I would like to take some time to talk about emotional wellness. In particular, I want to get into the emotional wellness of our residents with various forms of dementia. 

All too often when someone begins to feel the effects of some form of cognitive loss, they begin to pull away. At first it is out of embarrassment over not being able to recall a friend’s name immediately or the name of a common object, or the frustration as they lose the concept of time and place. 

senior_careTaking Care of Someone with Cognitive Loss

Imagine if you had the knowledge that you were no longer able to follow a conversation with a group of people and be able to equally contribute to that conversation. Wouldn’t that lead you to draw away from your friends and family to save yourself from such an embarrassment? All our youthful years we identify ourselves by what we do or what we know. I’m an athlete, a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, and so on and so on. Wouldn’t this also lead you to be depressed if you could no longer identify yourself? 

What if we as the caregivers could do more than take care of someone with dementia? Do more than shower and dress and prop them up somewhere. Those of us in wellness tend not to be the ones to deal with the hygiene portion of an individual’s care, so how can we contribute to their daily lives? The easiest and best way is time and attention. Depending on the stage of disease, there are many things that we can do to let our residents know they are still loved. 

It is easy to say, “Yeah, but I don’t have time. I teach classes and run programs and work with people individually and there is just not enough time in a day.” There is good news. It does not take a lot of time. Programs can be created to include spouses, friends and family members, or volunteers to help share the responsibility of time. These programs can be built to be held in short increments of time. The most important thing with any of these programs is to just remember to be with your residents. Not shuffle them from place to place or activity to activity. Take the time to truly be with them. Let them tell you a story; ask questions about their interests. Don’t try to control the conversation. Let it go wherever it may, just as you do when catching up with a good friend. 

Ideas for Emotional Wellness Programs

Here are a few ideas to include in a dementia program:

Music time: Sing-alongs, classical music, or music of their time. Music is the universal language understood all over the world and is the best trick up our sleeve.Story time: This is not time to read a story to your residents. This is time to listen to your residents’ stories. Pay no mind if that story switches tracks; just be there to listen to that story and contribute to a conversation that may come out of it. 

Current events breaks: Try to focus on some happy current events. 

The most important thing to remember is to live in the moment, because that is all someone with dementia has: a series of moments. I encourage anyone who potentially will be spending time with someone with dementia to either read the book or see the movie Still Alice by Lisa Genova. It is a profound story that will open your world to an amazingly deep understanding of an individual’s perspective of the need to be needed.

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Topics: senior wellness programs brain health dementia memory care mental health emotional wellness

Active Aging: Read for Brain Health

woman in library resized 600Often when we think or talk about having good health, it consists of eating healthy foods and exercising. There are many areas of our lives that we could improve upon health wise—often it seems like there is so much to work on to keep track. However, one segment of health that seems to go by the way side is mental health. Just as muscles lose strength or cardiovascular fitness declines with age, your brain can lose agility and decline in the way that it functions. There is no one way to prevent degenerative diseases of the brain such as Alzheimer’s, but you can start today with the way you live your life to help make your brain healthier. Here are a few tips for great brain health:

  • Stay physically active – being active maintains good blood flow to the brain and can encourage new brain cells.
  • Adopt a brain-healthy diet – there has been research done that high cholesterol can contribute to brain cell damage and stroke. A healthy diet that is low in fat and cholesterol is desirable along with dark vegetables and fruits with antioxidants which can help protect brain cells.
  • Stay socially active – this can help reduce stress levels and maintain healthy connections among brain cells.
  • Stay mentally active – new nerve cells can be created by getting involved in mentally stimulating activities; this can also strengthen brain cells.

I want you to focus on the mental component of staying healthy and giving you ways improve your mind game. Try any of these easy ways to fit more mental activity into your daily routine:

  • Never stop learning! Maybe you wanted to take up doing a new hobby or even wanted venture out and do a new sport, commit to it and learn about your new adventure.
  • Take up writing and working on crossword puzzles to keep you mentally stimulated.
  • Enroll in a few college courses to keep mentally active in a structured way.
  • Play games with your friends and family.
  • Even try memory exercises or games that can help with your mind game!
  • Lastly, read books that are interesting to you. Who wants to read a boring book just to mark it off of your list? Head to the library and pick up a book for FREE!

Your public library is a great resource that is within your community; however some don’t take full advantage of it. First of all, it’s FREE; it’s easy to sign up for a library card; and there are so many books to interest anyone, you just have to do a little digging.

So check out your local library during National Library Week April 13-19 and read for excellent brain health!  Visit our facebook page and share what book you are currently reading!

Topics: active aging nifs fitness management brain health wellness mental health