Most of us start planning for our retirement fairly early on in our lives. We sometimes create personal retirement accounts, working hard to build up a comfortable little nest egg. However, few of us exploit the benefits of having a ‘Personal Retirement Account for Health’ or a PRAH. Perhaps you’re wondering what a PRAH is.
Picture what you would like your ideal senior years to look like. Does it involve continuing to do your favourite things with less sickness and pain? Spending time traveling and exploring? Or perhaps it means simply remaining active in your community and being able to spend more time with your loved ones. Now, take a minute to think about all the health problems many of your friends and family have experienced as they have grown older.
The years of a prudent financial investment you have made to ensure that you are able to enjoy retirement will amount to nothing if you have not taken the time to invest in your health. As you grow older, there is no better way to ensure that you enjoy the years ahead than by taking care of yourself. Developing your own health plan is what I mean by a PRAH.
In preparation for developing your health plan, I would like to emphasise that how long your health lasts is more important than how long you live. Healthspan is more important than life span. Your goal should not be to just live a long life and accept feeling sick and tired all the time as the natural “consequences” of age. As you start contributing regularly to your PRAH, building up your health balance, you will begin to notice a couple of positive changes. Some of these include:
● Clearer thinking: The brain is the organ most affected by healthy eating and lifestyle changes. You will realize that your thought processes are noticeably clearer and your memory sharper as you start your journey towards clean living. Your brain will be more focussed and you will notice fewer mood swings. As a result you will also be able to handle stress better.
● Clearer vision: The eyes are an extension of the brain and the foods which are good for the brain are also good for the eyes. Visual acuity is retained if the eyes are nourished with the right foods and strengthened with the right exercises.
● Healthier teeth and gums and improved sense of taste: As you start eating real food, your taste buds will evolve and they will start craving the taste of real food. Artificially sweetened and flavoured foods or ready-to-eat processed foods will become increasingly distasteful to you. Your teeth and gums will get healthier as a result of the right balance of nutrients.
● Better breathing: Your breathing will improve as your body gets into better biochemical balance. As you become fitter, you will automatically start breathing more slowly and deeply. This is beneficial both for the mind as well as for the body.
● Leaner body: Waist size is more important than scale weight as an indicator of health. The more fat there is in the waistline, the more likely it is that excess fat is being stored inside the abdomen. As you continue to be diligent about bringing about changes in your lifestyle, you will become more lean and will have the right amount of body fat for your musculoskeletal frame.
● Better healing: As you get older, blood supply to the skin diminishes and the skin gets worse at repairing itself. The immune system also gets weaker. However, as you continue on this path of healthy balance, you will notice that you heal quicker and more completely from regular cuts and wounds. Your immunity will also become stronger and those pesky colds and nagging headaches will soon become a thing of the past.
As you learn to work on your PRAH, start by visualising your best life. Take some time to think about what you really want your later years to be like and use those mental pictures as your motivators. Also, think of what you don’t want to become by thinking of family members and friends who have not planned their PRAHs.
(The author is an internationally certified Health Coach and blogger based in Singapore. The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.)