Senior Wellness & Prevention

As you age, taking care of your health becomes increasingly more important to maintain a good quality of life. It is important for you to have regular wellness visits with a healthcare provider to ensure that you are maintaining your health and preventing any issues that may arise as you age.

Provida Family Medicine will provide top-quality to care to all of our senior patients and- with annual visits- your doctor can perform physical and mental exams assess your overall health. These exams include not only checking your vitals, heart, lungs, and skin, but also examining your general appearance. Your healthcare provider may also perform hearing and vision tests.

To schedule a wellness visit, please call  (847) 548-2200.

Staying Healthy

Maintaining your health is a life-long undertaking that includes proper nutrition, adequate sleep, and exercise. Although a challenge at times, minimizing stress is also crucial to maintaining your health. Women who experience higher levels of stress, for example, can also have a weakened immune system. Just like in your teenage years, we recommend that adult women get a full night of sleep (between seven and eight hours), eat a healthy diet, and limit their consumption of alcohol.

Living healthy is about making daily lifestyle choices that actively improve both your quality of life and the function of your mind and body. With the right choices, you’re wellness and mental health will improve.

Nutrition

A healthy diet is a crucial part of staying healthy. As a senior, a healthy diet includes fruits and vegetables, whole grains foods, and low-fat or fat-free dairy products. This diet also includes lean meats, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts. Foods should be low in saturated fats, salts, and added sugars.

At Provida Family Medicine, it is our goal to prevent diabetes with the care we provide and to help you monitor and control your weight to prevent other health complications that can stem from rapid weight loss or weight gain.

If you have questions about planning a healthy diet, Provida Family Medicine’s on-site dietician and credentialed diabetic educator, Monica Gonzalez, can work with you to create a nutrition plan that works best for you within your lifestyle.

Sleep

For seniors aged sixty-five or older, seven or eight hours a sleep a night is required to feel rested and awake. Less sleep leaves your brain exhausted, which in turn impairs motor function and your cognitive thinking skills. As you age, your sleep patterns may change resulting in trouble sleeping.

Everyone experiences an occasional sleepless night. But if you find that you have persistent trouble finding sleep, contact your doctor at Provida Family Medicine so that we can help you identify the source of this issue and help you get the better sleep you need. In order to best achieve a good night’s rest, seniors should try to stick to a consistent sleep schedule to reinforce your body’s natural sleep cycle and help prevent the changes which keep many seniors awake at night.

Naps during the day can also disrupt sleep at night. Naps that last longer than thirty minutes produce REM sleep, the deepest level of sleep. Achieving REM sleep during the day disrupts your internal sleep cycle and will leave you just as tired as you were before the nap.

Exercise

Exercise is just as important in your golden years as it has been throughout your life. The best exercises for seniors work to promote health, not to induce an injury or over-exhaustion.

Endurance and aerobic activities to increase breathing and heart rate include walking, swimming, water-walking, and dancing. Balancing exercises to prevent falls and stretching to help the body stay limber are also important. Strength exercises can help your muscles become stronger with lifting weights or using resistance bands. But it is important not to overexert yourself or lift anything heavier than the weight recommended by your healthcare provider.

If you want to lose weight, maintaining a healthy diet is the best way to safely achieve this
result.