The free fitness app Map My Walk motivates me to walk more

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MapMyWalk

I used to wear a Fitbit clipped to my waistband every day to track my steps, but lately I use the free app Map My Walk on my phone to track my longer walks.  I love it.  It tracks my steps, calories burned, pace, elevation, duration of walk, and charts my walk on a map.  Workouts can be saved or posted on Facebook.  I am sure my friends like to see me hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park while they are at work!  It definitely motivates me to walk more.

 

Do Fitness Trackers Really Improve Your Health?

The devices aren’t terribly accurate, but that may be beside the point: getting you out and about

by Kaitlin Pitsker from Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

October, 2016

“Millions of Americans now wear fitness bands on their wrists to count their steps daily. Some employers are using fitness trackers to set goals—and rewards—for employees. Health and life insurers are offering premium discounts for wearing one. School systems are even using them to enable self-directed physical education programs.

How accurate are they? Fitness bands contain an accelerometer, which tracks movement in every direction to calculate the number of steps you’ve taken. But studies show that over the course of a day, many trackers have error rates of 10% to 20%. Tufts University’s Health & Nutrition Letter suggests you verify that your stride-length setting is correct by going to a track with the exact distance marked and counting your steps as you walk it. If you walk, say, 100 feet in 40 steps, divide 100 by 40. You have a stride length of about 2.5 feet.

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Most fitness bands are on track when it comes to counting steps when you’re walking, running or climbing stairs—usually coming within 1% to 4% of your actual step count, says Alex Montoye, an assistant professor at Alma College who studies wearables. The devices are also good at not awarding credit for stationary activities with a lot of wrist movement, such as typing or shuffling papers.”  Read more

Those who wore fitness trackers significantly increased the time they spent doing moderate to vigorous activity.

November is National Family Caregivers Month

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Take care to give care.Home

That is the theme of the National Family Caregivers Month for November, 2016.  The following post is from caregiveraction.org:

“The first rule of taking care of others: take care of yourself first. Caregiving can be a rewarding experience, but it is also physically and emotionally demanding. The stress of dealing with caregiving responsibilities leads to a higher risk of health issues among the Nation’s 90 million family caregivers. So as a family caregiver, remember to pay attention to your own physical and mental wellness, and get proper rest and nutrition. Only by taking care of yourself can you be strong enough to take care of your loved one. You really do need to ‘take care to give care!’

  • Caregiving can be a stressful job. Most family caregivers say they feel stressed providing care for a loved one. With all of their caregiving responsibilities – from managing medications to arranging doctor appointments to planning meals – caregivers too often put themselves last.
  • The stress of caregiving impacts your own health. One out of five caregivers admit they have sacrificed their own physical health while caring for a loved one. Due to stress, family caregivers have a disproportionate number of health and emotional problems. They are twice as likely to suffer depression and are at increased risk for many other chronic conditions.
  • Proper nutrition helps promote good health. Ensuring that you are getting proper nutrition is key to help maintain your strength, energy and stamina, as well as strengthening your immune system. Maintaining a healthy diet is one of the most powerful things you can do to take care of yourself and keep a positive attitude overall.
  • Ensuring good nutrition for your loved one helps make care easier. As many as half of all older adults are at risk for malnutrition. Good nutrition can help maintain muscle health, support recovery, and reduce risk for re-hospitalization – which may help make your care of a loved one easier.
  • Remember: ‘Rest. Recharge. Respite.’ People think of respite as a luxury, but considering caregivers’ higher risk for health issues from chronic stress, those risks can be a lot costlier than some time away to recharge. The chance to take a breather, the opportunity to re-energize, is vital in order for you to be as good a caregiver tomorrow as you were today.”

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Considering downsizing or a reverse mortgage for retirement income?

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Planning for retirement income can be complicated by choices like downsizing or reverse mortgages.  The Center for Retirement Research has published a useful booklet, Using Your House for Income in Retirement, to assist you with this important financial decision.Housing Booklet image

“Using Your House reviews the two most common ways to use your house to boost your income in retirement – downsizing and a reverse mortgage – with clear examples, a discussion of the pros and cons of each approach, and links to tools on the web where you can get estimates of what downsizing or a reverse mortgage can do for you.”

PDF of booklet

© 2014, by Trustees of Boston College, Center for Retirement Research. All rights reserved.

Fearless solo road trip through the midwest

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Roseman Bridge
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My sister Sue and her husband Tom are retired and vacationing this week in Hawaii.  When I asked which island they were going to visit, Sue replied, “All of them.”  They are on a cruise which docks at each island.

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The issue I wrestle with the most as a solo retiree is the fact that if I want to travel, which I do, then I must get comfortable with travelling alone.  I always dreamed of taking a long trip abroad once I retired, but fear of traveling solo lead me to settle for a few days in Crested Butte, Colorado (about six hours away from my home) last summer.  Crested Butte is one of my favorite places to visit in the summer and the Wildflower Festival was extraordinary, but it wasn’t the travel I had dreamed of.

Late this summer I decided to stretch myself and overcome my fear of solo travel.  I renewed my AAA account, serviced and gassed up the car, called to see if my friends would be around when I arrived, reserved a hotel home for me, and boarding for my dog.  I was planning a solo road trip, this time venturing out-of-state.

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How is your mental health and fitness?

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Older individuals who remain mentally active and who take advantage of opportunities to learn new information seem to be significantly less likely to show signs of mental decline.

How to Keep Your Brain Limber

From Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mind, Mood & Memory

“Here’s some good news for older adults!  A new study suggests that regular mental workouts can do for your gray cells what heart-pounding exercise routines do for your body: increase fitness and restore the vigor of youth.

To determine whether engaging in activities that make demands on the brain can help preserve cognitive vitality, scientists recruited a group of older adults and randomly assigned them to one of two groups.  One group engaged in mentally stimulating, high-challenging activities, spending 15 hours per week for 14 weeks learning quilting or digital photography.  The other group spent an equal amount of time engaged in low-challenge pursuits, such as playing simple games, watching movies or listening to music.  All participants underwent cognitive testing and brain scans to measure brain activity at the beginning and end of the study, and a smaller number of participants were tested again a year later.

According to a paper published October 20, 2015 in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, the high-challenge group showed improved brain performance after participating in the study and upon retesting a year later, scoring higher on measures of memory and increasing in efficiency in brain regions responsible for attention and language processing.”  Read more

Key items to help make a widow’s life a little easier

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adobecreekfuneralhome.com

The Ultimate Survival Guide for New Widows

These 10 items will make your transition easier

by Laurie Burrows Grad

August 24, 2016

“Sorry widowers, this one’s for the ladies.

When Peter died, I had to face the practical aspects of living alone. I had to change light bulbs, hang pictures and open jars by myself. So I devised a list of key items for widows to keep on hand to make their lives easier.  Here are 10 of them:

1. A secure step ladder: A woman who lives alone surely needs a secure step ladder. Invest wisely and use your coupons at Bed Bath & Beyond to get the top-of-the-line ladder. Be honest. How many times have you stepped on a chair instead of a step ladder and almost taken a nose dive? More than one I bet! Be safe please!

2.  Tap lights: I live in Los Angeles where earthquakes are common so I always keep a tap light in every room of the house in case of a power outage. They also double as great toddler toys.

3. A screw driver: This item is a must for every household but particularly helpful for single women. Color me so proud. I just put my new license plates on my car by myself with this nifty little sucker.

4. EZ Moves Furniture Moving System: When you have to move heavy furniture, simply lift, place, and slide the item. It’s a dolly that doesn’t take up space and can be used for a variety of household chores. OK, it doesn’t help with my bad back, but just think how you can keep your chiropractor in business? (In the interest of truth, I have never used it, but it does look great in my garage).”

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“Who is going to get what you leave behind?”

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“The Best Bequest”Lutheran Hour Ministries

#84-09
Presented on The Lutheran Hour on October 30, 2016
By Rev. Dr. Ken Klaus, Speaker Emeritus of The Lutheran Hour
Copyright 2016 Lutheran Hour Ministries

“Although it is not strictly mandatory from a legal point of view, novels and films have taught us that a person’s last Will and Testament really ought to begin with the words, “I (and then you insert your whole name) being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath to (and then you list who gets what). Now that phrase has always caused me a problem. Since many wills are written when a person’s physical condition has deteriorated to the point where they expect the grim reaper to come calling any minute, how can they say they are in ‘sound body.’ So, rather than wondering, I went to one of my lawyer friends and asked him. He laughed and told me that the expression is not a medical one; it is merely a statement that the individual is capable of making the decisions which follow in the rest of the document.

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