Physical activities and healthy living is essential to all ages, including the elderly. Bodies are made for activity and without regular exercise they will not function at an efficient level. It is not age but lack of exercise that makes people stiff and numb, even young people can stiffen up without adequate exercise. Physical activity helps the body to maintain its youthfulness, and helps movement, making it easier to be self-sufficient. Activity aids in a better life all together with health, stronger muscles, stronger positive attitude and a powerful resistance to sickness. Exercise also helps people look, feel and work a lot better. All these positive outcomes from exercise are also experienced by the elderly, ages fifty and up. .
What happens when people age? .
Too often, upon retirement, a person coming straight out of the workforce who is active and alert will deteriorate physically and mentally. The same process happens to ones that are not so active. There are factors that need to be considered once an individual is getting old. Their muscle strength diminishes with age, they are not sufficiently being used so they decrease in power. Cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases are often present and restrict the physical possibilities of the elderly. Their arteries slowly harden and arterial plaque clogs up the blood vessels, this can lead to a stroke or heart disease. Arthritis of weight bearing joints is also very common which will be a problem with too much movement in exercise, this is also a problem with osteoporosis patients. As individuals age the immune system also changes, cells in the bodies of older people take longer to produce the antibodies that fight infections. It takes the cells in an elderly individual between fourteen and twenty one days to create antibodies, this accounts for the elderly more likely to suffer infectious diseases and the diseases being a lot more severe (Dube, 1993).
