For general fitness, as against specific goal oriented exercise, especially for the Senior Citizens, it is more important to have your internal organs functioning effectively, your joints moving freely, your spine staying flexible and your sense of balance maintained appropriately. This is best achieved by a proper understanding and control of your diet and a regime of appropriate flexibility, balance say Yoga Asanas (including ‘Surya Namaskars’) and breathing exercises such as ‘Kapal Bhatti / Pranayama’, about 30 to 40 minutes of daily walking and at least 15 to 20 mins of meditation.

The oxygen required for burning or oxidation of food comes from proper breathing that is more effective during low intensity exercise when your heart rate is at the lower end of your training heart rate (220 – your age X 70 percent or 80 percent depending on your fitness and age) at which the body’s main fuel source is fat. Breathing exercises such as ‘Kapalbhati’ and ‘Pranayama’ help keep your lungs and diaphragm muscles in good working order while also oxygenating your blood.

Yoga and the breathing exercises need to be properly done and hence must be started with advice from a qualified instructor who can take into account your current state of fitness and health. Deep breathing not only increases the oxygenation of the body and brain it also increases elasticity of the lungs and ribcage. It also massages and stimulates the abdominal organs and reduces the load on the heart. All, not only during the exercise period but, throughout the day.

As you grow older you no longer, ‘hop – skip and jump’, or walk on a balance beam or dance and hence you soon lose your sense of balance. You also need to walk a few minutes, both every morning and evening, on natural, uneven ground. This allows the sensors in the soles of your feet to sense the unevenness and trigger your balance mechanism, in the inner ear, to respond and thus continue to function properly. Walking with foot wear, or on finished surfaces, denies such stimulation and feedback, and again leads to loss of balancing ability. It is such loss that causes falls and the consequent risk of broken bones. Therefore in addition to walking barefoot on an uneven surface, also introduce some balance exercises into your exercise programme, to be done every now and then (Yoga or Tai Chi). Test your balance by seeing how long you can stand on one leg with your eyes closed and the other knee lifted waist high. Please stand in the corner between two walls and also have a friend standing by for safety as you try this. Try to build up to 30 seconds on each leg. For Senior Citizens, even 10 seconds is good.

Barefoot walking on natural ground is also said to allow your body to ground itself by absorbing free electrons from the Earth that could improve a number of health conditions.

Not exercising undermines health. Exercise not only keeps you healthier, it also helps you live longer. Exercising has been found to lessen and even reverse the effects of ageing on human skin, protect against age-related vision loss, improve creativity, lower risk of developing heart disease even for those who have multiple risk factors for the condition, increase the numbers of good bacteria in one’s gut, raise pain tolerance and alter, in desirable ways, how our DNA works. Being in good shape also, in a sense, keeps us young biologically. Researchers at the Boston University have determined that most people have the genetic make up to live well into their 80’s if they take care of their own health. People respond to exercise in very different ways depending on individual genetic variations. However exercise helps maintain health in all.

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