Ageism Causes Unhappiness and Not Just for the Old

Why Anti-ageing Products Are Offensive Recently, I saw a post on Instagram promoting ‘body positivity.’ It was part of a great campaign that aims to dispel the stigma around differences in appearance. Those differences can be visible or hidden and include, for instance, scars. In the video post, a young woman with psoriasis affecting her face and scalp was talking to camera when suddenly she paused, gasped and looked closely at her scalp. Her horror was not due to her

By |2021-02-26T13:32:48+00:00February 26th, 2021|Advice, Psychology, Social, Well-being|0 Comments

Five Self-Talk Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Improving Your Self-talk Will Make You Happier We often equate self-care with physical care, taking enough exercise, rest and relaxation and eating well; we may also meditate or practice yoga to help us relax and reduce stress. But one of the key areas I’ve been working to improve recently is my self-talk — the way I talk to myself. It’s easier said than done, but a good start is recognising that we all have habitual ways of thinking that affect

By |2021-01-05T18:37:17+00:00January 5th, 2021|Advice, Life Lessons, Psychology, Well-being|0 Comments

Change Your Perspective and Change Your Life

How Some New Thinking Could Help You Live Longer Critical thinking and becoming open to change could be the key to improving your physical and mental health, helping to change your perspective, your life, and maybe even increase your life span. As a health professional, it was my role to discuss healthy lifestyle changes with my patients. They usually had long-term conditions such as diabetes and getting them to accept any change was challenging. Earlier in my career, this

By |2020-10-28T13:57:36+00:00October 23rd, 2020|Advice, Life Lessons, Psychology, Well-being|0 Comments

My Relationship Advice After 40 Years of Marriage

Being in lockdown with my husband for the last four months has been a good test of our relationship and caused me to wonder whether there are key things that keep couples happily together. I don’t usually presume to offer anyone relationship advice, because I truly believe that there is a lot of luck involved in maintaining long-term relationships. As human beings, we are bound to change over the years as we go through various experiences and challenges. It is

By |2020-10-08T11:17:50+00:00October 8th, 2020|Advice, Relationships, Well-being|0 Comments

Does Everything Make You Angry Now You’re Older? Let’s Just Be Kind to One Another

When my daughters were young and having a typical sibling squabble, in desperation I would often ask them ‘are you being kind?’. It was an attempt to avoid becoming involved in their argument and to get them to think about what was really important at that moment. Amazingly, it usually worked. Lately, I have had to remind myself of this tactic as I try to bring more kindness and compassion into my thinking. Kindness or being kind is a trait

By |2020-10-13T10:59:00+00:00July 25th, 2020|Advice, Life Lessons, Psychology, Social, Well-being|0 Comments

The Surprising Benefits of Regular Foot Care

Why healthy feet can make all the difference as you grow older Is it possible to write a witty and profound article about feet? Possibly not. But this is important stuff. It could save your life. In his wonderful book ‘Being Mortal’, the surgeon Atul Gawande describes sitting-in with a chief geriatrician for some routine consultations. He noticed that the doctor spent a lot of time examining the feet of one patient who had several issues related to ageing although

By |2020-07-06T14:27:34+00:00July 6th, 2020|Advice, Health, Life Lessons, Well-being|0 Comments

Some Healthy Eating Habits for Older Adults

What you eat is important but so is when you eat it We have notions of what healthy eating means, but it all gets very confusing and the advice seems to shift constantly. Sometimes the confusion occurs because there wasn’t any real evidence to support what we have been told by experts and also because new research points us in new directions. Ultimately, any advice, however well-meaning, is only going to help if it fits with our personal preferences

By |2020-01-12T18:07:36+00:00January 12th, 2020|Advice, Health, Nutrition, Well-being|0 Comments

Why Baby Boomers Should Resist Any Urge to Join the Ageing Tribe

The importance of social connection across generations What do I mean by the ‘ageing tribe’? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a tribe as ‘a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect’. Recently it has occurred to me that, because of the many conversations that are taking place in social media and more widely in the press, we are forming ‘tribes’ based

By |2020-01-09T16:31:03+00:00January 9th, 2020|Advice, Psychology, Social, Well-being|0 Comments

Facing Up to Ageing

Helping Your Skin to Age Well Our faces change constantly and our appearance alters as the years go by, that’s inevitable. But for some of us, the fear of ageing is very much a fear of losing our ‘looks’ and that is not surprising when you think about the ways old people, and women, in particular, are often portrayed. And women do tend to be under a lot more pressure than men to look good. In the fairy tales

By |2019-11-15T17:43:35+00:00November 15th, 2019|Advice, Skin Care, Well-being|0 Comments
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