Get Moving: The Power of Prehabilitation by Growing Bolder

This month I'm blogging about Healthy Aging in honor of Older Americans Month. I have a whole list of topics and cool sites I wanted to blog about and one of those topics is "Prehabilitation" and one of those cool sites is Growing Bolder!

I'd never even heard of this term until I was invited to "The Power of Prehabilitation" online summit sponsored by Growing Bolder and Florida Blue Medicare.

The 25-minute video was really inspirational and this morning, Growing Bolder even emailed me a free workbook.  From the workbook:

Most people have heard of rehabilitation, the process of restoring health through therapy or training after an illness or surgery. But maybe this was the first time hearing the word “PRE-habilitation.” Getting in shape BEFORE a surgery or illness might be the key to healing better and faster — or sometimes may help prevent them in the first place. 

The workbook has a bunch of great tips about things we can all do, at whatever age, to stay healthy. 

One of the things I hadn't realized was how much a healthy lifestyle contributes to recovery after an injury or a medical setback.  In the video, it was amazing to find out that those who suffered strokes or broken hips or other injuries late in life were able to recover and go on to compete in events like Senior Olympics in their 90's! 

It was emphasized that when we exercise (at any age) when we're healthy, our bodies are better able to recover.  We don't have to be impressive athletes or even have an uninterrupted history of exercise for this to be true.  So...  if you exercised a lot in your 20's and then you stopped, it sounded like you'd still be able to recover faster than someone who hadn't exercised at all.  (Phew! I'm covered by my active years in my 40's!)

Of course, it's best to just get in the habit of exercising every day, but I thought this bit about better recovery if we were ever active was particularly interesting.

I know that breaking a hip later in life has almost been thought of as a death sentence.  Even my (really negative) doctor (who I will never go back to!) told me that a high percentage of people who break a hip die within a year. 

But now they are finding that those who had a healthy lifestyle before the injury are much more likely to be able to recover and recover more quickly. (They're also getting people up and moving as soon as possible because that helps them recover, too.)

I've read so much about the importance of exercise to our health (more blog posts to come). But I hadn't heard about this concept of "prehabilitation" until I watched this video.

So check it out and then...  get moving!