As you turn 50, you are likely 100% comfortable with who you are, understand your likes and dislikes, and have learned from various mistakes throughout your life. Yet, entering this decade can bring challenges you might never have faced, especially when it comes to your health and lifestyle.
Make midlife feel easier by looking for ways to avoid health issues and improve your quality of life. Get started by reading about the four common mistakes women make in their 50s.
Mistake #1: Skipping Essential Health Screenings
Women in their 50s will need to attend various screening tests to protect their health, such as:
- Blood pressure tests
- Cholesterol checks
- Pap tests
- Mammograms
- Colorectal cancer screening
- Bone density screening
While attending various screening appointments might seem a chore, they can protect your health and even save your life. If you avoided having a mammogram in your 40s, you must book a screening every two years between the ages of 50 and 74.
Mistake #2: Accepting Menopause Symptoms
Many women make the mistake of believing they need to endure various unpleasant menopausal symptoms, such as sleeping difficulties, hot flashes, vaginal issues, a reduced sex drive, urinary issues, and more.
In actual fact, you can buy products to improve your hormone production, memory, and brain health. Take your pick of menopause vitamins that contain boron, a trace mineral that can provide the above benefits while increasing estrogen levels in post-menopausal women.
Mistake #3: Giving Up on a Healthy Lifestyle
Many women often accept that gaining weight is a natural aspect of aging and may give up on healthy eating altogether. You may lose muscle mass in your 50s, and your ratio of fat to muscle will rise, but this doesn’t mean you should give up on a healthy lifestyle. As a higher fat to muscle ratio will decrease your metabolic rate, you will need to work a little harder to lose weight, but it isn’t impossible.
If you’re inactive and don’t follow a nutritious diet, you will quickly gain more calories than you burn, which will result in unnecessary weight gain. Set time aside each week to embrace various forms of physical activity, such as walking, dancing, swimming, hiking, or strength training.
Mistake #4: Ignoring Your Heart Health
Did you know that heart disease is the leading cause of death in women in the United States? Also, your risk factor will increase as you grow older. Believe it or not, the issue isn’t caused by menopause, but it is due to bad habits you have adopted throughout your life, such as:
- Smoking
- An inactive lifestyle
- Obesity
- Poor dental health
It, therefore, makes sense for women to keep tabs on their health. Regular checkups from a cardiologist could be the way forward. If prescribed, going through the different diagnosis processes, whether it is a blood test or an echocardiogram in West Orange, NJ (or elsewhere) could also prove to be beneficial in determining the signs of any underlying heart ailment.
Furthermore, it might surprise you to learn that women who have high blood pressure will have a heart age 18 years older than their actual age. It’s never too late to start caring for your heart and decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease. Lower your heart’s age by losing weight, exercising regularly, quitting smoking, and eating foods high in omega-3 fatty acids. You must stay on top of various heart health tests, such as blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol tests.
