Community-Dwelling Adults: Aging Well at Home

If we have the good fortune to live into our golden years, we have surely succeeded at life. While aging is universal, just ‘how’ we age will be uniquely our own. While capacity declines can be experienced across our entire lifespan, modifiable risk factors, such as physical inactivity, can have serious implications on our health. The World Health Organization (2022) notes insufficient physical activity as attributable to 830,000 deaths annually. Studies support this link between modifiable behaviors (e.g., unhealthy diets, physical inactivity) to chronic diseases (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes) and death (Ng et al. 2020; Booth et al. 2012). We need strong muscles to support our mobility and exercise remains the best approach to slow age-related declines (Roubenoff 2007). In addition, a crucial and modifiable risk factor also impacting our health is loneliness (Morr et al. 2022). Loneliness and social isolation in older adults are identified as an unaddressed health problem, where the negative effects of loneliness affect quality-of-life, cognition, subjective health, stress and depression, disability, cardiovascular disease, increased use of health care services, increased mortality, and institutionalization (Berg-Weger and Morley 2020). Therefore, we do well to protect ourselves and build practices that support our overall wellness.