As a member of the sandwich generation here, working with many athletes who are also in the same boat, this article made me sit up and take notice!
In case you don’t know what the sandwich generation is…
sand·wich gen·er·a·tion
noun
- a generation of people, typically in their thirties or forties, responsible for bringing up their own children and for the care of their aging parents.
As a parent, it’s important for us to take care of ourselves to make sure we are here for our kids. A good goal is to be disease free as long as you can as to not be a burden to someone else and stay around as long as you can. It’s just part of parental responsibility.
Taking care of a parent is hard. I personally have made life-long health changes just because I saw in my own parent where I would be in 20 years or so if I didn’t. Read this article – Dementia study links your risk with your fitness level – and know you are on the right path if you are working on being fit!
Here’s the part that got me:
The study, published Wednesday in the medical journal Neurology, found that women with high cardiovascular fitness, or high stamina, had an 88% lower risk of dementia than women who were moderately fit.
“I was not surprised that there was an association, but I was surprised that it was such a strong association between the group with highest fitness and decreased dementia risk,” said Helena Hörder, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who was first author on the study.
Makes sense as the opposite of illness is fitness right?
-Lara
