Since childhood, we are taught to say thank you when someone helps us. Thank you is not for social purposes but to truly express our sincere gratitude to that person. However, perhaps we have never been taught to say thank you because we often consider thanking ourselves as something ridiculous, strange, and unnecessary! On the contrary, we often tend to speak ill of ourselves, be dissatisfied with ourselves, and even... curse ourselves. For over ten years running the Clinic column in Muc Tim newspaper, I have received many letters from teenagers complaining about their body shape, their beauty, and mercilessly insulting themselves! Many of them wrote "wanting to commit suicide", "wanting to die", "not wanting to live anymore"... just because they have a few pimples or freckles on their face, a few scars on their legs, or because they feel they are not as handsome as models, do not have the measurements of beauty queens!
Many older people are the same. Looking in the mirror every day and seeing yourself getting older with crow's feet at the corners of your eyes, lines at the corners of your mouth, wrinkles on your hands... you can't accept yourself, you feel sad and depressed, some people have to go to beauty salons to have facelifts and hand injections in the hope of staying young forever. Once in a class, I asked the students to describe the image of old people in their family, they all talked about wrinkled skin, gray hair, dim eyes and deaf ears, crooked mouths, missing teeth, slowness and confusion... But who is old without wrinkled skin and gray hair? If you live long, you have to get old, right?
Building your self-image is very important, if it is a positive image, it will help you become more confident and thereby affect the surrounding "environment"; but if it is a negative image, it will be very bad.
There is no item that can be used forever, even sophisticated machines made of the best metals. Recently, I saw an advertisement in the newspaper for an old Swiss refrigerator that had been used for 20 years and was still working well. So many of us can boast that we have been using it for sixty or seventy years and it is still working well! So we should be more grateful to ourselves.
Let's take a look at the skeleton. Our body has over two hundred large and small bones that are connected together to form a skeleton, which functions thanks to joints, and has been used for decades without any oil or grease. Yet it still works smoothly and quietly, only when we accumulate years of age and get older does it start to ache a little, which is understandable! Sometimes, just because we did not know how to take care of our skeleton since childhood, it has become misaligned, such as scoliosis in school age, or we eat foods that cause the synovial fluid between the joints to harden. Right at the end of puberty, the skeleton has formed with a fixed bone mass, mainly due to genetics but also partly due to nutrition. If you know how to care, you must be well nourished from a young age for the bones to develop fully. Older people are prone to osteoporosis, prone to falls, leading to fractures and dislocations. Look at a dry branch and a fresh branch and you will know. Fresh branches are difficult to break because of thick bark, tough wood, and if broken, they often break; while dry branches have thin bark, brittle wood, and when broken, they easily break. Research shows that older people, after the age of 65, are very susceptible to falls. Women are more susceptible than men. In addition to fractures, dislocations, muscle tears, soft tissue injuries, etc., there are other near and far complications such as pneumonia, skin ulcers, due to having to lie still for a long time. In postmenopausal women, osteoporosis increases because of decreased ovarian estrogen. Women are three times more likely to fall and break bones than men. To reduce the risk of falls in the elderly, it is necessary to pay attention to their living environment. For example, the stairs in the house should be easy to walk, not slippery, with even steps, and adequate lighting. Old age causes poor eyesight, inaccurate sense of height difference, slow reflexes, and reduced motor coordination, making it easy to fall. Some drugs such as sleeping pills and sedatives increase the risk. The elderly still need to be active - exercise, walk, play sports, for example - to increase joint flexibility and help muscles maintain suppleness. Diet needs to be supplemented with calcium and vitamin D. People who are sedentary or have to lie in one place will have osteoporosis happen faster. Tobacco and alcohol contribute to the acceleration. The use of estrogen to compensate must be guided and closely controlled by specialists. It is worth noting that when an elderly person falls once, they are often afraid and do not dare to move much later, so the coordination between the nervous system and the muscles is worse, making it easier to fall again. Overprotection by family members makes the elderly weaken more quickly.
Then try to look at our circulatory system. If we know that every day our heart has to contract hundreds of thousands of times to push a mass of blood about 7,000 kg non-stop, even when we sleep, into a system of blood vessels that, if connected together, would be hundreds of thousands of kilometers long (more than double the circumference of the earth) to nourish the body, we can see how wonderful the circulatory system is! Is there any pump that can work continuously with such a mass for seventy or eighty years without having to change the battery or clean anything? Yet not only do we not remember it, not be grateful to it, sometimes we even torture it, poison it, force it to jump around with substances like alcohol, tea, coffee, cigarettes... Nicotine in cigarettes, for example, not only forces it to work faster but also constricts the blood vessels that nourish it, causing it to lack oxygen. We also poison its spirit by always moaning "A dry heart, a winter heart" or rejecting it: "The day I left Paris, I forgot my heart"... Actually, a normal heart works so silently and persistently that we think it doesn't exist. When it speaks up to "remind" us, it's already in trouble! So having a healthy heart is such a blessing that we often don't know it!
Our blood vessels are like water pipes. When the water pipes are new, they are flexible, stretch easily, and nothing happens, but when the water pipes are old, they dry out and become less elastic. In the elderly, blood vessels are also more likely to harden, so blood pressure is more likely to increase. Too much blood pressure can cause complications. Hypertension must be monitored and treated properly. In addition, if there is a lot of fat in the blood (often called "blood mixed with fat"), these substances will harden in the blood vessels, making the diameter smaller and causing blockage. Diabetes further increases this blockage, and therefore, "Geriatrics" experts advise us to eat less sugar, drink less alcohol, eat less salt, eat less fat, not smoke...
Then try our lungs. That is where we exchange air to live. People can go hungry for a few weeks, go thirsty for ten days, but cannot hold their breath for more than five minutes. Lack of oxygen for about five minutes will destroy brain cells and they cannot recover. Perhaps because air is free, we often consider it as not having it. We still breathe every minute without realizing that air is necessary! We have a lung that is working well, but we don't care, we don't even know about it, until it starts wheezing and wheezing, then we really panic. A Zen master wrote this sentence on the wall: "What to do today: breathe in, breathe out, breathe in..." It seems really funny and it seems like it's a Zen master's business. As for us, we have a hundred thousand things to do, not just breathing in and out like that. But just think, if we write the opposite sentence: "What to do today: don't breathe in, don't breathe out, don't breathe in..." then what will happen! So, after all, breathing is an important thing. Many of us consider breathing as light as... a feather. In general, we often don't know how to breathe, don't bother to breathe, especially when we are working so hard that we almost forget to breathe, or when we have strong emotions like anxiety or anger, we often forget to breathe, hold our breath. Breathing is an automatic reflex, but we can control our breathing and breathing rhythm, unlike other automatic mechanisms such as the heart, blood vessels, stomach, liver, intestines, etc. that operate completely against our will. Therefore, we can practice breathing. Our lungs have about 300 million alveoli, which are small lung sacs, which are the place where air is exchanged between the lungs and the capillary system, transferring O2 into the blood and removing CO2 and other toxic gases from the body. Spreading out the alveoli, we have an area of more than 80 square meters, as large as a classroom. Every time we inhale polluted air, dust, smoke, bacteria, that layer of polluted air will flood the entire area of the alveoli. When we are still a fetus in the womb, our lungs are flat - in the womb we do not need to breathe with our lungs - but as soon as we are born, the "birth cry" is a reflex to let air flow into the two lungs, expanding the alveoli to help us form respiratory activity, essential for life. Imagine a paratrooper jumping out of a plane without the parachute opening, what will happen? When we are still embryos, the lungs and skin have the same origin, so later when we get cold, we naturally cough and wheeze, especially the elderly are susceptible to pneumonia due to cold. The respiratory system includes not only the lungs but also the nose, throat, larynx, trachea and respiratory muscles, of which the diaphragm is the most important muscle. In our nose, for example, there is a dense capillary system to heat the air, making it warm before entering the lungs. When cold, we will sneeze, have a runny nose, and a stuffy nose because the capillaries dilate. Using nasal drops with vasoconstrictors and vasoconstrictors will make breathing easier for a while, then it will be more difficult to breathe and over time will lead to drug dependence. We often see people walking on the street or in meetings or working, suddenly looking up at the sky as if looking for a poem, but in fact they are dropping a few drops of medicine into their nose or sniffing a tube of medicine to help clear their nose. It is not without reason that the elderly often wear a scarf when going out because when it is cold, the scarf will help warm the nose.
Elderly people who are still healthy, clear-headed, and work tirelessly are those who know how to breathe. They have "secret" methods often called health preservation, qigong. Sometimes we even read sentences that seem mysterious like "bringing breath down to the dantian..." Actually, there is nothing mysterious but completely biologically based. We know that the diaphragm is the main respiratory muscle located across the abdomen and chest, "responsible" for 80% of the volume of respiratory activity. The diaphragm moves up and down like a piston in the chest, causing the lungs to expand or contract in volume. Every time the diaphragm moves 1 cm, the volume of the chest increases or decreases by 250 ml of air. The diaphragm can move from 1 cm to 7 cm, so a person who knows how to use the diaphragm to breathe can increase the volume of air in and out by 1 to 1.5 liters of air compared to other people. Therefore, when we inhale deeply, the diaphragm is pushed down to below the navel, which is called the dantian point. So "bringing air down to the dantian point" is essentially taking a deep breath and pushing the diaphragm up and down more strongly, the diaphragm moves wider, thereby improving ventilation. Experts calculate that if we breathe slowly and deeply with the diaphragm, the amount of air entering the lungs will double compared to when we breathe quickly and shallowly. The older you get, the lazier your diaphragm becomes, so older people need to practice breathing and physical exercises so that the diaphragm can work better.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is common in older people, making them easily tired and short of breath, as well as bronchiectasis, which causes a lot of coughing every morning. More and more people get lung cancer from smoking. Many elderly people with tuberculosis are a source of infection in their families without knowing it, so it is necessary to have their lungs checked regularly. Older people often like to walk under the shade of trees, like to grow ornamental flowers, like to live in an open space because there is more oxygen. During the day, trees release oxygen, so walking under the shade of trees we can breathe fresh air, feeling light and refreshed. Trees are close friends of each of us. Keeping the environment clean, unpolluted, creating lots of shady trees, being close to nature, practicing proper breathing, avoiding cigarettes... are the best ways to be grateful for our lungs.
Ly Lap Ong, in the 16th century, wrote in Leisurely Love Improvisation: “Considering the human body, ears, eyes, nose, hands, feet, body, everything is necessary... there are only two unnecessary things that God has given us: the mouth and the stomach, the source of all the suffering of mankind from ancient times to the present. Having a mouth and a stomach makes livelihood become troublesome, troublesome livelihood gives birth to deceitful schemes, deceitful schemes require the creation of criminal laws…”.
Lin Ngu Tang probably agreed with this, so he also wrote: “We have a bottomless bag called the stomach… It affects human civilization… No matter how tense international conferences are, they still stop to eat….”. Then he wished: "If humans had a crop like a bird's crop, a stomach like a ruminant, there would be no warlike or cruel behavior because herbivores and seed eaters are gentle, and carnivores are bloodthirsty." He also made an interesting comment: "Roosters often fight each other, but not for food, but for hens. If humans had a crop like a chicken, there would only be small wars, not a big war to export canned food." (Living beautifully, translated by Nguyen Hien Le). What a pity for the "bottomless bag" also known as our stomach!
It is an important part of the digestive system, responsible for "charging energy" so that we can maintain our existence and activities throughout our lives. That bottomless bag actually has to work hard, squeezing and kneading food and drink all day and night to provide us with the nutrients necessary for life. It works silently without any recognition, completely outside of our consciousness because when it kneads and contracts like that, we are not aware of it.
To digest food, the stomach must secrete a strong acid. If it is not careful to protect itself, this acid will digest itself, causing it to ulcerate all over, which we call gastric ulcers. Usually, if there is an ulcer, the stomach will silently bandage itself, until it gets too bad, then we complain and speak up, then we have what is called stomach pain.
In general, we rarely pity our stomach, let alone talk about being grateful to it, on the contrary, we are willing to stuff as much as possible into it, from whale meat to snakes, lizards, geckos, rats, insects, grasshoppers, locusts, clams, mussels, snails, etc. We are also willing to pour in liters of rice wine, whiskey, crates of beer and countless other toxic substances such as... pesticides, thorny-headed worms, etc. Pay a little attention, we see that the digestive system is a long muscular tube from the mouth to the anus, bulging here, tightening there to become the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine... Food and drink that pass through that tube are outside the body, and the parts are assigned to cut, tear, grind, mix, knead, transform, absorb... to bring into the body for use. use.
A whole machine that works tirelessly and continuously like that can meet the body's daily energy needs. We cannot imagine that every day more than a liter of saliva is secreted to help keep the mouth from drying out, smelling bad, and to help digest some of the food. In the elderly, saliva is secreted less, so it is easy to have a bitter mouth, dry mouth, and poor appetite.
The villi system in the small intestine has many layers with a total area of up to 250m2, equal to a tennis court, to absorb nutrients that pass through the body, with cells working hard day and night to metabolize, with countless tiny microorganisms producing digestive enzymes and vitamins. The liver pours bile into the intestine, the pancreas secretes enzymes and insulin, without which we will have diabetes. Any problem in that tube will cause unfortunate troubles such as blockage somewhere, for example. A person who is often constipated also causes the tube to become clogged, leading to bad breath, loss of appetite, and restless sleep.
Lin Yutang has a rather interesting comment: “For me, happiness is first and foremost a matter of digestion. If our intestines move smoothly, we are happy; if not, we are miserable. That's all!” But really, if you see someone who is always frowning, grimacing, and looking annoyed... then they probably have chronic constipation or hemorrhoids! The elderly also need to be provided with adequate energy, need to avoid obesity but also need to avoid malnutrition - mainly due to lack of protein.
Don't be too afraid of cholesterol because there is good cholesterol that the body needs. You should use vegetable oil. Vitamins are provided from foods such as vegetables, eggs, beans, carrots, spinach, gac fruit... To keep the taste delicious and satisfactory, you need to add spices that the elderly are used to using such as garlic, pepper, chili. Do not abstain too much, as it will spoil the taste of food. Soybeans are probably an ideal food that provides vegetable protein and phytoestrogen, a very good female hormone that slows down the aging process.
A happy family meal with children and grandchildren, whether it is water spinach, braised fish sauce, tofu..., also brings a lot of nutrients for both the spirit and energy of the elderly. "Tell me what you eat, I will tell you who you are." Lin Yutang said that there are two types of people, the vegetable-eaters and the meat-eaters. The more vegetable-eaters there are, the easier it is to have... peace in the world.
And then there is the bladder. You have to have difficulty urinating once to know the "value" of the bladder, to be extremely grateful to have a bladder that functions normally, knowing when to contain, when to contract, when to open the sphincter and when to close tightly. It is really harmful when the sphincter begins to not work well anymore, when it needs to close tightly it opens, especially in older women.
In men, the prostate gland can swell into a tumor that blocks the flow of urine, when it needs to urinate, it cannot. Surgery and dilation are needed. A strong stimulus such as laughing loudly, coughing for a long time or exercising too much can also easily cause urinary incontinence. Sedatives and diuretics will make urinary incontinence happen more often. In general, if the cause is found, it is not difficult to treat, do not always think it is mental and ignore it. You should practice urinating on a schedule, do not wait too long. Absorbent diapers can be very convenient for the elderly when traveling by train or car.
You also need to pay attention to arranging the place to go to the toilet so that it is convenient, easy to go, and has enough light. Vietnamese people often consider the toilet as a dirty and ugly place, so they often place it at the back of the house, far from the house, while in fact, the toilet is an important human need, so in large hotels, people arrange the toilet right in front of the living room, clean and fragrant.
Eyes are the most important sense of humans. Eye care is a way to improve the quality of life. There is a book whose author is a blind person, written with the preface "If I could see one day!" Normal people with bright eyes often do not appreciate it. Try living a day with both eyes covered to evaluate the quality of life thanks to the eyes.
When you get old, your eyes will weaken, your sense of density will be poor, you will adapt to the dark slowly and your fixed vision will not be clear. The lens adjusts poorly so you cannot see near, this clearly affects the quality of life, because you have to wear glasses for everything. Common causes of blindness are trachoma, night blindness, cataracts (dry cataracts), and glaucoma. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people who are blind due to dry cataracts account for more than 40% of the elderly who are blind. Nine out of ten cases of dry cataracts are due to old age and physical weakness; the rest are due to diabetes, trauma, malnutrition, etc.
When you see your eyes gradually become blurred, have black spots floating around and then fixed in one place, no pain, no redness, think that the glasses are not the right prescription and no glasses fit, you must think of dry cataracts. Currently, there is no medicine to cure dry cataracts, the only way is to have surgery to replace the cloudy lens with an artificial lens or wear glasses to adjust. Currently, there are new techniques to operate on dry cataracts and place artificial lenses very conveniently. After surgery, the patient can return to normal activities immediately.
Glaucoma is a very dangerous disease because it leads to blindness. If detected early, blindness can be avoided. Acute glaucoma causes severe headaches, sometimes migraines accompanied by vomiting, red eyes, stiffness, and dilated pupils. In this case, you must go to a hospital with an eye specialist immediately. Chronic glaucoma progresses silently, with only slight eye pain, eye irritation, eye fatigue, and gradual blurring. Many people think that their eyesight is poor because they are old, and do not measure intraocular pressure for timely diagnosis.
Older people often have hearing loss and hearing loss. A little hearing loss is also good, so you don't have to listen to bad things about yourself! You can listen to what you like, or you can ignore it. From the age of 65 onwards, more than a third of people are hard of hearing. Hearing loss makes communication more difficult and can be dangerous in traffic and travel. Today, there are hearing aids that are easy to use and cheap. In developed countries, one in three elderly people wear a hearing aid, which helps them communicate better and participate in social activities, helping them feel refreshed and not be considered disabled.
In our country, many people do not like hearing aids because they are noisy and make us hear clearly the "painful truths". A play tells the story of an old couple, the husband talks like a chicken and the wife talks like a duck but they are very happy together, until their filial children send each of them a hearing aid, they start arguing all day. In the end, both of them have to throw the hearing aid in the trash!
“We do not take care of ourselves but let our bodies work until they are worn out, so they are easily damaged early. When we are still healthy and energetic, we exploit ourselves, exploit our body parts, exploit our abilities without any consideration, without thinking about the consequences. At the age of 50, I still did not pay much attention to my health…” Dr. Misculine, 90, wrote like that. Nowadays, every morning he jogs, exercises regularly, plays tennis, and eats moderately. He said, “I feel that 30 years ago I was much older and weaker than now”!
Một người chưa từng mắc lỗi là chưa từng thử qua bất cứ điều gì mới mẻ. (A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.)Albert Einstein
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