Where’s the Line for Too Much of a Good Thing?

Last week I posted on Twitter a picture of me with a resident. We had just walked around the block in the neighborhood of our home.

A distance of over a half mile.

Maybe that doesn’t seem too far. It is a really far distance when you realize the man could barely stand eight months ago.

I try to take him for a walk every time I stop by the home. There are lots of benefits to walking. Plus spending some time in the sun. And the Phoenix heat helps him sweat out some toxins.

I had not planned to take him so far. I thought we would just go for a short walk. It was around 100 degrees out.

About 100 yards into the walk, the man said “I can’t do this”. I tried to encourage him and said we would just go a little further.

Then we made it to my original turnaround point. I told him that we would turn around now. We had walked about 3 football fields.

He looked up and over the other way. “Let’s go that way”, he said. Meaning let’s keep going.

We kept going all the way around the block. I was holding his hands as we walked. For a portion of the walk he wanted to walk on his own. He seemed genuinely excited to push himself.

When we made it back to the home, he was definitely hot and sweaty. We gave him a lot of water and put some cold wash cloths at him.

He recovered and is doing fine. But his walk made me think of how much we can push these seniors.

As his wife said “I don’t want to lose him to heat stroke after all the progress we’ve made.”

Makes sense.

Pushing yourself to exercise has a lot of benefits. It shows you that you may be capable of more than you think. It has both physical and mental benefits for your health. It increases blood flow and reduces inflammation. I’m sure there are other benefits as well.

The trouble is to know how much is too much.

Too much exercise can have detrimental effects. Especially in the elderly.

Here are some symptoms of too much exercise from the website Medline:

• Being unable to perform at the same level

• Needing longer periods of rest

• Feeling tired

• Being depressed

• Having mood swings or irritability

• Having trouble sleeping

• Feeling sore muscles or heavy limbs

• Getting overuse injuries

• Losing motivation

• Getting more colds

• Losing weight

• Feeling anxiety

Most of those symptoms manifest in elderly people, just because they are elderly people.

One thing we do know for sure. Too little or no exercise will have bad health effects as well.

Sometimes good health is a balancing act. The whole healthcare industry is still experimenting to find out the best way to maintain health. The important thing is that we keep trying. Keep striving. Try little changes to see if it helps. Stop or cut back if it hurts. Keep working on it. Because good health is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and others.