Retirement is a life-course transition which normally will affect the mental and physical health of a person. The lifestyle habits, social networks, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, dietary patterns could be impacted one way or the other after retirement. It is difficult sometimes to predict what a retired person undergoes mentally once he has nothing much to do after retirement.
Retirement is a turning point in the life of a person. It makes the passage into the long last stages of adult life. It has to be viewed as a critical status transition having risks of both positive and negative effects on health. We must take this as an opportunity to intervene enabling and supporting healthy behaviours and health promotion with preventive purposes.
Money
When we are working, we have a regular schedule of things to do and end of the week or month we look forward to getting salary which stops immediately after retirement. Most of us will not have any sort of pension schemes for a regular income after retirement. The savings in the lifetime may also not be sufficient for leading the same lifestyle after retirement. Thus one becomes sort of dependent on other family members. They very thought that he/she is not an earning member any more in the family starts building negative thoughts in the mind of a retired person. This can highly influence the physical activities and behaviours of the person.
Physical Activity
Physical Activity gets considerably reduced after retirement. This starts building imbalances in the body functions. The person would have undergone severe stress at many stages during his work-life which already would have affected his muscles, bones and other systems and functions in the body. He/she may be Diabetic, having Blood Pressure, Arthritis and one or more life threatening diseases due to the stress factors while working. So, once the Physical Activity gets reduced, a person feels more tired and becomes more lethargic and thus becomes more likely to have health issues after retirement.
Time Management
One will get more time to spend for himself/herself and the family after retirement. But having more time in hand also usually creates some problems. We tend to postpone certain things in life because we feel we have enough time to do them. But if one fails in time management, things will go bad. For example, a person who used to get up at 6 in the morning while working, may get up only at 8 after retirement, thinking that he/she has sufficient time left for the day. But getting up late in the morning will normally reduce our efficiency. If it is just one day, it is ok but as a regular practice, we tend to become lazy and skip many things like exercise, walking, yoga or meditation, even breakfast.
These are only very few points to be considered in the life of a retired person. While many will have positive effects, many have negative effects after retirement. It depends upon how each individual takes it and manages a healthy lifestyle. Always keep your mind and body engaged by simple tasks like reading, engaging in some social activities or doing household chores. Remember, an idle mind is devil’s workshop. We won’t have an idea what we all will end up thinking when we don’t have anything to do. This destroys our peace of mind resulting in serious health issues.
Read about 6 ways to keep busy after retirement at Chefs for Seniors
