Your health in your 40s can very suddenly become a big topic of conversation amongst your friends (and in your own internet searches?!). So, what’s actually important to focus on and how do we do it? Alice went looking for answers…
Capsule x Samsung
Welcome to our TWENTYTWENTYTHRIVE series. We’ve joined up with our pals at Samsung to bring you stories of pure joy and happiness, interspersed with actually helpful advice and tips on how to make this the best year yet. We’re be focusing on themes like connection, health and self-care with real stories and real experts offering their sage advice and knowledge and, in true Capsule form, we’ll be (over)sharing our own experiences along the way.
This edition is all about health and wellbeing – and features our own co-founder Alice’s experience (yup, the oversharing begins here!). You can also find our last story about how to tackle loneliness and build connections here.
A few weeks back I caught up with a group of friends from high school. They’re women I don’t get to see nearly often enough because organising all four of our calendars apparently now requires some sort of military level precision planning.
However, when we do have these very irregular catch-ups, it’s like no time has passed as we share some laughs and always seem to work through the same topics: who has been on holiday and where, what’s happening with the kids, WHY IS TIME GOING SO FAST, what our husbands/partners/love life is doing… but more recently, now that we’re firmly in our forties, I’ve noticed there’s another ever-expanding section of our catch-ups:
Health.
There’s our parents’ health to cover off (who is battling what illness/disease/diagnosis and who has found a granny flat that’s good or a retirement village to avoid – yay, sandwich generation!) plus, more increasingly, our own health updates or those of our spouses or people we went to school with. Who thinks they have perimenopause symptoms? What are we doing to improve our health (Yes, that is a new ring/watch I’m wearing to track my health, thankyouverymuch, a Samsung Galaxy Ring to be exact!) Who is next for surgery? Who is waiting for a bit of a scary scan? Who do we know who has been diagnosed with something hideous?
It’s… alarming?
Late last year I went through my own strange health run that I filled you in on – a heart murmur (that thankfully was a false alarm), skin cancer (thankfully one that was easily taken care of with a quick day-surgery) and an osteopenia diagnosis (a not so great one that essentially means I already have moderate bone density loss). This was all swimming around in my head when we decided we each should have a ‘word of the year’ – a word that we were going to make our focus in 2025, aka twenty-twenty-thrive. And so, mine came pretty easy:
Health.
My goal was to move more, laugh more, to prioritise rest, well-being and joy more – and to really work on my bones.
Thankfully, I’ve always had a bit of a competitive bone in my body (weirdly, particularly when it’s against myself?), so having solid goals and the help of the right equipment (I have a new Samsung phone which is paired to a Samsung Galaxy ring for seriously tracking my health – plus I got some exercise equipment) has actually kept me (mostly) on task.
And now here we are, somehow (SOMEHOW?!?!?!) nearly halfway through the year, so an excellent time to check in on how things are looking.
IT ALL ADDS UP… OR… DOES IT?!?
Ok, look, my main focus this year is to get my bones in better shape, and I will get to talking about that very soon. But, as I’ve certainly learned over the last 40-odd years, nothing happens in isolation – everything is connected and to take care of one part of you, you have to take care of all of you.
I’ve long had a little nagging guilty feeling in my subconscious around the fact I don’t do enough exercise. I’m not a gym girly, I don’t do any group sport (shudder) and surely the fact I don’t ‘push play’ every day would come back to haunt me soon. So, movement has gone on my To Do list.
With some (ok, maybe a lot of?) trepidation, I got a Galaxy Ring because it can very accurately track your steps/heart rate/skin temperature – a whole plethora of things basically, that would tell me exactly how much exercise I was actually getting. I braced myself to feel very embarrassed and ashamed of how little I do and how disappointed the ring would be in me (why do I worry what inanimate objects think of me?!).
Instead, something wild happened: I discovered I’m getting more exercise than I thought. A lot more!
I work from home, and it turns out all those trips back and forth to the laundry, putting out washing, doing the vacuuming – and, perhaps most critically, chasing around a toddler/lifting him/having dance parties with him, are really adding up. And seeing my steps and exercise minutes tick over on my phone is… surprisingly enjoyable and motivating?!
It turned out I only had to do a liiiittle more every day to reach my targets. So now, when I look at my goals on the handy app each day I just add a few more things into my routine. Like, when I get up to go to the kitchen for a snack, I add in a set of jumping exercises (I’ll explain that in my next bit about my bones), or, if I’m going downstairs for something, I’ll run up and down the stairs an extra time or, if the sun sets and I realise I need to get that heart rate up and do some more exercise, I put on my three-year-old’s favourite dance playlist (it’s currently Kylie Minogue), put on a flashing disco light and start dancing. I didn’t realise that getting my exercise goals could really be done without sweating it out at the gym or going for a run.
To really make sure I’m making it a priority, two or three times a week after I take my son to daycare and do my emails, I then set aside 30 minutes to do a reformer Pilates workout. Some weeks I forget, or get busy (or in the case of last month, I get Covid!) – and I’ve decided that really, that’s okay too.
It turns out knowledge is serious power. I didn’t need to hold onto all this guilt – I was nearly there, I just needed a little push (and the incentive of hitting my goals every day!).
I’ve also found the ring great for helping me pick up a meditation habit again (healthy mind, healthy body, right?) and for tracking my sleep.
By now, yes we’ve all heard that one of the most crucial things we can do for our good health is to consistently get a good night’s sleep. It’s critically important for overall health and wellbeing as it plays a vital role in physical and mental restoration, memory consolidation and immune function, amongst a bunch of other very important things!
But, it can be surprisingly hard to come by and prioritise. I found that just knowing I was tracking my sleep gave me a little more of an incentive to improve the time I hit the hay. Getting through so much information about my sleep habits has been incredibly interesting (and motivating?!). I’d gone through a period in the past of trying to track my sleep – the first time using an app on my phone (that was a disaster – I’d roll onto my phone or hit it out of bed in my sleep) and the second time I used a smart watch (I found it too bulky and annoying while I slept!). A ring is so much easier and nicer to use.
A BONE TO PICK
Okay, here’s what I think they should be teaching us in school:
Typically, women stop building bone density and start losing it from their early thirties.
We have that window to really build up our bones, before it becomes difficult to just maintain our bone density, let alone actually build more.
It’s unfortunately one of those things you often really only start thinking about once it’s a problem – and by then, well, it’s certainly a lot harder to do something about.
And the figures are pretty darn scary:
+ Approximately one in every two women aged over 50 will break a bone because of osteoporosis.
+ The average woman loses up to 20% of her entire bone mass in the first five years after menopause.
+ A woman’s risk of breaking a hip is EQUAL to her COMBINED risk of breast, uterine and ovarian cancer.
I asked my GP for a bone density scan at 42 because I have a family history of osteoporosis and wanted to front-foot it. I obviously wish I could get in a time machine knowing everything I know about bone-density now and really concentrate on it during my twenties, but, better late than never. I’m so glad I did it now in my early forties than waiting. Because although the results weren’t great, it means I can start doing something about it.
But what can you actually do about it?
From what the experts have told me, it’s a multi-faceted approach of getting a good diet rich in calcium and Vitamin D (I now take a vitamin D/vitamin K spray supplement to really be sure I’m getting enough. I stick to dietary choices to get my calcium intake, as my GP advised against a calcium supplement due to some evidence that they can cause cardiovascular disease – but talk to your own GP if you’re concerned/interested!) and doing the right kinds of exercises.
Because just going for a walk or run isn’t going to cut the mustard here. Weight-bearing and impact exercise is what really makes a difference for your bones.
The Royal Osteoporosis Society says what we really want to be doing is short bursts of activity (the words ‘short burst’ when it comes to exercise is music to my ears). So, maybe you’re doing for a walk – they recommend you then break into a run, then a little jog, then back to walking.
What’s really going to help your bones though is incorporating impact exercises – something that’s really going to add extra force or controlled jolt through your bones.
More and more research is showing that one of the most beneficial things you can do is some serious jumping – whether that’s box jumping, or just ‘jump landing’. Essentially this is where you’re in your bare feet taking a great big leap in the air and landing on your feet hard. It’s pretty safe (and free!!!) for most people – but check with your doctor (especially if you have any pelvic floor, balance or spinal issues!!)
A ‘jump landing’ program conducted by the AUT Sports Performance Research Institute amongst premenopausal women showed amazing results. After six months on the program women actually increased their bone mass density between 1.8 and 2.9%.
When I first started doing it, I felt like an insane person, but now… I weirdly love my crazy jumps? If you’re feeling angry or frustrated about something, they’re a great release. If you’re feeling low on energy, they give you a bit of pep. And, in case I ever forget to do them, the kids now always want to do them with them and will be sure to remind me.
My next bone density scan is a couple of years away now – and I’m hoping that with all I’m doing (particularly with the help of my Samsung gear), I’m on track to have some more positive news.
