#older-women

#older-women

Let's talk about something nobody warned us about: watching our mothers navigate their sixties with medicine cabinets that look like small pharmacies. Mine started complaining about joint pain last year, then fatigue, then that her doctor kept mentioning bone density. Every visit seemed to add another supplement to her routine, but half the time she wasn't sure if they were actually helping or just expensive placebos.

A recent investigation from Flinders University sheds new light on how two widely consumed drinks, coffee and tea, could play a role in bone health for women later in life. The study, published in the journal Nutrients, monitored nearly 10,000 women aged 65 and older for ten years to examine whether regularly drinking coffee or tea was connected to changes in bone mineral density (BMD). BMD is a central marker used to assess osteoporosis risk.

Patterson and colleagues (2022) were interested in how mature women, specifically, maintained and developed a positive body image in a culture that emphasizes youthfulness, physical fitness, and beauty in these classes. They looked into the experiences of 14 women (a small sample size, which may be a limitation of the findings), aged 65 and older, who regularly attended a variety of such classes as low-impact aerobics, seated muscular conditioning, indoor cycle, water aerobics, Pilates, Zumba, and yoga in a Canadian recreation center.