Positivity after Retirement

People usually retire at the age of 60. They are released from their everyday work. They get more physically active and reduces their sitting time and gets healthier sleep and leads a more healthy and comfortable life as compared to those still working.

A researcher from University of Sydney in Australia stated that “A major life change like retirement creates a great window of opportunity to make positive lifestyle changes — it’s a chance to get rid of bad routines and engineer new, healthier behaviours”.

As the people get more time for themselves so the amount of physical activities is increased by more than 93 minutes a week. The sitting time is decreased by 67 minutes per day and sleep time is increased by around 11 minutes per day. Smoking people reduce their smoking habits and mainly the female smokers stop smoking after retirement.

In terms of sitting time, the largest reduction occurred in people who lived in urban areas and had higher educational levels. They get more time in other factors and have more time in experimenting new stuffs. Sitting time in older adults can be reduced following a brief intervention based on goal setting and behavioural self-monitoring.

The researchers maintained that the differences were significant even after adjusting for factors such as age, sex, urban/rural residence, marital status and education.

The lifestyle of the elderly people also changes after retirement. It mainly changes for those who worked for the whole day. When they are working, they eat out a lot of time and after returning home they hardly get time to do any physically activity. The same monotonous life continues everyday. When they retire, they get more physically active and gets more time to sleep which reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

Both health professionals and policy makers need to consider developing special programmes for retirees to capitalise on the health transitions through retirement.

A secure, comfortable retirement is every worker’s dream. So planning a retirement life can be beneficial. A retired person has a lot of time to think and they can be more creative from those working the whole day.

Retired person gets the chance to spend more time with family and the emotional attachment increases, they are often called upon to care for grandchildren. For many it gives them more time to devote to a hobby or sport such as golf or sailing. They lead a happy and healthy life as compared to others.

The healthy elderly and retired people are as happy or happier and have an equal quality of life as they age as compared to younger employed adults, therefore retirement in and of itself is not likely to contribute to development of depression. So life after retirement is also fun and time for yourself increases.