Relax and stay healthy to beat mid-life slump

By REBECCA WALSH

Maintaining a healthy mind and body can aid the transition from youth to maturity, avoiding the potential for a mid-life crisis, says Dr Sven Hansen.

Dr Hansen, who has a special interest in preventive health, says people need to manage their minds, bodies and emotions to lead a full life.

"When we are young, we are resilient. We tend naturally to be active and optimistic and keen to engage with people. As we go through life we get beaten back a little, and what's happening in our modern world is that things have got very, very busy.

"As you get into your late 30s and early 40s, you don't have that natural youthful resilience.

"I suspect a mid-life crisis is a spiritual crisis where you have identified with work, your relationships, cars, house and mortgage and you have forgotten to ask 'who am I?'

"That can leave people feeling very uncertain."

Dr Hansen says many people reach the peak of their careers in their mid-30s - a time when the things that keep them happy and healthy are at the bottom of the priority list.

People in their late 30s and early 40s should be asking "how well am I?"

"That's when heart disease really strikes, it's when depression is common, it's when the cancers begin. Some kind of recognition that you need to send yourself in for a warrant of fitness at that age is a fundamental.

"Very few of us do because it's at the bottom of the priority list at the very time it should be at the top."

Although no quick fixes exist, he warns, a handful of key lifestyle choices can help prevent disease and enable people to "sustain their youthful resilience". They include:

* Having regular meals and augmenting the main foodstuffs in your diet with some of what Dr Hansen describes as the "superfoods" such as spinach and nuts.

* Keeping active, whether it is a 20 minute walk, playing with the children or an extreme sport.

* Understanding how to relax, which is vital for mind, body and relationships.

"So few of us know how to relax. We have come to believe it is necessary to go at 100 per cent all the time.

"Always, on the email, always on the mobile phone, always rushing in the traffic, trying to get more dollars, more contacts, more sales. Then you get home and there's all this marketing stuff. We are simply flooded and overloaded."

* Recognising that the spirit or soul is real. That means paying attention to who we are and what it is we are doing.

"If someone can say I'm off to do something that feels right and exercises my talents they have a very different life from someone who wakes up growling, embarrassed about what they are doing or not having something to do and feeling they are not using their talents."

Dr Hansen says women are more likely to confront and deal with these issues than men who may think it is not acceptable to be vulnerable or seek help.

nzherald.co.nz/health