Breakfast with the Centenarians by Daniela Mari

Author:Daniela Mari
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

CHAPTER FOUR

Active ageing

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

Hippocrates

I like to start my day with a walk. If it’s sunny, I go through the park to stroll in the shade of the plum and lime trees, and past the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheatre. I stop to admire the age-old red bricks of the church of San Lorenzo. On the days when I leave a bit later in the morning, the lawn behind the apse will already be dotted with students, stretched out on the grass with books. When I get to the university, I usually take a shortcut through the Guastalla Gardens, the oldest park in Milan, where the pond is a deep blue in winter and shimmering green in summer, and when the sun hits the neoclassical temple there full on, it turns the columns gold. I come out onto Via della Commenda, walk past my son’s old school (whose time there seemed to go by ever faster – his secondary years passing in a flash) and then reach the Policlinico hospital.

There, I weave my way through the familiar pavilions and enter the Polifit gym. Located on the second floor of an impressive fifteenth-century building (the hospital’s original building), it has huge windows that look out over the site of the new hospital (established in the late 1800s) and the red-brick San Giuseppe church.

It always fills me with joy when I go into the gym and see so many older adults – several in advanced old age – exercising together. It makes me happy to think that the classes set up for people who prefer to avoid expensive health clubs have not only brought them physical benefits but also lifted their mood thanks to the many new relationships forged. No matter their caregiving commitments – to husbands, wives or grandchildren – these individuals are always on time for their sessions with the much-loved Dr Giuseppina Bernardelli, which is just as well as she doesn’t admit latecomers! The exercises vary from week to week and typically feature moderately energetic aerobics (like walking on a treadmill) to tone muscles, improve breathing and strengthen the heart; resistance exercises (using sticks, weights and bands) to build specific muscle groups; balance exercises to help maintain posture, regulate movement and reduce the risk of falls; and exercises for the spine, which aim to prevent the inevitable backache we all have to deal with in old age.

After the first full cycle of exercise classes, consisting of a forty-five-minute session a week for six months, the participants were very happy with the small improvements they had made. One woman, for example, reported being able to put her tights on without any help for the first time in years.

These exercise classes were made possible by funding from the Italian Ministry of Health. Our objective had been to devise an exercise programme specifically geared to elderly citizens, and to make it available in a safe environment in the local community.

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