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Let the elderly push their own shopping trolley

Insisting on carrying a shopping bag or pushing a luggage trolley for an older person is not really doing them a favour.

Better to let them do the work and compliment them on their heroic efforts to stave off osteoporosis and the other perils of ageing.

“The old saying ‘If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it,’ applies,” said Australian researcher Robert Newton. “As we get older what we’re seeing with a lot of the people, particularly over 65, is a really marked decline in their physical function and their quality of life.”

Newton, professor of exercise and sports science at Perth’s Edith Cowan University, said resisting the onset of diabetes, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease requires continuing physical activity.

A minimum of 150 minutes of aerobic exercise each week and two sessions of lifting weights is what’s required.

“We need to get our older folk to build up their muscles and build up their bones,” he said.

Newton would be pleased with Susan Smith, 70 this year, who took up weekly aquarobics sessions in her local swimming pool after being diagnosed as a border-line diabetic.

And he’d be delighted with 70-year-old Vlastik Skvaril, who is currently making the 3,000-kilometre north-south transcontinental journey from Darwin to Adelaide on a scooter that doesn’t have a motor. He expects the trip to take 40 days.

Last year Skvaril ran the 6,000-kilometre west-east route from Shark Bay to Byron Bay.

“A lot of people these days do walking and running, so I thought I would do something I haven’t seen many people doing,” Skvaril explained about his latest massive aerobics session.