When are you officially old? Is it when your bones start to pop and you emit groans and frustration that your body won’t do what you want it to do? If that’s the case, I have some professional athlete friends in their twenties you should meet. Is it when your skin gets all wrinkled? Have you watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons or seen the lovely Angela Bassett or Keanu Reeves?

Fiction and wealthy celebrities aside, there isn’t a conclusive number to ‘old’. It’s all arbitrary. The United Nations considers 60+ elderly. Some countries regard the age of forty as ‘old’. Watch this video from AARP in their campaign to #DisruptAging and you’ll probably not be surprised at the number of young people who believe age is about decline and not growth.

Mary Schmich from the Chicago Tribune writes “Aging well involves aging honestly, and it’s good to embrace the truth of getting older, no matter how vital and engaged you remain as you do. But we don’t have good language for aging, a lack that reflects our culture’s underlying discomfort with it.”

Unchecked ageism is growing. According to an article in the New Yorker “A recent A.A.R.P. study revealed that sixty-four per cent of Americans between forty-five and sixty had seen or experienced age discrimination at work.”

“‘Ageism’ was coined in 1969, two years after the Federal Discrimination in Employment Act set forty as the lower bound at which workers could complain of it. The upper bound continues to rise: the average life span grew more in the twentieth century than in all previous millennia. By 2020, for the first time, there will be more people on Earth over the age of sixty-five than under the age of five.”

Regardless, everyone gets ‘old’. How you feel about aging can be entirely up to you, but how everyone else feels about it effects you. Ultimately, we need to change how we think about aging. Educate yourself and others. Read up on ageism and ask older people how it has affected them; remember empathy. When you get around to being ‘old’, you’ll have a much better appreciation for the more mature among us.

For those elderly that need additional care—at BEC Integrated Solutions—the Numera Libris GPS Cellular Network Location Device can track a patient’s personal health data, daily activities and location at all times ensuring safety and immediate location accuracy specifically in cases of a fall.

The Anti Wandering & Fall Prevention System is another affordable and practical system that can be designed to fit you and your patient or loved one’s needs. Containing call-buttons, silent signaling to a centralized location, sensor pads, floor mats, pagers and panic buttons, these devices are wireless and come without the burdensome cords that can oftentimes cause falls and injuries in patients.

BEC Integrated Solutions aim is to provide caregivers with affordable and user-friendly technology to help keep your patient or loved one safe. Please contact us for a free quote.