September is healthy aging month and one Covenant doctor has some advice on how to do that.

“For me, I think it’s being able to maintain the the quality of life you want to,” Dr. Angela Ferguson with Covenant said.

She said a big part of how you make sure you are staying healthy as you get older is through prevention.

“I always stress to patients to try to make sure that they’re up to date on preventative health, age appropriate cancer screenings, activity, exercise, those are the things that I think increase your chance of living the most long healthy years that you can,” she said.

One way to do that, Dr. Ferguson said, is by keeping up with your yearly physicals.

“That’s our opportunity to remind each other what items are going to be due in terms of immunizations, screening for age appropriate cancer like colon cancer screening, for ladies, breast cancer screening and also bone density screenings,” Dr. Ferguson said.

Those yearly physicals are also a good time to get your blood pressure and cholesterol looked at, according to Dr. Ferguson.

She also said staying active is another key part of staying healthy as you get older.

“Activity is by far the most important thing. I see there is an absolute correlation between people staying active and people remaining active and I think the most important thing is having a good level of activity,” she said.
 
“Regular exercise is very important. The amount of exercise is a little bit up in the air, in terms of how much is the right amount, I would say, as much as you can do is probably the best thing that you can do to try to maintain your health and quality of life,” Dr. Ferguson added.