Healthy Ageing: Staying Well in Your 60s, 70s and Beyond

Nobody wakes up one morning suddenly old. The changes are slow, and most of them are manageable if you notice them early. That is really the whole of healthy ageing: catching things while they are still small, and keeping the habits that protect you long enough for them to count.

Who arranges it: HealthPlan Spain is an authorised Sanitas agent (agent code 22395) in Marbella that arranges Sanitas policies in English, at the same price as buying direct from Sanitas.

This is the overview. Where a subject deserves more room than a paragraph, we have linked to a fuller article - so use this page as the map and follow whichever branch matters to you right now.

What actually changes as you get older?

Four things drift quietly, usually from your forties onward:

• Muscle and bone. You lose muscle mass steadily unless you do something about it. Less muscle means less balance, and poor balance is what turns a stumble into a broken hip.
• Blood vessels. Arteries stiffen. Blood pressure creeps up, often with no symptoms at all, which is why it gets missed for years.
• Senses. Hearing and eyesight fade so gradually you adapt without realising. Untreated hearing loss is strongly linked to social withdrawal, and withdrawal is bad for the brain.
• Recovery time. The illness itself may be no worse than it was at forty, but bouncing back takes longer, and a week flat on your back costs more muscle than it used to.

None of that is a countdown. It is a list of things that respond well to attention.

What makes the biggest difference?

If you only change one thing, change how much you move. Strength and balance work matter more than cardio here, because they are what keep you independent.

After that, in rough order of payoff:

• What you eat. The Mediterranean pattern most of Spain already eats is, conveniently, the one with the best evidence behind it - including for cognitive health in later life.
• Your heart. Blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, smoking and sleep together do more for your biological age than anything in a supplement aisle.
• Company. Loneliness is a health risk in its own right, not just a sad one. Keeping a reason to leave the house is a medical intervention.

Small and repeated beats dramatic and abandoned. That is the entire trick.

How do you look after your brain?

The honest answer is that most of what protects your brain is the same list as above - what is good for your heart is good for your head. Beyond that, three things are worth doing.

Get your hearing and eyesight tested and corrected - our guide to eye care cover explains how that side works. Stay socially and mentally busy in a way you actually enjoy, because the version you dread is the version you will stop doing. And learn the difference between normal forgetfulness and the sort worth reporting: losing the thread of a conversation is common, getting lost somewhere familiar is not.

If you want the clinical side - what a neurologist does, what the scans show and when a referral is warranted - see our guide to neurology and neurophysiology.

What should you be getting checked?

Nothing here is exotic. It is the boring list, done regularly:

• Blood pressure, at least yearly
• Bloods - cholesterol, glucose, kidney and thyroid function
• Eyes, including pressure testing for glaucoma
• Hearing, once it has been a few years
• Skin, if you have spent decades in the Spanish sun
• Whatever national screening you are eligible for, by age and sex

If you are taking several medicines for several conditions, ask for a proper review of the whole list rather than each prescription in isolation. Interactions between drugs are a common and very fixable cause of dizziness, falls and fog.

Can you still take out health insurance after 60?

Yes, and this is where the Sanitas range differs from most. The cut-off is not the same on every plan, and it is worth knowing yours before you assume you are too late.

• Up to 75 – the Mas Salud plans, the Professional plans, Top Quantum and Residents Visa.
• Up to 64 – Sanitas Premium 500 and both Sanitas Mas 90 plans.
• Up to 59 – Accede and Avanza. If you are in your sixties, these two are already closed to you whatever else you read.

Sanitas Unico is the one built for this stage of life. It is for people aged 60 and over and has no upper age limit, so in practice there is no age at which it becomes unavailable. If you are past 75, it is the plan that is still open to you.

Sanitas Unico in one line: no upper age limit to join or to stay insured, no health questionnaire and no exclusions for pre-existing conditions. It is an outpatient plan with co-payments.

One important limit. Unico cannot be used for a visa or residency application. It has co-payments and does not cover hospitalisation, and applications require full cover with neither. If you are applying for a visa or registering for residency, you need one of the qualifying plans - and those stop accepting new customers at 75.

Two more things worth knowing before you apply. If you already hold cover, staying put usually beats switching, because a new policy restarts waiting periods and reassesses anything pre-existing. That is the rule for a change between Sanitas plans; moving from another Spanish insurer after 12 months of cover is different, because Sanitas then waives its waiting periods except childbirth. And if you are choosing between a plan with co-payments and one without, the sums change once you are seeing doctors more often - a small per-visit charge adds up faster at seventy than at thirty.

See Sanitas Unico

Which specialists will you actually see?

The pattern is fairly predictable, and knowing it helps you judge whether a plan is any use to you. Most people in their sixties and seventies end up seeing some combination of:

• Cardiologists - blood pressure, rhythm, heart health
• Ophthalmologists - cataracts, glaucoma, macular changes
• Rheumatologists and orthopaedic specialists - joints, backs, replacements
• Neurologists - memory, tremor, headache, stroke follow-up
• Physiotherapists - recovery, balance and staying mobile
• Geriatricians - the specialists who look at the whole picture rather than one organ

Mental health belongs on that list too. Low mood in later life gets written off as an inevitable part of getting older, and it is not - see what our mental health cover includes.

Where should you start?

Pick the thing you have been putting off longest. For most people that is either a blood pressure reading or a proper strength and balance habit, and both are free to begin.

On the cover side, the questions to answer are simple: does the plan take you at your age, are the specialists you are likely to need available near you, and do the co-payments still make sense given how often you will actually go? The cost guide works through the pricing, and the tools included with your policy cover what you get beyond appointments.

Frequently asked questions