WHAT IS AGING

Aging problems are created by sociey's response to aging. As we get older our hair gets greater, we develop wrinkles, were glasses, have hearing aids, become fragile, and dependent.
Aging is something that happens to us what time and is irreversible. None of us mind growing old, when we consider the alternative.

Aging is a complex process. There is chronological aging, how many years you lived since birth. Chronological age can tell you how old your body is but biological aging is a better indicator to see how well your body systems are functioning and how much reserve capacity you have two live.

Our past affects our chances for survival. The DNA in our genes determines how we develop. Researchers tell us that our physical ability begins to decline at the age of 26. Our curious organs decline at different rates. However we can hasten the decline by obesity in the use of nicotine and alcohol. Exercise acts as a gauge reducer. It can reduce your blood cholesterol, triglycerides, and phospholipids which are associated with heart disease.

Amazingly, you can survive with less than 40% of your liver, a fraction of your stomach and bowels, one long, and a part of one kidney. Usually the aging process goes unnoticed because it is gradual. Early signs of aging are hard to pinpoint.

Your kidneys starts declining at the age of 40, with a 2% decline each year thereafter. As you age you can’t clear the system of metabolic wastes as quickly as when you were younger.

Once you ingest sugar, your aged pancreas has great trouble neutralizing it.

Aging causes sensitivity to extreme cold or heat. In the winter there is difficulty sustaining inner heat. In hot weather, the aging thermostat has difficulty coping with the heat. The body loses heat by sweating and through circulatory changes.

With aging, the skin becomes dry and rough, loses its elasticity and some of the arteries have trouble dilatiing. During a hot prolonged summer, the aged population is more prone to death.

The first symptom of aging usually is the inability to read line print. After the age of 14, it is more difficult to focus on near objects. The lens becomes less transparent, and night vision declines, with glaring becoming troublesome.

The other senses, hearing, smell, taste, tactile, deteriorate as well with advancing age. It becomes easier to become isolated from your external surroundings. However, this results in a loss of your ability to monitor and accommodate to the environment.

Finally you become no longer competent to drive a car, and your licenses revoked. This restricts you geographically, you become isolated, and find it hard to get crude and necessities of life.

As you enter a nursing home, there is further isolation from the world. You see yourself living on an island steadily shrinking in size.

Life expectancy has increased from the age of 47 at the turn of the last century to 85 today. Many more people live in now into their 80s and 90s. A few very old people do die from just old age. Usually the person has so many diseases that the exact cause of death cannot be pinpointed. With numerous organ failiures, it is difficult to know which one caused her death.

Is growing old normal? Researchers say stress is the causative agent of disease and senescence. Growing old predisposes you to diseasse, which produces aging. Both lead to an end with death.

As we all live longer, we are burdened with chronic conditions usually three or more. Diseases as kidney, diabetes, arthritis, are strongly related to aging. Cancer peaks in the 50s and 60s hitting women a little earlier in the 40s. After one reaches age 65, cancer kills about one in seven people. I if you make 80, you have a one in 10 chance of dying from cancer.

With senescence, comes s atherosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, coronary thrombpsis, and high blood-pressure. These problems account for two out of three deaths. Heart attacks and strokes occur in the early stages of old age. If you reach the 8th decade, high blood pressure and Alzheimer’s takes over as the chief killers.

Atherosclerosis is the major cause of death from cardiovascular disease. It is a general term to describe hardening of the arteries. There is loss of elasticity, collegen becomes rigid, and changes occur in the lining of the arteries.

Lipids, connective tissue, and calcium create arterials for arterial plaques. They make the inner wall of the artery more rigid, thicker, and rougher. Gradually it closes the passageway for the blood. When your tissue is deprived of blood, d infarction occurs.

The aging process starts long before you consider yourself old or even middle aged. It slowly whittles away at your ability until your competence becomes poorer and you become resistant to environmental stresses. This weakens you and you no longer can survive.

We do not age intellectually, sexually, or physically in a vacuum. Our aging problems are created by society’s response to aging.

Today there are fewer children in the family, they go to college, leave home at 18, and rarely return. The current recession probably keeps young adults home with their parents a little longer.

In middle age, you’ve finally reached a career of stabilization and become increasingly vulnerable in the job market. Your ability to get a new job diminishes. In the 60s, with retirement, you lose access to money, security, and prestige. You lose friends and relatives through death. Time was a premium, now there is too much time and not enough to do.

As you hit 70, you lose some motor skills and perceptual systems. You start being concerned with evaluating your life. You reminisce, review your life, and try to resolve why you exist. Depression often sets in.

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