Health and Aging
Often we take our health, or the absence of illness, disease, or injury
for granted until we become sick. It is then that we recognize the worth of
being without ailments. It is then that we appreciate feeling strong, robust
and healthy. Being healthy and, being physically and mentally sound, is
associated with one's satisfaction with life. Developmental health
psychologists - specialists who study the interaction of age, behavior, and
health and gerontologists - specialists in the science of aging -- are piecing
together the details of diet, exercise, personality and behavior that make it
practical to shoot for 80, or even 120. People approaching middle age can
expect a bonus of several years of extra living thanks to continuing medical
progress against cancer, heart disease and stroke.
Specialists in the field of aging, developmental health psychologists,
and gerontologist , concentrate their area of study on determining health
status over the course of adulthood, and determining the nature and origin of
age-related diseases. They are also concerned with describing the effects of
health on behavior and describing the effects of behavior on health. The goals
of these specialists are: prevention of diseases, preservation of health,
and improved quality of health for those suffering from disability and disease.
What does it mean to be healthy? Health is a state of complete physical
, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease, illness
or infirmity. It is important to distinguish between disease and health.
Disease is the prognosis of a particular disorder with a specific cause and
characteristic symptoms. On the other hand, illness is the existence of disease
and, the individual's perception of and response to the disease.
Whether in sickness or in health age and the progression through life
play a large part in our health and our developmental status. The role of age
in regard to health is listed below:
- Most young adults are in good health and experience few limitations or
disabilities. Nearly 71% of adults older than 65 living in a community report
their health as excellent, good, or very good. - Health and mobility decline
with age especially after age 80. Disease is more common among older adults. -
Most of the diseases of later life have their origin years earlier. - Income is
related to perception of health. - The older the individual, the more difficult
it is to recover from stress. - As an individual age, acute conditions decrease
in frequency while chronic conditions increase in frequency. 4/5 of adults over
65 have at least one chronic condition. - Older adults may have multiple
As we age, we become more prone to a wide array of diseases, such as cancer and heart disease and treating these diseases most definitely helps us live longer but they do not seem to halt the natural aging process that eventually causes our bodies to weaken and wither away. New research suggests that, like several biological processes, the aging process could also be controlled and this could lead us to live much longer lives. However, commoners and bioethicists alike are often concerned about the bioethical issues pertaining to the life extension phenomena. They argue that the quality of life may be compromised in exchange for longevity and this may be due to intervention in the
Aging affects every individual and is inevitable, despite our valiant attempts to prevent it. The aging process beings the moment of conception however some can argue it begins at birth. The process of aging is heavily impacted by health, genetics and environmental factors. As people age we have to become accustom to the changes associated with life. The question becomes what changes happen and how? Although we cannot predict what will happen to us we can work to prevent specific things from happening by living healthier lives.
how we age, is discovering how to stop it. An intrinsic characteristic of Man is
Mrs. Maxine represents my archetypal view of the healthy "seasoned citizen." Maxine is a Caucasian female born in rural, Mullens, West Virginia in 1926. She is the only child of a Southern Baptist, "middle class" family. Joseph Hammond, her father, was a farmer. Her mother, Ruby, was a "full-time parent" and prided herself on "running the house." Maxine explained that farmers wife's were routinely responsible for the day-to-day operations of the household. Her Southern Baptist faith was complements of her parents and minister grandfather.
Aging is a phenomena we are all familiar with, a trait characteristic of all humankind, in fact, of all living organisms. What are the effects of aging, especially those which go beyond the biological aspects and effect the social aspects of changing roles, seniority, and treatment of the aged? What was the original human condition before high-tech medical interventions redefined death and dying, before the industrial age changed the nature of the nuclear and extended family? Going back still farther, what can the behavior of chimpanzees tell us about the origins of our responses to the aging of those around us?
Health issues throughout the human lifespan are always hard to deal with. In this essay, I will give examples of different health issues that occur throughout the lifespan of a human. The seven different stages of a human’s lifespan include: infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood. By the concluding paragraph of this essay, you will have gained knowledge of some of the health related issues of a given person throughout their lifespan.
Aging occurs at the biological, psychological and social levels. With numerous theories of aging spanning over many disciplines, no one is truly certain why we age or how we cope with it. Fortunately, our knowledge of how the body regulates or governs the rate of aging is slowly being demystifyied and we now know more about this process. Activity and disengagement are two major psychosocial theories which describe how people develop in old age.
Aging occurs in every species. Over time a change occurs on a cellular level in a person’s body, which causes degenerative effects on the brain, muscles, organs, bones, hormones, and DNA. In 1991, the book Evolutionary Biology of Aging, offered the following definition of aging: a persistent decline in the age-specific fitness components of an organism due to internal physiological deterioration.1 Aging affects the body physically and mentally. Many people dread getting older due to the numerous changes the body goes through. The geriatric population experiences many pains and is inflicted with various diseases. There are a few who are lucky enough to not get diagnosed with a life altering disease, such as Alzheimer’s, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, macular degeneration, or some form of cancer. Studies have shown that genetics play a vital role in the aging process.
Health is described as physical and mental well-being and freedom from disease, pain or defect. However, such descriptions only superficially define the actual meaning of health. There may be many occasions when individuals are not necessarily ill or in pain but may be overweight, stressed or emotionally unstable. Health is a quality of life involving dynamic interaction and interdependence among the individual’s physical state, their mental and emotional reactions, and the social context in which the individual exists. There are many factors that influence your health, but three major components contribute to general well-being: Self-awareness, a balanced diet and, regular physical activity.
The article “What is Successful Aging”, thoroughly explained the author’s thoughts on what aging successfully actually means. I think it is extremely vital to try our best to be content with our lives and what we have done at a later age. Integrity versus despair, as we learned in class kept coming to mind while reading the article. It is important that when one reaches this age he or she doesn’t feel like there is more to look back on than to look forward to. I agreed with the author’s views on self-efficacy and different opportunities in aging successfully.
Lifespan development is essential, as it is the changes that happen to us throughout a person’s lifespan. Our development occurs at ages stages where we develop from infancy till death. This essay will contain my life story to display the domains in 5 age stages in my lifespan development. The domains I will be exploring is in this essay is physical, emotional, cognitive, social, cultural and moral domain. The influence of biological and environmental play a significant role in my development. Development is influenced by nature or nurture and its affect will occur throughout lifespan. The changes that occur during development have stage. Each theorists has stages of development where they display the changes. This essay will explore my development that will support theorist such as Erikson, Vygotsky, Berk, Piaget and other theorist. The age stages of prenatal will display physical and emotional domain, Infancy (0-2) will portray social and emotional domain, young children (2-6) will show cognitive and social domain, middle childhood (6-12) will display socio-cultural and moral domain and adolescence will portray nature vs. nurture and cultural domain. Development is crucial for a healthy wellbeing. As a physiotherapist it is significant to understand development in age stages, as it will aid knowing how young children will react compared to an adolescence who is more development mentally, emotionally, physically, socially and culturally.
Late adulthood is known as the period of life after middle adulthood, usually from around 65 years old to death (Santrock, 2013, p. 485). There are many varying stages of development and health in late adulthood, along with steady changing of life expectancy. Aging is a part of life, and with it comes changes in every area of living. Many diseases find late adulthood as an opportune time to affect people. Eventually, whether caused by disease or another reason, every individual dies. Death is unique to every person, and healthcare in America is changing to reflect that. This stage of life is a time when bodily processes and functions may be decreasing, but depending on lifestyle choices, death can come at different times.
This also requires the person to be socially and economically productive in order to be seen as healthy. According to Mildred Blaxter (1990), there are different ways of defining health. Furthermore, disease can be seen as the presence of an abnormality in part of the body or where there is a harmful physical change in the body such as broken bones. So, illness is the physical state of disease, that is to say, the symptoms that a person feels because of the disease. However, there is some limitation of these definitions which is not merely an absence of disease but a state of physical, mental, spiritual and social wellbeing.
Aging and being old was dominated by negative characteristics and conditions such as illness, depression, and isolation for a long time (Eibach, Mock, & Courtney, 2010). At first glance the terms “success” and “aging” seem to be in conflict to each other. When asking people about aging, their answers have many facets that are also found in psychological definitions: successful aging is seen as health, maturity and personal growth, self-acceptance, happiness, generativity, coping, and acceptance of age-related limitations. In the psychological sense successful aging is also often seen as the absence of age-associated characteristics (Strawbridge, Wallhagen, & Cohen, 2002). It seems that successful aging means is not aging.
Aging Aging is the process of growing older. It’s defined in Evolutionary Medicine “as a decrease with age in the intrinsic ability to survive and reproduce” (Stearns, 64). Aging can be influenced by natural selection. Natural selection is the mechanism by which an organism that is best suited to its environment will survive and pass on its beneficial traits in increasing numbers to the generations. For example, some animals are capable of catching their own prey, while others cannot.