Why Do We Grow Old? This question
often comes in mind, but no one has right answer. When Friends meet
after the passage of some years they probably remark, inwardly or
outspokenly. How time has altered the appearance if each. In the
ordinary way, people are not aware of growing older.
It is that sort of meeting that
makes them conscious of it. In each human body, physical and
psychological changes occur with increasing years. And a combination of a
number of these changes indicates the approach or presence of old age.
From about the age of 21 we begin to grow old. What causes; the gradual
changes, both external and inside the body. Which eventually lead to old
age?
Can Anything be Done to Delay this Process of Why Do We Grow Old?
The most familiar changes relate to
the external appearance of the body. The skin loses its elasticity and
bloom, becoming folded and wrinkled and flabby. The hair loses its
original color, becoming grey. Actual hair loss, producing baldness,
occurs more especially in men but also in women.
The muscles of the limbs and trunk
become weaker and thinner. It is causing a general appearance of weight
loss, while the bony parts of the skeleton become less dense with a
greater tendency to fracture. Wear and tear thins the discs between the
vertebrae of the spine, producing some shortening of stature.
The difference between three
generations of women is expressed not only in physical appearance but in
posture and style of dress.
- A stooping posture, dim, sunken eyes, a wrinkled skin, grizzled hair and beard such signs of age imprinted by a lifetime’s experience nevertheless impart character to this head.
- An elderly German obviously has no intention of resigning himself yet to becoming a mere spectator at the sports festival.
- An old French woman concentrates on her knitting. Though the joints may become stiff with age, long experience can make old people very quick and deft at performing manual tasks. Poor muscle tone also make an old person appeal shorter. A protruding abdomen or paunch may result both from lack of tone in the voluntary muscles and excess fat in the abdominal wall.
- Facial appearance may be altered both by changes in the sheen of the skin and by wrinkles but also by the presence of dentures replacing decayed teeth. The individual’s own teeth may have been affected by dietary habits and dental attention, but age does thicken the teeth, producing a yellow appearance.
Glasses and Hearing Aids
Hearing aids and glasses are clues
to the fact that the senses are also affected by ageing. Changes in the
inner ear lead to a gradual loss of high tone hearing, making group
conversation difficult to follow. Whether a person is long sighted,
short sighted or normal sighted in younger years, advancing age alters
the eye lens and lens muscles.
This causes increasing difficulty in
reading small print, calling for correction by suitable glasses.
Sharpness of vision and night vision may also decrease because of age
changes in the light-sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the
eye.
The other senses of taste, smell,
touch and vibration become less efficient over the years but are never
completely lost unless disease of the nervous system supervenes. The
sense of pain is usually retained in old age, though its messages may
not be interpreted so efficiently by the brain.
Professional singers and political
orators become aware sooner than most that age affects the strength and
range and timbre of the voice. Thinning or the muscles of the voice box
and loss of tissue in its cartilages helps produce the change in voice.
Which may the universally felt dread
of old age finds harsh expression in a typically brutal caricature. Two
old people drinking soup become hoarse or high and piping. Dentures or
lack of teeth may also result in slurred speech. While brain changes can
affect what is said and slow the delivery.
Changes inside the body may be less
obvious but continue apace with advancing years. The linings of the
joints, particularly the weight-bearing joints like knees and hips, are
subject to wear and tear. This reduces the mobility of the joints, which
become stiffer, affecting walking and other movements.
In the digestive system there is
thinning of the stomach lining. But this has little influence on actual
digestion unless disease is present as well. Sometimes there is reduced
secretion of enzymes from the salivary glands and the pancreas, which
does interfere with digestion.
The kidneys produce urine normally
in old age, excreting the body’s waste products satisfactorily. There is
some gradual decline in the kidneys’ reserve function though, and the
old are vulnerable to any sharp decline in water intake. Such as may
occur in a debilitated old person living alone and neglecting diet and
fluid for some time.
With age, breathing becomes less
efficient, partly due to changes in lung capacity through loss of
elasticity. There may be thinning of the heart muscle with advancing
years and an associated reduction in working capacity. The actual heart
rate may be the same as in younger people or it may slow up, and there
is a greater tendency to irregular beats.
The shuffling or unsteady gait noted
when old people move about is one result of impaired co-ordination due
to changes in the 130 nervous system. This may he made worse by muscle
weakness and lack of tone and further exaggerated by disease.
In the female human body, the
ovaries cease to function at the menopause around the end of the fourth
decade of life. In the male human body, however, the testicles can
continue to function well into the seventh and even eighth decade.
This means that women cease to be
able to reproduce in middle age while men can continue to father
children into old age. In both sexes there is a gradual but steady
decline in sexual activity but the sexual urge can be well maintained
into old age.
Living in the past
The
overall physical picture of ageing in the human body is therefore one
of a general decline in vigor, in activity and in organ function.
Moreover, old people respond badly to extremes of external temperature
in particular, thin skin, poor muscle-shivering reflex and slower
blood-vessel contraction in the skin make them less able to tolerate
cold. Contrary to popular notions, there is no thinning of the actual blood with age. Where there is lack of blood it is caused by dietary deficiency or disease. Changes in mental powers have recently been studied more fully. Mental alertness and fitness may be well preserved into later years.
There is a gradual and cumulative
deterioration in intellectual function as age advances. However
particularly with respect to new situations new ideas and new techniques
involving co-ordination and the power to adapt. The decline in memory
affects learned facts and recently occurring events especially, while
past incidents are well recalled. Artistic creativity is also likely to
fall off.
An important change in the
blood-vessels, known as arteriosclerosis (popularly called ‘hardening of
the arteries.), affects everyone as he grows older. The normally
elastic and supple arteries become narrowed rigid and twisted. As a
result the oxygen supply to the tissues through the blood is reduced and
degeneration and ultimate decay of cells. Tissues and organs ensues.
The actual age of onset of
arteriosclerosis is variable, some people may be affected in early
middle age. The severity of the condition also varies some people may be
affected more than others. Such factors as the presence of high
blood-pressure, or sugar diabetes are known to encourage the earlier
development of arteriosclerosis. When arteriosclerosis is associated
with etheroma degeneration of the inner lining of the arteries – it is
called atherosclerosis.
Doctors and scientists alike have
argued whether arteriosclerosis is a normal biological ageing process or
whether it is due to ill-understood disease factors. General opinion
favors the latter concept. And so further research may enlighten us on
its cause and treatment. What is certain, however, is that
arteriosclerosis speeds up normal tissue decay by depriving the ageing
tissues of an adequate blood and oxygen supply. This is especially true
in the case of the brain and heart.
While insurance companies can
calculate the expectation of life at birth for men and women,
calculation of the rate at which an individual ages overall is very
difficult. Different tissues and organs age at different rates in each
human body, and the rate of ageing of individual organs or the body as a
whole may in addition be altered by stress, disease, arteriosclerosis
or uncertain factors like radiation.
Looked at in biological terms, the
human body has several growth periods up to puberty. Followed by further
development in adolescence until the full peak is reached at the age of
21. At that age, for example, long-bone growth ceases and many consider
that true ageing begins shortly after this time. Since the expectation
of life at birth is around 68 years for men and 72 years for women. It
follows that men and women have a very long ageing period.
The social, cultural and
evolutionary value of this long-ageing period is immense. It allows
individuals to organize their lives in terms of studying and training
for different occupations. Then developing the knowledge and expertise
thus gained in their employment over many years. It allows the growth of
cultural group patterns – secular, ethnic and religious and long
periods of individual cultural attainment.
Moreover, it gives adequate time for
the development of social and sexual relationships, and consequently of
family units as the essence of stable societies. In an evolutionary
sense, wisents and grandparents are themselves it means that the
children born to parents potentially long-living. The maximum at
different periods in their lives will vary, human life wins, and we have
seen is about producing genetic mutation and adaptation.
Very few animals apart from turtles
which regulates length of life, however the bio tortoises, have a life
span greater than the logical time clock’. It appears to be built in 110
years which is the usually accepted genetically. When the individual
contribution are upper limit for a human being and many Man’s
evolutionary plan of pro-familiar animals, like dogs and horses, grass
is over, ageing and death arrive.
Have a life expectancy of less than a
third the improvement in the average expected the three score years and
ten which is the portion of life from 60 years in 1930 to over. There
appears to be no single main genes but to an environmental change the
cause of human ageing. What seems to better medical and surgical
treatment of happen is that a number of factors – disease and better
social and economic inherited physical, chemical, psycho conditions?
Logical and environmental varying
with there are several cellular theories of each individual – cumulate
to damage and ageing to explain some of the tissue and ultimately
destroy the cells and tissues. Organ changes already described. The end
result of ageing is therefore cells are capable of dividing indefinitely
inevitably death of the individual as a throughout life, the old cells
being shed as whole.
The nature of these ageing factors
scales while the new one, replace them it is understood in some
instances and still is known by analogy with what happen to the subject
of research in others. In cancer, that this capacity for dividing
Heredity appears to influence the in and renewing can be altered both by
dividable life span.
1 At nearly 90 years of age the many people retained his extraordinary vitality, creativity and influence in their profession.
2 In the stress-free atmosphere of a
rural immunity people may live to great ages. Accepted as a member of
society with an active part to play, this old Turkish farmer still finds
life good.
3 In old age there is some
stiffening of the limbs, allied with an insecurity in balance and
greater tendency to fall, which makes getting downstairs a hazardous
business needing help.
1 and 2 A full, strenuous and
momentous life has been responsible for the difference taken at the
beginning and end of any career.
3 Men can continue to father
children until late in life, and they are more like than women to marry
partners much younger than themselves. The ever-youthful film actor Care
Grant became a father for the first time at the age of 62.X-rays in the
case of the skin and by chance mutations.
As a result the new cells produced
by the ageing human during the division process are progressively
inexact copies of their predecessors, and their function is
progressively less satisfactory. Cells of the central nervous system are
unable to regenerate at all, and once lost at any time throughout life
are irreplaceable. Ageing of the brain and spinal cord can be thought of
as progressive loss of cells through ill health, infection or changes
in the blood supply.
A current theory of ageing is
derived from speculation about certain types of illness such as thyroids
and acquired hemolytic anemia. In these illnesses it is believed that
the body’s ability to distinguish its own tissues from foreign invaders
of the body, zilch as micro- organisms, is disturbed.
The breakdown in the
self-recognition mechanism results the production of antibodies rich at
ac the body’s own proteins. In tie diseases mentioned, is responsible
for the destruction of thyroid-gland tissue and blood-cell tissue. It is
thought that this auto-immune process could operate in ageing as well
as in cases of specific disease, gradual degeneration steadily extending
throughout the body.
The fact that a woman’s expectation of life is greater by at least four years than a man’s has led to a suggestion that sex hormones have an effect on ageing. While there is some evidence that giving sex one to patients with chemical measurable sex-hormone deficiency, makes them look younger.
It does not altogether fundamental
ageing process. Similarly, illnesses caused by hormone deficiency, like
hypothyroidism. Which produce illness with the features of old age, are
corrected by giving in this case thyroxin hormone, but do not alter the
basic ageing tendency.
An older idea, based on animal
experiments, relates the body’s metabolic act it sits or rate of living,
to the speed of the ageing process. Metabolism is related to hormone
function and also to temperature levels and diet. A famous experiment
with rat-showed that these creatures could be retarded in their growth
and development by persistent low-calorie feeding, and that they lives
could be abnormally prolonged in this way. This does not mean.
However, that human ageing can be
retarded in the same way; although the converse is true overeating
leading to obesity shortens life. There is no clear evidence that human
ageing is affected by temperature. Extremes of temperature however, act
as a stress factor adapted to them and stress is thought it to influence
ageing. Stress, pain, privation, and neglect may because of premature
ageing. Which is promoted by arteriosclerosis has noted earlier.
As young as you feel the influence
of the mind on ageing is now being increasingly recognized. Apart from
the problems of adapting to the physical changes brought by age, such
causes of emotional disturbance as compulsory retirement from work,
bereavement, altered social role and economic anxiety may all contribute
to ageing. The absence of a positive function in old age can affect the
will to live and may accelerate the ageing process towards death.
From earliest times, Man has dreamed
of reversing the ageing process. Particularly with a view to sexual
rejuvenation, and of prolonging life indefinitely. The search for an
elixir of life by the medieval alchemists is one example of this
preoccupation.
The modern science of gerontology
studies the processes of ageing in animals and humans in order to
understand the difference between normal and disease-induced ageing. The
purpose is to determine the causes of normal ageing, and to see whether
the ageing processes can be retarded.
There has been no real progress in
the last-mentioned aim. Despite the widespread and uncritical use of so
called ‘anti-ageing’ drugs usually sex hormones, vitamins or procaine
derivatives no evidence of prolongation of the natural life span is
forthcoming.
