AGING AND THE ELDERLY PATRICIA BUNTIN
DR: GORTNEY
LITHONIA CAMPUS
SOCIOLOGY 100
08/16/11
STRAYER UNIVERSITY
Aging is the length of time during which a being or thing has existed length of life (Webster dictionary). Growing old and becoming an elderly person can be challenging but, yet it can be very rewarding, it can bring a lot of good and bad. Aging has its rewards, but it presents the challenges of all stages of life. Growing old consist of gradual, ongoing changes in the body, changes such as shrinking in height in which the elderly tends to get shorter as he or she age. Elderly people tends to have less appetite which causes them to lose weight, and a decline in strength and vitality, which can sometimes make them
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The other region affected by age is a C-shaped
area deep inside the brain, which is known as the hippocampus, there is where there, is a dramatic deterioration of explicit memory capacities supported by this region as we get older.
Intergumentary system The skin develops wrinkles and dark spots, skin becomes very easy to tear, and saggy because of the ability of the skin to produce oil, the skin becomes very dry and lusterless. The aging process affects groups of cells within hair follicle. Hair becomes thinner, hair color changes from its normal color to gray then eventually to white as cells quit functioning. Aging affects the bone strength to decline, friction between joints increases which causes pain while they move. There becomes a loss of density and strength due to porous. There is a depletion of minerals like calcium and phosphorus which makes the bones weak and fragile easily to have bone fracture which can cause an elderly person to be wheelchair or bedbound for life. Eyes, Ears (senses) Our vision changes as we age, objects appear blurred or unable to be seen. The combined alterations of the cornea, iris, lens and ciliary bodies can account for most of the age-related changes in our visual perception. The pupils become less responsive and more sensitive to glare. The iris gets stiffened, cataracts and glaucoma becomes common, we don’t see as well as we use to. The lens thickens and takes o a yellowish hue, which
There are many physical changes that happen during the late adult years. These include vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, height and hair. In late adulthood your vision is more likely to get worse. There are many different things that can happen with your vision. Along with vision, hearing is also affected. Hearing is affected by many different components. You can lose the ability
The cataracts within the eye often changes in the lens of the eye. As people grow older the lens in the eye starts to change and can start to appear cloudy looking, this often happens and stops the process of the eye lens from being able to change shape or even to transmit the light properly. The cataracts may start to form between the ages of 50 and 60 years old and can often take a while to develop. If you are known to have diabetes then that also contributes to poor cataracts.
In Chapter 15: Aging and the Elderly, the U.S. birth rate has been falling for more than a century. It happens because children are more likely to survive into adulthood, and so couple have fewer children. As more women work outside the home, they choose to have fewer children. Greater material wealth and advances in medicine have raised living standards so that people benefit from better housing and more nutrition. The oldest segment of the U.S. population, is increasing rapidly and is already forty times greater than in 1900.
With the aging society in America means that there will be larger number of older people than young people. As a result of this fewer people will have to pay taxes to support public necessities and there will be fewer young people to provide services for the elders. This will also highly affect the health care in America because many seniors will have a chronic illness and there will be a shortage of healthcare workers to assist them. This will affect retirement because retirement income is made up of welfare payments, savings, and public and private pensions. Most publicly financed retirement pensions are funded by programs or most commonly know, social security. Social security is a universal income support program for elders and is usually
Elderly people physically slow down and have lower energy levels. There are changes in the body systems and organs that can usually result in all types of
Aging, though it is usually defined as a biological process, it is also the gathered development of change with time. Aging is a continuous, complex and dynamic process that begins even before birth and ends with death. Unless death occurs at an early age, all humans grow old and experience the effects of the aging process. The process of aging does not
Though humans largely retain optimal cognitive function and experience little physical neural changes throughout adulthood, with aging comes change in structure and decline in brain function.
Aging is a natural process of life however, studies show that there are some age-related decline in cognitive development. As a person grows older some brain cell dies, shrink, or weaken and cause some decline in brain functions. Some cognitive processes include attention, working memory, long-term memory, perception, and executive control. The material will explain the effect of aging on cognitive development by providing scholarly research proof.
Simple misconceptions of the elder sexuality are often made based on what others say, lack of knowledge, and the medias representation. As stated in chapter 11, Americans live in a youth-oriented, consumer-based society, essentially meaning that only the young are beautiful and sexy and we should fear aging because of the negative side effects that come with old age. Although, we eventually become victims of our own negative views of the elderly and I don’t think the misconceptions of the elderly will change anytime soon, partially because the media would need to change the way they portray how we think the elderly act and behave, and portray them more realistically. A majority of the elder population is at least interested in sex later in
Maxine thought this question was quite basic. However, after much thought she stated that aging is simply "advancing in age." Upon further questioning she explained that her definition is a view of the "total process" of aging. She does not define aging in a biological, functional, psychological, sociologic or spiritual domain.
It's important to schedule regular eye exams as you age to make sure you don't lose your vision due to glaucoma. Glaucoma is a gradual increase in the pressure inside your eye. Glaucoma starts with no symptoms, but it can ultimately cause loss of peripheral vision and blindness if left untreated. Treatment is typically a simple matter of eye drops and the glaucoma test takes only seconds to preform. It is estimated that half of the people with glaucoma don't know they have it. Make sure you're not one of them.
As aging is a stage of development that cannot prevented, the question of “can one’s aging be more successful than another?” is posed my many. Researchers continually consider the differences between aging successfully, and aging unsuccessfully. As researchers work to complete their studies, many find a reoccurring basis of successful aging. A basis of successful aging can be set including: physical health disease free, chronic illness free, mental health disease free, among many others. The only problem with this basis is the difference from person to person in terms of what makes aging successful. As individuals age, their mental state is a large predictor of how the person will age. A positive mental state about aging, will have a more positive effect on a person’s aging process. Many factors may influence the positivity of aging, such as negative aging stereotypes and discrimination because of older age. These negative aging stereotypes include but are not limited to: older adults are not as smart, older adults are angry all the time, older adults are bad drivers, older adults are isolated and never socialize. In adult aging and development, having a positive outlook on aging will lead to better mental and physical aging.
Aging! We all do it every day, but have you ever thought how it is going to affect the rest of your life or more importantly your career? Aging isn’t something that we get to choose if we participate in, however working is, and aging may affect that choice. Right now, I want you to think about the age of sixty-five. What words pop into your head when you think of someone sixty-five? I’d imagine some of the words you thought of were retired, old, fragile, slow, as well as many others. Those words right there all help to explain the many concerns that one’s employer may have when hiring someone that is of the older population. When we think of the older population in the work force we don’t necessarily think of positive things, instead we think of things. When we think of this population in the workforce we generally think of lower production rates and higher costs. These can create issues among the older population, as employers must consider all the possibilities when hiring someone. We know that more people in the older population are continuing to try to continue their careers, but why? How hard is it for them to continue? What changes have made it easier? How are the younger and middle aged populations perceiving them in the work place? This are only some of the many question surrounding the increase of aged workers.
Aging is the process of becoming older, as we age, multiple mutations occur that concern all the processes of aging well as it compromising a number of different genes. There are many theories of biological aging, such as the Cellular Aging Theory, Immunological Theory, and the Wear and Tear Theory. The Cellular Aging theory describes the process of aging in which cells slow their number of replication, thus giving each species a “biological clock that determines its maximum life span” and how quickly one 's health will deteriorate(Hooyman, 42). After a certain number of years, each cell which follows an apparent biological clock starts to replicate itself less, thus the specific individual or species slowly deteriorates. This theory gives
Also spelled as ageing, this is generally the process of becoming old. It is the in a way the opposite of immortality. In a broader aspect, it may occur to single cells in an organism also called cellular senescence or the population of a species, known as population ageing. This process primarily affects human beings and fungi. In humans, it signifies the accumulation of various changes which occur over time. The changes include physical, social and psychological changes.