How does age affect your health

If your own poor choices contributed to a stressful situation, reflect on them and learn from your mistakes. When a challenge seems too big to handle, sweeping it under the carpet often appears the easiest option. Instead, take things one small step at a time. Even a small step can go a long way to boosting your confidence and reminding you that you are not powerless.

Laughter is strong medicine for both the body and the mind. It helps you stay balanced, energetic, joyful, and healthy at any age. A sense of humor helps you get through tough times, look outside yourself, laugh at the absurdities of life, and transcend difficulties. See: Laughter is the Best Medicine. A key ingredient in the recipe for healthy aging is the continuing ability to find meaning and joy in life.

As you age, your life will change and you will gradually lose things that previously occupied your time and gave your life purpose. For example, your job may change, you may eventually retire from your career, your children may leave home, or other friends and family may move far away. But this is not a time to stop moving forward. Later life can be a time of exciting new adventures if you let it. Everyone has different ways of experiencing meaning and joy, and the activities you enjoy may change over time.

If your career slows down or you retire, or if your children leave home, you may find you have more time to enjoy activities outside of work and immediate family. Either way, taking time to nourish your spirit is never wasted. Pick up a long-neglected hobby or try a new hobby. Taking a class or joining a club or sports team is a great way to pursue a hobby and expand your social network at the same time.

Learn something new , such as an instrument, a foreign language, a new game, or a new sport. Learning new activities not only adds meaning and joy to life, but can also help to maintain your brain health and prevent mental decline. Get involved in your community.

The meaning and purpose you find in helping others will enrich and expand your life. Community work can also be a great way of utilizing and passing on the skills you honed in your career—without the commitment or stress of regular employment.

Spend time in nature. Take a scenic hike, go fishing or camping, enjoy a ski trip, or walk a dog in the park. Enjoy the arts. Visit a museum, go to a concert or a play, join a book group, or take an art appreciation class. The possibilities are endless. The important thing is to find activities that are both meaningful and enjoyable for you. One of the greatest challenges of aging is maintaining your support network.

Career changes, retirement , illness, and moves out of the local area can take away close friends and family members. And the older you get, the more people you inevitably lose. In later life, getting around may become difficult for either you or members of your social network. Along with regular exercise, staying social can have the most impact on your health as you age. Having an array of people you can turn to for company and support as you age is a buffer against loneliness, depression, disability, hardship, and loss.

The good news is that there are lots of ways to be with other people. Connect regularly with friends and family. Spend time with people you enjoy and who make you feel upbeat. It may be a neighbor who you like to exercise with, a lunch date with an old friend, shopping with your children, or playing with your grandkids.

Even if you are not close by, call or email frequently to keep relationships fresh. Make an effort to make new friends. Make it a point to befriend people who are younger than you. Younger friends can reenergize you and help you see life from a fresh perspective. Spend time with at least one person every day. Phone or email contact is not a replacement for spending time with other people.

Regular face-to-face contact helps you ward off depression and stay positive. Giving back to the community is a wonderful way to strengthen social bonds and meet others interested in similar activities or who share similar values. The eyes, followed by the ears, begin to change early in mid-life. Most internal functions also decline with aging.

Most bodily functions peak shortly before age 30 and then begin a gradual but continuous decline. However, even with this decline, most functions remain adequate because most organs start with considerably more functional capacity than the body needs functional reserve. For example, if half the liver is destroyed, the remaining tissue is more than enough to maintain normal function. Thus, disorders, rather than normal aging, usually account for most of the loss of function in old age. Even though most functions remain adequate, the decline in function means that older people are less able to handle various stresses, including strenuous physical activity, extreme temperature changes in the environment, and disorders.

This decline also means that older people are more likely to experience side effects from drugs. Some organs are more likely to malfunction under stress than others. These organs include the heart and blood vessels, the urinary organs such as the kidneys , and the brain. Bones tend to become less dense. Moderate loss of bone density is termed osteopenia and severe loss of bone density including occurrence of a fracture due to loss of bond density is osteoporosis Osteoporosis Osteoporosis is a condition in which a decrease in the density of bones weakens the bones, making breaks fractures likely.

Aging, estrogen deficiency, low vitamin D or calcium intake, and With osteoporosis, bones become weaker and more likely to break. In women, loss of bone density speeds up after menopause because less estrogen is produced. Bones become less dense partly because they contain less calcium which gives bones strength. The amount of calcium decreases because the body absorbs less calcium from foods.

Also, levels of vitamin D, which helps the body use calcium, decrease slightly. Certain bones are weakened more than others. Those most affected include the end of the thighbone femur at the hip, the ends of the arm bones radius and ulna at the wrist, and the bones of the spine vertebrae. Changes in vertebrae at the top of the spine cause the head to tip forward, compressing the throat.

As a result, swallowing is more difficult, and choking is more likely. The vertebrae become less dense and the cushions of tissue disks between them lose fluid and become thinner, making the spine shorter. Thus, older people become shorter. The cartilage that lines the joints tends to thin, partly because of the wear and tear of years of movement.

The surfaces of a joint may not slide over each other as well as they used to, and the joint may be slightly more susceptible to injury.

Damage to the cartilage due to lifelong use of joints or repeated injury often leads to osteoarthritis Osteoarthritis OA Osteoarthritis is a chronic disorder that causes damage to the cartilage and surrounding tissues and is characterized by pain, stiffness, and loss of function.

Arthritis due to damage of joint Ligaments, which bind joints together, and tendons, which bind muscle to bone, tend to become less elastic, making joints feel tight or stiff. These tissues also weaken. Thus, most people become less flexible. Ligaments and tendons tend to tear more easily, and when they tear, they heal more slowly. These changes occur because the cells that maintain ligaments and tendons become less active.

The amount of muscle tissue muscle mass and muscle strength tend to decrease beginning around age 30 and continuing throughout life. Some of the decrease is caused by physical inactivity and decreasing levels of growth hormone and testosterone , which stimulate muscle development. Also, muscles cannot contract as quickly because more fast-contracting fast-twitch muscle fibers are lost than slow-contracting slow-twitch muscle fibers.

More severe muscle loss called sarcopenia, which literally means loss of flesh results from disease or extreme inactivity, not from aging alone. Most older people retain enough muscle mass and strength for all necessary tasks. Many older people remain strong athletes. They compete in sports and enjoy vigorous physical activity. However, even the fittest notice some decline as they age.

To make up for the muscle mass lost during each day of strict bed rest, older people may need to exercise for up to 2 weeks. In muscle-strengthening exercise, muscles contract against resistance provided by gravity as in sit-ups or push-ups , weights, or rubber bands.

If this type of exercise is done regularly, even people who have never exercised can increase muscle mass and strength. Conversely, physical inactivity, especially bed rest during an illness, can greatly accelerate the loss. During periods of inactivity, older people lose muscle mass and strength much more quickly than younger people do.

For example, to make up for the muscle mass lost during each day of strict bed rest, people may need to exercise for up to 2 weeks. By age 75, the percentage of body fat typically doubles compared with what it was during young adulthood. The distribution of fat also changes, changing the shape of the torso. A healthy diet and regular exercise can help older people minimize increases in body fat.

Loss of near vision: During their 40s, most people notice that seeing objects closer than 2 feet becomes difficult.

This change in vision, called presbyopia Causes In refractive disorders, light rays entering the eye are not focused on the retina, causing blurred vision. The shape of the eye or cornea or age-related stiffness of the lens may decrease the Normally, the lens changes its shape to help the eye focus. A stiffer lens makes focusing on close objects harder.

Ultimately, almost everyone gets presbyopia and needs magnifying reading glasses. People who need glasses to see distant objects may need to wear bifocals or glasses with variable-focus lenses. Need for brighter light: As people continue to age, seeing in dim light becomes more difficult because the lens tends to become less transparent.

A denser lens means that less light passes through to the retina at the back of the eye. Also, the retina, which contains the cells that sense light, becomes less sensitive. So for reading, brighter light is needed. On average, year-olds need 3 times more light to read than year-olds.

Changes in color perception: Colors are perceived differently, partly because the lens tends to yellow with aging.

Colors may look less bright and contrasts between different colors may be more difficult to see. Blues may look more gray, and blue print or background may look washed out. These changes are insignificant for most people. However, older people may have trouble reading black letters printed on a blue background or reading blue letters. The pupil of the eye reacts more slowly to changes in light. The pupil widens and narrows to let more or less light in, depending on the brightness of the surroundings.

A slow-reacting pupil means that older people may be unable to see when they first enter a dark room. Or they may be temporarily blinded when they enter a brightly lit area. Older people may also become more sensitive to glare. However, increased sensitivity to glare is often due to darkened areas in the lens or to cataracts.

Fine details, including differences in shades and tones, become more difficult to discern. The reason is probably a decrease in the number of nerve cells that transmit visual signals from the eyes to the brain.

This change affects the way depth is perceived, and judging distances becomes more difficult. Older people may see more tiny black specks moving across their field of vision. These specks, called floaters Eye Flashes and Floaters Eye flashes are a person's perception of bright flashes of light, flickering lights, or streaks of light that do not correspond to external sources. Eye floaters are specks or strings that appear Floaters do not significantly interfere with vision.

Unless they suddenly increase in number, they are not a cause for concern. The eyes tend to become dry. This change occurs because the number of cells that produce fluids to lubricate the eyes decreases.

Tear production may decrease. The whites sclera of the eyes may turn slightly yellow or brown. This change results from many years of exposure to ultraviolet light, wind, and dust.

Random splotches of color may appear in the whites of the eyes, particularly in people with a dark complexion. A gray-white ring arcus senilis may appear on the surface of the eye. The ring is made of calcium and cholesterol salts. It does not affect vision. The lower eyelid may hang away from the eyeball because the muscles around the eye weaken and the tendons stretch. This condition called ectropion may interfere with lubricating the eyeball and contribute to dry eyes.

Nonetheless, some changes in hearing occur as people age, regardless of their exposure to loud noise. As people age, hearing high-pitched sounds becomes more difficult. This change is considered age-associated hearing loss presbycusis. For example, violin music may sound less bright. Articulating consonants clearly may be more helpful than speaking more loudly to older people who have trouble understanding speech.

The most frustrating consequence of presbycusis is that words become harder to understand. As a result, older people may think that other people are mumbling.

Even when other people speak more loudly, older people still have difficulty understanding the words. The reason is that most consonants such as k, t, s, p, and ch are high-pitched, and consonants are the sounds that help people identify words. Because vowels are lower-pitched sounds, they are easier to hear.

Understanding what women and children say may be more difficult than understanding what men say because most women and children have higher-pitched voices. Gradually, hearing lower pitches also becomes more difficult. Many older people have more trouble hearing in loud places or in groups because of the background noise. Also, earwax, which interferes with hearing, tends to accumulate more.

Generally, when people are in their 50s, the ability to taste and smell starts to gradually diminish. Both senses are needed to enjoy the full range of flavors in food. The tongue can identify only five basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and a relatively newly identified taste called umami commonly described as meaty or savory.

The sense of smell is needed to distinguish more subtle and complex flavors such as raspberry. As people age, taste buds on the tongue decrease in sensitivity. This change affects tasting sweet and salt more than bitter and sour. The ability to smell diminishes because the lining of the nose becomes thinner and drier and the nerve endings in the nose deteriorate. However, the change is slight, usually affecting only subtle smells. However, advice nurses ranked second, followed in a distant third by computers.

We find convincing evidence to counter the stereotype that older adults are resistant to try new health information technologies. The stereotype would suggest that older adults would be less likely to use health information as a result of the HCP intervention than younger adults. Instead, increases in the use of health information were the same or larger for older adults as for the younger age groups. For using an advice nurse or a computer, older adults showed equal increases compared with younger and middle-aged adults.

For using books, older adults actually showed a greater increase than younger adults and the same increase as middle-aged adults. When we do not consider the intervention effect, we find a negative association between age and information use—older adults were less likely than other age groups to report using books, telephone advice nurses, and computers to access health information.

These data confirm past research Ende et al. Perhaps this is why there is the stereotype that older adults are less likely to use new technologies, but clearly this stereotype should not translate to the expectation that older adults are less likely to benefit from a targeted health informational intervention.

One hypothesized reason why older adults are less likely to seek additional sources of information is that they are more reliant on physicians for information. Beisecker found that although all ages desire health information, older adults put more trust in their physician's decision regarding their medical care.

This research also found that older adults desired less involvement in medical decisions and had less interest in challenging the physician's decision. Similarly, Turk-Charles, Meyerowitz, and Gatz found that older adults were less likely to seek information from health professionals. Another interesting finding from our study is that in all age groups, books were the most frequently used information source.

However, computer use for health information varied tremendously by whether one owned a computer and had Internet access.

For older adults with a computer and Internet access, computer use for health information was the next most frequently used information source see Table 2. As other research has found Fox, ; Gustafson et al. There were some limitations with this study that must be acknowledged. First, the data are from three cities in the Pacific Northwest. The results may not easily generalize to other parts of the country. In particular, almost everyone in our sample self-identified as White non-Hispanic.

Communities with a greater ethnic diversity may respond differently to health information interventions. Access to computers was important for older adults' health information use in this study. Computer access may be an even more significant barrier for older adults of different ethnic groups. Rates of using computers in this study might also be higher than would be observed in more diverse locales. Second, the study used a quasi-experimental design in which participants were not randomly assigned to receive the intervention.

The benefit of this design is that it has more external validity. Information was made available to a broad community, mimicking how information is disseminated in real life. However, as with any quasi-experimental design, there are greater questions about the study's internal validity. Most importantly, an unobserved characteristic may be responsible for the effects that we attribute to age or to the intervention effect. Although we controlled for many variables in the logistic regression, this was not a true experiment with random assignment to condition.

Given the potential tremendous benefit that older adults can gain from health information and the fact that older adults do respond to interventions designed to increase their use of information, more interventions should target older adults and more research should examine the factors that impede older adults' use of information.

We thank Merwyn Greenlick and Judith Hibbard for providing access to these data. The association between age and information use, absent any intervention. The y axis is the conditional probability of using health information. The analysis includes all respondents at Time 1 and control respondents at Time 2; intervention Boise Time 2 respondents are excluded.

The effect of the Healthwise Communities Project on the use of medical and self-care books by age. The effect of the Healthwise Communities Project on use of telephone advice nurses by age. The effect of the Healthwise Communities Project on computer use for health information by age. Computer access was defined as owning a computer and having home Internet access. Beisecker, A. Aging and the desire for information and input in medical decisions: Patient consumerism in medical encounters.

The Gerontologist,. Brodie, M. Health information, the Internet, and the digital divide. Health Affairs Millwood ,. Degner, L. Information needs and decisional preferences in women with breast cancer. Journal of the American Medical Association,. Ende, J. Measuring patients' desire for autonomy: Decision making and information-seeking preferences among medical patients. Journal of General Internal Medicine,. Fox, S. Wired seniors. The online health care revolution: How the Web helps Americans take better care of themselves.

Glied, S. The value of reductions in child injury mortality in the U. Gustafson, D. Computer support for elderly women with breast cancer. Honaker, J. Boston: Harvard. Hosmer, D. Applied logistic regression. New York: Wiley. Isaacs, S.

Consumer's information needs: Results of a national survey. King, G. Analyzing incomplete political science data: An alternative algorithm for multiple imputation.

American Political Science Review,. Little, R. Regression with missing X's: A review. Marwick, C. Cyberinformation for seniors. Journal of American Medical Association,. McCann, R. Ageism in the workplace: A communication perspective.

Nelson Ed. Nahm, E. Homebound older adults' experiences with the Internet and e-mail. Computers in Nursing,. Nuessel, F. The language of ageism. Philipp, R. Information needs of patients and visitors in a district general hospital. Journal of the Royal Society of Health,. Pregibon, D. Logistic regression diagnostics. Annals of Statistics,. Rand Health. Consumers and health care quality information: Need, availability, utility.

Roan, S. Cyber analysis. Los Angeles Times , p. Robinson, C. Internet access and use among disadvantaged inner-city patients.