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Physiological changes in older adults essay
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As a person ages they may experience physical and psychological changes.
One physical aspect may include changes to skin and appearance. As one ages the body becomes weaker and processes take much longer. Breathing and circulation becomes weaker and skin becomes less elastic. Also, muscles become weaker and as it joins with the skin bones become less flexible and thus they become less mobile.
The heart becomes less able and efficient at pumping blood around the body. It happens that it requires more oxygen to do the same work it used to do with less oxygen. With ageing there also is an increased thickness of the arteries causing them to become harder and thus resulting causing high blood pressure. These heart problems may result in the individual taking medication as ordered and these may have their own specific side effects on the body.
Moreover, breathing becomes more difficult as the lungs become less elastic, and are unable to expand fully reducing the amount of oxygen that enters them, this creates shortened breath.
With aging the kidneys are less efficient at filtering and...
Air then travels to the bronchioles which are narrow (bronchoconstriction) due to the natural defence in keeping irritants out of the airway, causing wheezing breath sounds.(Eldridge, 2016) The air then proceeds to the alveoli, which are weakened and damaged air sacs due to the progression of the disease, that are unable to efficiently move O2 into the blood stream and gas exchange CO2 to be expelled through exhale, causing hypoxemia, lethargy, dyspnoea and high CO2 reading. (“Lung conditions - chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD),”
...teract. Many of the medications are very powerful in and of themselves. This article also presents additional approaches to medicating the elderly, including focus on reduction of number of medications prescribed. Both articles present the importance of considering the normal physiological changes within geriatric patients.
As mentioned above, emphysema affects the alveoli. When you develop emphysema the symptoms may go unnoticed for many years. With emphysema, your alveoli lose their elasticity and that makes it harder for the body to dispel the carbon dioxide. Also, the alveoli will eventually rupture and develop into one larger air sac. (Mayo Clinic)
This only keeps the blood moving for a short while. The heart muscle walls weaken and are unable to pump as strongly. This makes the kidneys respond by causing the body to retain fluid and sodium. When the body builds up fluids, it becomes congested. Many conditions can cause heart failure, and they include coronary artery disease, heart attack, cardiomyopathy, and conditions that overwork the heart.
During late adulthood, which begins around 65, many changes will take place. Death, sickness, and aging are some of the things you go through. Everyone is affected at some point. Individuals deal with these changes differently. Gerontology is the science that deals with the aging process. Vision can show impairment as people age. One of the changes in vision is the loss of accommodation of the lens. Most people 65 and older have hardened eye lens and have lost elasticity if the lens. Cataracts can form and vision becomes cloudy and is significantly impaired. Glaucoma is a serious condition that causes pressure to increase within the eye and it can result in blindness. Often hearing decreases with age. The hair cells in the Corti (inner ear) can cause a decrease in hearing frequencies. The ossicles and eardrum have a decrease in the transmittance of mechanical sound waves. Due to aging many elderly people have hearing impairment. Loss of appetite from connective tissue cells replacing taste buds. Skin can become thin, dry, and inelastic as it ages and the skin can fold and wrinkle from sagging.
-Shortness of breath=described as tightness of the chest. Some people have trouble breathing during exercise, others experience it after inhaling smoke, while others need to ingest a particular food-regardless of the circumstance, all people with asthma have trouble breathing.
In an attempt to define ageing one must take in consideration the biophysiological together with the psychosocial aspects; these two aspects are intertwined.
In the body-transcendence versus body-preoccupation stage, one must be able to learn and accept physical changes that happen as we get older, we refer to this as transcendence. If someone is unable to do so, they become preoccupied with the physical deterioration, to the detriment of their personality development. Although the physical capabilities are not the same in the elderly as when they were young, many older people stay regularly fit considering their age. The changes that began in middle adulthood are becoming more unmistakable by the time one finds themselves in late adulthood. The two distinct types of aging are primary aging and secondary aging. Primary aging involves the irreversible changes that occur as people get older due to genetic programming. Secondary aging refers to the changes that are bought on by illnesses and diseases, not increased by age itself. Late adulthood is a very interesting period of life. Since people are now living longer than ever before, late adulthood is increasing in length. Whether we say it starts at 65 or 70 years, the amount of people included in this stage is larger than ever before, due to medicine and technological advances. One of the most obvious signs someone is in late adulthood would be a person’s hair. Most people’s hair become distinctly gray and eventually white, which may thin
The brain regulates the level of breathing based on the oxygen levels detected. Likewise, the brain constantly communicates and sends signals down the spine so that it can receive information on the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and if the level of one or both fall below a certain rate, signals are send to the respiratory system, forwarding to the lungs, where they have the responsibility controlling the inhalation of oxygen and exhalation of carbon dioxide and likewise adjust and maintain the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide to be balanced. When these two are unbalanced, it could cause homeostasis to fall off balance as well and could lead to death or serious damages to the internal
Shortness of breath or dyspnea in COPD happens because the demand for ventilation exceeds the person’s ability to meet the demand (Mitchell, 2015). The basics behind breathlessness in COPD is an increased ventilatory demand with a decreased capacity of the respiratory muscles to relax and generate forceful and efficient ventilation (Brashier & Kodgule, 2012). CD8+ lymphocytes release enzymes causing apoptosis of bronchial epithelial cells and pulmonary capillaries, creating a ventilation-perfusion mismatch as the body becomes hypoxic and hypercarbic (Brashier & Kodgule, 2012). Decreased lung elasticity and compliance from fibrotic damage to air sacs are responsible for the inability to expand and recoil to generate effective ventilation. This loss of elasticity also causes air trapping, as the lungs are less effective at removing air (Brashier & Kodgule, 2012). The lungs become hyperinflated and contribute to dyspnea. Loss of parenchymal tissue causes decreased pressure and inability of alveoli to remain open. Less oxygen is able to pass the alveoli-capillary membrane into the red blood cells and less C02 is able to transfuse to be removed from the blood. Inflammation, mucus, apoptosis, fibrosis, loss of elastic recoil all lead to decreased oxygenation and ventilation causing the person to feel short of breath, particularly during exertion (Brashier & Kodgule,
"It becomes thinner, loses fat, and no longer looks as plump and smooth as it once did. Your veins and bones can be seen more easily. Scratches, cuts, or bumps can take longer to heal. Years of sun tanning or being out in the sunlight for a long time may lead to wrinkles, dryness, age spots, and even cancer." One of the common growths that adorn a senior's body are known as skin tags.
The fundamentals of biological aging are determined not by calendar years, but by what physical structures of the physique have become altered, and these variations of our former selves; good and or bad, have been happening from the moment of conception and continues until death. Physical adjustments are noticeable and undeniable as they are the first signs of aging that one can observe without medical training, are common, expected, and normal. As a whole, elderly people will experience thinning and wrinkling skin, graying hair; loss of teeth, vision and hearing impairments, taste and smell might become altered, and their height might no longer be where it once was. (Toussier) Not every senior will encounter every aspect of growing old, but the probability and likelihood of encountering at least one change, is a sure shot. These changes are naturally genetic and in no way reduces a person’s ability to live a productive, creative, and fulfilling existence, but can create “difficulties for the elderly to handle their daily life if they live alone and experience medical ...
of the air spaces and drops the air pressure in the lungs so that air
In a persons typical aging process, they will encounter many different changes in their lives. Some changes might result to be better than others, however not everyone will have the same effects. Authors of Gerontology: for the healthcare professional, Robnett and Chop state, “We need to consider whether the negative physical and cognitive changes that occur in older people result from the aging process or from the accumulation of poor lifestyle choices”. (Robnett & Chop, 104). For some, the aging process involves cognitive changes in which disorders such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s can present themselves early on. The proposal for this essay is to look at those two diseases, but to first understand what cognition is and what it means in reference
People with obstructive lung disease have shortness of breath because it is difficult for the person to fully exhale all the air from the lungs. This can be because of damage to the lungs or narrowing of the airways inside the lungs. With obstruction exhaled air comes out more slowly than normal. At the end of a full exhalation, there may still be high amount of air lingering in the lungs. Obstructive lung disease makes it harder to breathe, especially during increased activity or exertion. As the rate of breathing increases, there is less time to breathe all the air out before the next inhalation. Treatments for obstructive lung disease work by opening up the narrow airway. Airways may be narrowed by constriction of involuntary muscles that surround the airways.