P5) Explain the physical and psychological changes which may be associated with ageing
Physical changes: Growth that happens in our bodies for example puberty.
- Skin
As you get old your skin becomes thinner and more wrinkled, it’s not smooth anymore. As you get older your skin becomes more fragile which means that it bruises easily because of the loss of support around the blood vessel walls. You will start to lose fat from your cheeks, chin and around your eyes this will give your face a leaner look. You may start to lose bone around your mouth and chin. With aging your skin gets dry, when your in your 40’s you start getting horizontal lines on your forehead, you get curved lines around your mouth and your cheeks because of the expressions you make. Your bones start to get more fragile so it's easy to break, were the individuals joint are it can become more loose as they get older.
- Effects of smoking
Smoking damages the collagen, elastic and tissue and this is the key elements that keep an individual looking youthful. If you smoke you age at a faster rate than others for example you will get wrinkles quickly and you will start to yellow teeth quickly as well. The individual skin, hair and nails may become dull and they will be less determined to do anything.
When you smoke you look older than you actually look because your tissues are damaged and less blood is flowing to the skin and it also doesn't allow vitamins and oxygen to reach the skin.
Your gums can be effected when you're smoking you will get gum disease which means with some people there teeth starts to fall out.
Smoking can affect the individual's voice it will become dry and husky because the vocal cords are damaged. Carbon monoxide and other chemicals reduce the amount of blood goes to the throat and other areas.
- Nervous system
Once you start getting older you nervous system starts slowing down because your brain and nervous system are going through natural life changes. Your brain and spinal cord starts to loose nerve cells, which means the nerve cells passes out messages slowly that it was when you was younger. But it also depends on the person's health on how much nerve cells they have, on average the blood flow to the brain decreases by 20%. The spin cord starts to become hard and brittle, since so much pressure is on the spin cord this causes injury which decreases the individual strength and balance.
When your nervous system starts to break down this can affect your sense or you might start to get nervous breakdowns. You might get Dementia because dementia affects the memory and language. When you get older you will start to get things this is called short-term memory and to learn new things gets difficult.
- Organs
As you start aging all important organs start to loose some function. For example the muscles in the digestive tract become weak this cause constipation. It starts to become harder for the heart to pump the blood around the body. In some organs the cells dies and it’s not replaced or they become large and they are less able to divide. The cells in the ovaries, liver and kidney decrease a lot as the body starts getting older. In the brain if you're old and healthy you don't loose any brain cells. Nutrients that you eat can become harder to absorb, when you start getting older your body starts to build up a lot of waste it builds up in the tissues. When an organ is worked harder than it's supposed to it won't increase its function meaning it still won't be used to working hard at that rate. This when illness and medications are involved. Breathing can become harder because the respiratory muscles are weak. When an individual gets older there is a slow, steady weight in the kidney because the arteries are not able to supply enough blood for the kidney so the kidney starts to decrease. How the liver changes is that the amount of blood it supplies reduces because the blood supply is reduced the liver's ability is also reduced say. Doctors say “after 25 for male and 20 for female, the blood supply to the liver is reduced 0.3 ~ 1.5% every year”.
- Cardiovascular system
As person gets older it becomes harder for the heart to pump blood around the body. When there breathing they will lose a lot of fluid, there will also be a decrease in the amount of red blood cells. The heart becomes stiffer, thick and less flexible this is because of the connective tissues. This cause the blood pressure to increase and the heart to pump harder. There will also be a lot of veins in the blood because the valves in the body are not working properly.People that are old start to get narrow arteries and the blood vessels start to thicken and toughen so the walls become less tolerant which means it starts to clog up this is called ‘atherosclerosis’. Clogging up can cause high blood pressure this makes the person have a high risk of a stroke. The heart will increase but people think that because the heart is bigger the heart can hold a lot of blood and that's not the case, the heart will just fill up slowly. Many older people have orthostatic hypo-tension which is that when a individual changes positions the blood pressure falls for example from lying down to standing up. This causes dizziness because less blood is going to the brain. The capillary walls thicken so it's hard for nutrients and to pass through which slows the rate of exchange. When you get older your heart starts to pump harder when you're doing physical activity, when you're taking some medications and when you get ill or infected by something.- Degeneration of the sense organs
As you get older your sense (hearing, vision, taste, smell and touch) starts changing it becomes less precise so it makes it harder. Hearing and vision are the most senses that are affected by aging, glasses and hearing aids can improve this.
- Hearing
When you start getting older your ear structure starts to change your ability to pick up sounds decrease. You will also have problems with your balance as you sit, stand and walk. Some old people have something called presbycusis this is age related hearing loss it affects both ears, which means you won't be able to hear high pitch sounds and you would struggle to tell the difference between certain sounds. Sometimes if there's background noise and you're having a conversation you won't be able to the hear the person that you're speaking to properly because of the background noise. Also when you're old and wax starts to build up in your ears this can damage the structure of your ear.
2. Vision
When you start getting older your vision starts to get bad slowly. Whats most old people struggle with is focusing on close objects this is called presbyopia. Some individuals find it hard to tolerate glare or dark and bright lights. As you start getting older you find it hard to tell the difference between blue and green. The gel substance in your starts to go away slowly this created particles in your eyes. Some older people can't really see in one of there eye this is called peripheral vision this makes it hard for them to drive. When you start getting older your eye gets dry quickly because not enough tears are produced.
- Hormones
Women experience a lot of decrease when it comes to hormones.The amount of hormones we produced changes it starts to decrease. Women get hot flashes, there more likely to fracture a bone and this causes depression. Also when they have sexual intercourse it becomes painful because there vagina starts to get dry.
With men not all men get this doctors say that 20% of men over the age of 60 and 30-50% over the age of 80 will experience andropause. This means that they will have a decrease in their muscles and strength, a decrease in their bone and they are more likely to be depressed which results to less energy
Psychological changes: Human behavior such as emotions everyone psychological is different.How we react to other people are ourselves.
- Losing a partner
Everyone is different which means everyone acts different in certain situation and loosing someone is one of those situations. Sometimes people act shocked or sometimes it has a huge impact on the individual which causes depression. At the time people feel as if they can't live without that individual this when inner healing takes place. Even some individuals think of doing suicide because they can't bear the pain of not being with that person.
Or some people get angry at themselves because they feel that it's their fault that the person died. They just might be angry because they feel as if they're going to be alone.
Some people may feel fearful because they're not used to that person not being with them anymore, this will make you vulnerable and afraid of getting close to people.
On the other hand some people may have mixed emotions because if the person was in pain and they were suffering they might be sad but feel relief because they know that the pain was too much for the individual to handle. Also if your relationship with that individual was difficult you will have a lot of mixed emotions.
- Retirement
Some people think that when retirement comes it's a time to focus on you and relax or do the things that you couldn't do because you was working.
But in reality some people don't look at it like that people have found out that there is a 40% chance that people who are on retirement become depressed and there's a 60% chance that they will have physical illness. When an individual's life was based at their workplace they will find it very hard to adapt to retirement. People who live alone are more likely to be depressed. Some people may feel as if because they don't need to work anymore they don't need to get out of the house so they start to disengage themselves this might cause them to lose interest in their life.
- Ageism
Ageism is social discrimination this can affect a old person self-esteem because there's a lot of negative things being said about them. Some people think that they are useless, demented and that they can't do anything for themselves so they rely on the world to do things for them. Some old people feel as if there second class citizen because of the younger generation, they feel as if that the younger generation are talking down to them and making them feel useless because of their age. Age discrimination leads to lack of self-esteem and also depression. Even some old people don't want to go hospitals, care home etc because they are scared of how they will get treated by the younger generation.
M3) Discuss the effects on self-esteem and self-confidence of the physical changes associated with ageing
As you get older you start changing physically for example your skin starts changing. This can have a big impact on your life, the way you act might change and the way you look at life might change as well for the good or bad. When an old person is going through changes that they're not used to it's important for someone to be there for them because these changes might have a negative impact on them.
Role changes this might have a negative impact on them because that individual is used to looking after everyone there children etc but now when they get older there own children will be looking after them because they might not be able to look after themselves. Some individuals wouldn't like to be in that position because they will feel less independent and they will lack self -confidence because there relying on other people.
As you get older your skin starts changing it becomes thin, wrinkled and it gets dry quickly. This can decrease an individual's self-esteem because they might not like the way they look they're not used to seeing there body and face to look like that, which means they are going to disengage themselves from the world meaning there family and friends. They start to feel uncomfortable in there own skin.
When you get older your attention span is not that good you lose focus quickly this can lead them feeling less confident about themselves. They might feel scared to have a conversation with someone because they might lose interest in the conversation or forget something that the person said. (cognitive change)
As you get older your sense (hearing, vision, taste, smell and touch) starts changing it becomes less precise so it makes it harder. How this can decrease an individual's self-esteem or self-confidence is that some old people because they have difficulty with hearing they wear a hearing aid. They might not feel comfortable wearing it so that can decrease their self esteem and confidence. There also might be certain activities that they can't do because of the individual sensory changes.
References:
1) Merck Manuals Consumer Version. 2017. Effects of Aging on the Nervous System - Brain, Spinal Cord, and Nerve Disorders - Merck Manuals Consumer Version. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.merckmanuals.com/home/brain,-spinal-cord,-and-nerve-disorders/biology-of-the-nervous-system/effects-of-aging-on-the-nervous-system. [Accessed 07 February 2017].
2) How Does the Liver Change When We Get Older?. 2017. How Does the Liver Change When We Get Older?. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.zhangclinicnyc.com/hcv/articles/c6_aging.htm. [Accessed 07 February 2017].
3) Aging changes in the heart and blood vessels: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. 2017. Aging changes in the heart and blood vessels: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at:https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/004006.htm. [Accessed 07 February 2017].
4) Aging changes in the senses: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. 2017. Aging changes in the senses: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at:https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/004013.htm. [Accessed 07 February 2017].
5) Rush University Medical Center. 2017. Hormones as You Age - Discover Health - Rush University Medical Center. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.rush.edu/health-wellness/discover-health/hormones-you-age. [Accessed 07 February 2017].
6) BBC News. 2017. Why retirement can be bad for your health - BBC News. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22553577. [Accessed 07 February 2017].
