Hainee Bolton
HCS 433 Dimensions of Health and the Older Adult
December 1, 2014
Instructor Stephanie Easterling
Functionality Paper
As we age, we get better with a lot of things; we become wiser, not too uptight, and even happier. There are a lot of benefits of being “seasoned” the downside is we start seeing or feeling our body age. Getting older means our body is winding down, and it’s a normal part of the aging process.
Each one of us gets old at different rates, and to a different level, and yet we experience many common effects of aging. For instance, our nails, they grow slower, hairs grow gray and some no longer grow these might cause insecurities for few elderly people. The most visible sign of aging is our …show more content…
As we age, our chances of developing high blood pressure rise. High blood pressure happens when the blood pumps through your arteries more vigorously than normal, and, if left untreated, it can lead to serious health problems such as stroke and heart attack. Also as we get older, our heart and blood vessels become stiffer. The heart fills with blood more slowly. The more rigid arteries are less able to expand when more blood is pumped into them. So, blood pressure tends to increase.
Despite these changes, healthy older heart functions well. Differences between young and old hearts become apparent only when the heart has to work hard and pump more blood, for example, during exercise or illness. An older heart cannot speed up as quickly or pump as fast or as much blood as a younger heart. Therefore, older athletes are not able to perform as well as younger athletes.
Digestive System and endocrine system. Overall, the digestive system is less affected by aging than most other parts of the body. The muscles of the esophagus contract less forcefully, but the movement of food through the esophagus is not affected. With the elderly, Food is emptied from the stomach slightly more slowly, and the stomach cannot hold as much food because it is less elastic. But in most people, these changes are too slight to be …show more content…
They are some that might not like the idea of their body winding down, nonetheless its part of life. Getting old is not all negative; we can look forward to retirement, not getting up too early, rushing out the door, and fighting traffic to work. We get to share our wisdom and knowledge to the next generation.
This paper covered a lot of loss of function in an elderly body and how is their life affected by it daily. We haven’t found the “fountain of youth”, we can’t freeze time; our body age through time. However, with prevention and knowledge while we are younger; we might be able to prolong the inevitable- our body aging. Meantime, we can enjoy life, live a healthy lifestyle; exercise and proper diet we can maybe “buy” time by prolonging the symptoms of aging.
The moral lesson of this paper is possibly we can sympathize more with our elderly on what they go through every day. Maybe we should not be too impatient if they are taking too long to get in and out of the car or urinate too much. Perhaps this assignment will help us understand them more, and cherished every moment with them.