Stress Resistance, Aging, and Late Life Diseases

Mutations that extend lifespan in invertebrates typically render the animals resistant to multiple forms of lethal injury, whether the threat comes from oxidative agents, heat, heavy metals, or irradiation. Indeed, this stress resistance seems likely to represent the mechanism by which these mutations delay the aging process. Thus presumably much of the cellular and extracellular pathology that produces dysfunction and increases mortality risk in older animals is held in abeyance by the same, poorly defined, defenses that permit nematodes and flies to survive when exposed to external stress in an experimental setting. (more…)

Aging Network Successes

First and foremost, many of the services supported by the Aging Network would not exist without network funding and advocacy. Without network services, an essential tier of the continuum of long-term care would be lost—the one that bridges total independence in one’s own home and institutionalization. (more…)

What is Frailty? Aging Related Disease

There is strong consensus among geriatricians and gerontologists that frailty is a clinical state of increased vulnerability and decreased ability to maintain homeostasis that is age-related problems and centrally characterized by declines in functional reserves across multiple physiologic systems. This vulnerability is age-related and also related to, but distinct from, disability and elderly disease states. (more…)

Effect of Aging on the Heart and Cardiovascular System

Growing older results in the various changes in the anatomy and physiology of human cardiovascular system. This affects in both healthy patients and patients with hypertension. The heart gets a less powerful pump, and needs to bring more to do the same job. (more…)

Hormonal Changes with Age – An Overview

Altered cellular metabolism and intracellular and intercellular signaling with advancing age result in widespread changes in endocrine function. Several mechanisms interact in most systems to bring about the observed changes. Aging is associated with anatomic changes of the endocrine glands. In addition, with age, changes in hormone replacement secretion occur, including alterations in circadian or seasonal biorhythms, changes in pulsatile frequency or amplitude of growth hormone secretion, as well as absolute changes in mean serum hormonal levels. The three main hormone systems that show decline with age are the gonadal hormones (menopause and andropause), the adrenal steroids DHEA and DHEA-S (adrenopause), and the GH/IGF-1 axis (somatopause). (more…)

Living Wills and Advance Directives

Because it expresses my own orientation, I carry in my wallet a membership card to the Society for the Right to Die, which has imprinted on the back a signed statement of my living will.

When the aging process accelerates inexorably, you usually don’t just fail to wake up one morning because of old age. One of the many illnesses that afflict the elderly with increasing frequency will likely be the cause of death and dying. Here is where I feel a living will is important. (more…)

Normal Aging of the Cardiovascular System

First the blood vessels. The walls of the arteries stiffen with age. And the largest blood vessel in the body, the aorta, gets longer and dilates as you get older. These developments can occur just from aging and in the absence of significant atherosclerosis in the vessels. They are secondary to changes that are happening to collagen and elastin and to deposits of calcium. The actual tonus (or tension) of the arteries also increases with the progressive thickening of the layer of the arterial wall that is present under the inside lining. These changes may contribute to high blood pressure and damage to the arteries, which encourage atherosclerosis. (more…)

« Previous Page