Contrary to popular belief, most American seniors live independently while maintaining strong relationships with family and friends. Research shows that our personalities remain relatively stable throughout our lives. Depression occurs less in uninstitutionalized seniors than among young adults.
Normal age related changes do occur. These may include:
Hearing impairment
Failing vision
Osteoporosis
Increased likelihood of arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension,
Mental process changes the speed at which information is processed and the speed of responding to changes in the environment
Our long term memory may decline
Our Word finding ability declines
Visual decline
Decreased reading speed
Seeing acuity in dim light decreases
Reading fine print becomes more difficult
Sensing peripheral changes - becomes more challenged
These changes may lead to difficulties in interacting with one's living environment. These include:
Decreased mobility and dexterity
Decreased strength and stamina
Reduced sensory acuity: vision, hearing, thermal sensitivity, touch, smell
However some functions tend to remain the same with advancing age and changes differ between people.
While seniors tend to process new information slower, daily social and occupational functioning ability remains stable
Most language related skills also tend to remain stable with age. Most notably, creativity and wisdom continue at strong levels.
In addition to physical changes, seniors experience social changes that may be disruptive. These include: isolation from family and friends, loss of peers children living far away and a changing neighborhood
The majority of seniors learn to adapt to their changing situations and lead happy and productive lives.
Physical Changes of Aging
Physical changes of aging are the easiest to recognize. Diseases that effect the elderly are not the same thing as changes which occur as part of the aging process.
Want to better understand some of the changes that accompany aging?
Vision - Look through a pair of glasses sprayed with hairspray.
Ninety percent of people over age 65 experience some changes in their vision. They may experience decreased visual acuity.Sharpness of vision, especially as tested with a Snellen chart. Normal visual acuity based on the Snellen chart is 20/20.
They gradually lose the ability to distinguish details and shapes of objects. , decreased tolerance to glare, difficulty in night driving, and decreased peripheral vision peripheral vision. Colors look different to older people. The blues, violets, and greens are seen less well, and the reds, yellows, and oranges are better seen. Sometimes this is a problem with seniors driving because they may not see a green light as readily.
Look through the wrong end of binoculars and try to follow a right turn line on the ground.
Touch - Put un-popped popcorn kernels in your shoes or try to turn the pages of a book wearing cloth gardening gloves.
Taste - Wear a blindfold and a nose-clip and try to tell the difference between a barbecue potato chip and a plain one.
Usually people experience some decrease in the ability to taste with age. While this decrease may begin after age 40, it usually is not perceptible until a person is over 60. We have taste receptors for salt, sour, sugar, and bitter, and they tend to disappear as we get older. Our foods contain a mixture of those tastes, and sometimes we find that older people will over-sweeten or over-salt their foods because it takes much more seasoning to get the same taste.
Another change in the mouth involves a decrease in saliva output, which can lead to an inability to moisten food adequately. Home care aides can recommend seniors drink fluids with their meals to improve the moistening effect and prevent choking.
Hearing - put cottonballs in your ears
First, seniors may lose the ability to hear some high-pitched sounds. Women and children, whose voices are higher-pitched, may be harder to understand for all older people. To compensate, speak low and slower, you can lower your voice.
People should learn to not raise their voices when they believe someone is having difficulty hearing them. When people raise their voices, their pitch goes up. Instead, they should speak lower. Eliminating background noises when speaking to an elderly person helps as well. Also, directly face the person because often people can lip read, even if you dont recognize that theyre doing that, she says.
Ability to Smell - Typically after age 50 or 60, people begin to lose their sense of smell; this affects men more than women.. This might present itself as a person who uses too much perfume or aftershave.
Some people may not be aware of their own body.
Temperature Sensitivity - The loss of some fat beneath the skin also may cause an elderly person to be more sensitive to cold. Thats why the elderly are at greater risk for hypothermia hypothermia.
Also, similar problems may occur in the summer. Because elderly people lack some fatty insulation, they are at greater risk for heat stroke, their bodies dont cool and warm up the way they used to.
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