Ageing and Health

Question 1

What is ageing?

Answer 1

• Ageing represents a progressive decline of vigour and resistance with time

• Age changes are natural losses in system adaptability, physiological effectiveness or function,
that  the probability of disease and ultimately lead to death (even in the absence of disease)

Question 2

Explain ‘rectangularisation of the survival curve’.

Answer 2

• Rectangularization is defined as a trend toward a more rectangular shape of the survival curve due to increased survival and concentration of deaths around the mean age at death of the population. That is, the variability in the age at death declines and deaths are being compressed into the upper years of life.

Question 3

What is ‘compression of morbidity’?

Answer 3

Elimination of major diseases =
20 years extra health but no alteration of maximum lifespan. Therefore it is not limited by disease but by intrinsic biological ageing. Longevity is genetically
controlled.

Question 4

What is accelerated ageing?

Answer 4

Accelerated ageing may be caused by
environmental insults such as poor diet, smoking,
excess drinking or inadequate exercise. Biological
age is increasing more than one year for each
year of chronological age.

Question 5

What is retarded ageing?

Answer 5

Retarded ageing means that the
biological age increases less than one
year for each year of chronological age