Chapter 1

Question 1

• Chronological Age

Answer 1

measured by years

Question 2

Agerasia

Answer 2

person looks/is fitter than their age

Question 3

Progeria:

Answer 3

Werner/Hutchinson-Gilford, premature ageing

Question 4

• Social Age:

Answer 4

What is considered socially acceptable behavior at what age

Question 5

• Antediluvian ageing myth/hyperborean ageing myth:

Answer 5

beliefs of race of people in ancient times/far away lands that had incredibly long lifespans

Question 6

• Today:

Answer 6

retirement ether positive “golden years” or negative, forced removal from work

Question 7

• Pensions:

Answer 7

late 19th century, German invention

Question 8

• Inter alia

Answer 8

less strong and less easy to retain pension makes room for younger workers

Question 9

• Adolphe Quetelet

Answer 9

early attempt at anthropometry “old age begins at 60-65 years”

Question 10

• Threshold age

Answer 10

60-65 years significant changes in physical and mental functioningused by most gerontologists

Question 11

• Young old,

Answer 11

old old

Question 12

• Third age

Answer 12

still active

Question 13

fourth age

Answer 13

dependent on others

Question 14

• Functional age

Answer 14

: chronological age at which a particular level of skills is found (controversial)

Question 15

• Distal ageing effects

Answer 15

: distant events during ageing, e.g. less mobility because of childhood polio

Question 16

• Proximal ageing effects

Answer 16

more recent events during ageing, e.g. broken leg

Question 17

Universal Ageing

Answer 17

: All people, e.g. wrinkles

Question 18

• Probabilistic ageing

Answer 18

likely but not universal, e.g. arthritis

Question 19

• Primary ageing:

Answer 19

age changes to the body

Question 20

• Secondary ageing

Answer 20

occur frequently, not necessarily

Question 21

• Tertiary ageing

Answer 21

rapid deterioration before death

Question 22

• Quetelets definition

Answer 22

old age “begins” at roughly 60-65 years, but no given point when person automatically becomes old, chronological age is arbitrary measure

Question 23

Prevalence of Ageing- the greying population

Answer 23

• Prehistoric era: old age extremely rare
• Until 17th century only 1% of population over 65
• By 19th century: aprox. 4%
• Britain today: 16%
• Old age today commonplace experience
• Life expectancy: how much longer can a person expect to live

Question 24

• Different measurements for life expectancy

Answer 24

either mean time left for people to live in one age group or median time people don’t live longer, fewer people die young
• Life expectancy 1400, 1841, 1981: 35, 40, 71

Question 25

• Reasons for better life expectancy

Answer 25

; antibiotics, disease prevention, better aesthesia, inoculation, clean water, hygiene….

Question 26

• Best practice life expectancy

Answer 26

highest life expectancy figure to be found in any country in the world at a particular point in time  has risen linearly  aprox. 3 month each year for 160 years

• Rising life expectancy largely due to low childhood mortality, only small increase in older pople e.g. infectious disease strikes for first time in childhood
• Life expectancy today is only a prediction, not certain e.g. obesity crisis could have effect (negative) or gene therapy (positive)

Question 27

• Longevity fan:

Answer 27

: life expectancy graphs produced by different predictive models would fan out the further into the future the lines would go

Question 28

data

Answer 28

• Estimated peak of old people in population: 17 million, 25% of total population in 2060 (UK)
• Biggest change in oldest old people: 85 years or older
• 70% of todays Western population can expect to live past 65, 30-40 % past 80
• Move from pyramidal society to rectangular society

Question 29

Prevalence of Ageing-Variations

Answer 29

• Larges differences in life expectancy: industrialized vs. developing countries
• In 2010: world life expectancy at birth: 69 years, developed: 77, less developed: 67, 55 in least developed
• Principal cause of death in western world increasingly chronic
• Once nutrition and perinatal issues in developed countries under control, life expectancy should sky rocket
• Life expectancy also dependent on SES, supportive communities

• Fountain of youth- myth in almost every culture

Question 30

• Tithonus myth:

Answer 30

got older but could not die suffering, not desirable

Question 31

• Harvard alumni Study

Answer 31

exercise strongly equated with longevity

Question 32

Facts about longevity

Answer 32

• Diet
• Having friends
• Winston Churchill argument
• Environmental factors + genetics
• Shorter people have higher life expectancy than taller people
• Fruit flies: over 500 genes involved with life expectancy
• IGF1 pathway growth factor with hormonal operations
• Number of men and women roughly equal until 45 years, at 80 years: ratio 4:1 not because of stress factors, difference also in other species

Question 33

The cost of living longer

Answer 33

• 75% of “extra time” for old people is spent suffering from one or more physical disabilities
• Active life expectancy: the expectant remaining years of functional well-being in terms of the activities of daily living, for noninstitutionalized elderly people
• Final 10% of life is lived with appreciable disability

Question 34

• Expansion of morbidity theory

Answer 34

people buy extra life by suffering more

Question 35

• Compression of morbidity theory

Answer 35

period of severe disability can be compressed into shorter time frame

Question 36

Causes of biological ageing

Answer 36

• Biological age: state of a persons body
• Anatomical age: state of bone structure, body build…
• Carpal age: state of the wrist (carpal) bones
• Physiological age: state of physiological processes, e.g. metabolic rate
• Post-developmental: physical decay and weakness
• Body’s cells: over a period of 7 years, most die and are replaced or lost
• Cell Decline after 30

Question 37

• Somatic mutation theory of ageing

Answer 37

: cells are replaced by inferior copies

Question 38

• Autoimmune theory of ageing

Answer 38

ageing attributable to faults in immune system

Question 39

• Cellular garbage theory

Answer 39

: ageing because of toxins produced as by-product of normal cellular activity

Question 40

• Free radical theory

Answer 40

damage caused by chemical by-products of cell’s metabolic processes
• Other effects: disease, stress, toxins

Question 41

• Hayflick phenomenon:

Answer 41

cells only reduplicate a limited number of times (Hayflick limit) cells preprogrammed to die

Question 42

• Telomere

Answer 42

(sequence of DNA at end of chromosomes), shoelace metaphor (keeps DNA together, gets shorter every time it duplicates, prevents cell from getting cancer  still debated

Question 43

• Programmed senescence (vergreisung) theory

Answer 43

ageing caused by evolutionary causes, designed to happen  debatable, most animals in the wild die before reaching old age

Question 44

• Mutation accumulation theory

Answer 44

: ageing effects happen because they are not elected against by evolutionary forces

Question 45

• Antagonistic pleiotropy theory

Answer 45

like mutation accumulation theory, also: some genes may be of advantage in early age bot not older age

Question 46

• Fruit fly experiments

Answer 46

: creating a disadvantage in early life was met with an advantage in later life (higher life expectancy)

Question 47

• Disposable soma theory of ageing

Answer 47

: reproduction is everything, reproduction organs are kept in best condition on expense of other (somatic) cells in body

Question 48

The ageing body

Answer 48

• Skin and muscles become less elastic, loss of efficiency in mitochondria
• Urinary system slower less efficient in filtering toxins
• Gastrointestinal system less efficient in extracting nutrients
• Less muscle mass
• Less oxygen
• Weaker heart , hardening and shrinking of arteries
•  changes have effect on brain functions in extremis: stroke
• Elderly people fall asleep after meal: oxygen level constricted because all energy goes to digestive system, not enough oxygen to stay conscious
• Toxins eave the body slowly overdose, delirium
• Decline in gastrointestinal system malnutrition
• Lack of Vitamin B12 Dementia like symptoms
• Depression because of signs of ageing

Question 49

The ageing sensory systems

Answer 49

• Starts in early adulthood

Question 50

Vision

Answer 50

• 1/3 of people over 65 have disease affecting vision
• Decline in accommodation (focus on different distances)
•  leads to presbyopia long sightedness
• Caused by ageing lens losing elasticity
• Loss of acuity (ability to see objects from a distance
• 75% of elders need spectacles
• Loss in Contrast sensitivity function (CSF): tiny image invisible in low contrast but visible in high contrast  e.g. lads to older people falling often
• Visual threshold (dimmest light that can be seen) increases with age
• Adjusting to low level lighting (dark adaptation) decreases with age
• Reduced ability to recover from glare
• Change in color perception: older people perceive world more yellow,
• blues and purples become harder to discriminate (only in 80s)
• size of visual field diminishes, cannot move eyeball as far up as younger people
• loss of peripheral vision (onset in middle age)
• Vison problems not purely ageing issue, starts earlier in life
• Charles Bonnet Syndrome: visual hallucinations, no other mental symptoms 11% of people with impaired vision
• 7% of 65-74 year-olds and 16% above 75 blind or severely visually impaired
• Reasons: cataractslens becomes opaque, glaucomaexcess fluid accrues in eyeball, pressure destroys nerve
• Macular degeneration (sharpest spot)
• Diabetic retinopathy  damage to blood vessels of eye because of diabetes
•  all these diseases can be prevented

Question 51

 Hearing

Answer 51

• Hearing loss at 50
• 1/3 of people in 70s and 80s need hearing aid, ½ o people 80 and older
• Presbycusis age related hearing loss (ARHL): 50% of people over 65 have some degree of hearing loss, other figures: 60-70%
• Old people cannot hear high frequenciesmost of speech is in high frequencies understanding people is impaired
• Sound localization impaired
• Leads to impairments when doing other tasks (lower mental capacity)
• Causes of hearing loss: noisy environment, genes, diet, free radicals, cardiovascular and general health
• Men’s hearing declines faster but sensitivity to higher frequencies remains better
• Ageing ear lobes increase in size by several millimeters
• Bones of the middle ear stiffen (trough calcification or arthritis)
• Auditory nerve diminishes in size
• Ability to detect silent gaps between auditory signals affected by age rather by state of hearing loss
• Level of hearing loss does not account for all changes in auditory skills in later life
• Worsening of pitch discrimination, sound localization and perceiving timing information
• Tinnitus: 10% of older adults
• Age x complexity effect: the more complex the speech signal, the more disadvantaged are older people, BUT: almost no difference to younger people when signals are familiar phrases or expressing familiar concepts
• Comprehension of emotional content of speech is unrelated to level of hearing loss
• Hearing loss=emotional burden

Question 52

Taste

Answer 52

• 4 types: bitter, sweet, sour, salty
• Decline in sensitivity to the four types
•  inconsistent studies about what declines faster
• Bad at either choosing or metabolizing healthy diet
• 5% of 65-74 year-olds in study (Clarke et al.) had Vitamin B12 deficiency, 10% over age 75

Question 53

Smell

Answer 53

• Little change in very healthy older adults
• Most older adults at least some decline (due to illness)
• Studies suggest changes because of changes in diet and cognitive decline
• Profound loss in people with dementia and Alzheimer’s

Question 54

 Touch

Answer 54

• Older people have higher touch threshold (firmer stimulation of skin before touch is detected)
• Sensitivity to temperature of objects decrease
• Cause: thinner skin, decline of number of touch sensors in skin

Question 55

 Pain

Answer 55

sensory receptors, but other researchers have fund no such evidence
• Prevalence of pain-providing conditions increases with age emotional meaning of pain may differ between ages
• Older brain not good at integrating several strands of sensory information into a cohesive whole

Question 56

Neuronal changes in later life

Answer 56

• MRI studies: brain volume decreases, ventricular system increases in size
• Biggest losses in temporal and frontal cortex, putamen, thalamus, accumbens
•  cause: shrinking of neurons and lowering of connections between neurons
• Huge variability between individuals
• Loss in intellectual skills correlated to loss in brain volume either because of physical decline or because of neuroplasticity (brain shrinks because intellectual skills are not used anymore)
• fMRI: many memory tasks are less lateralized
• brain changes in size and function
 Possible Causes: not enough practice, decrease cerebral blood flow, neurons dying, not functioning properly , infarcts: mini strokes, blood-brain-barrier declines, toxins reach the brain (has been linked to dementia, decreased cognitive abilities, decreased ability to recover from strokes)