Lecture 7 - Late Adulthood Flashcards
What is considered late adulthood?
65+
What is aging in a biological sense?
Increase in vulnerability to disease.
Does aging = disease?
Not necessarily, but it is a significant risk factor for diseases such as CV disease, Alzheimer’s dixease, type 2 diabetes, htn, arthritis, and cancer.
What are some GI changing that occur with age?
Mucosal lining thins.
Reduced liver size and blood flow increase the likelihood of adverse drug reactions.
What are some musculoskeletal changes that occur with age?
Decreased bone mass, decreased elasticity of ligaments, decreased muscle mass, and increased adipose tissue.
What are some circulatory changes that occur with age?
Decrease in myocytes,
Decreased vascular compliance
Increased collagen
Increased systolic bp
Left ventricular hypertrophy
Decreased response to catecholamines.
What are some renal changes that occur with age?
Decline in blood flow - about 10% per decade after 50.
Difficulties in maintaining blood vol, sodium levels, removing excess acid, and adjusting hypovolemia and hypotension.
What are pulmonary changes that occur with age?
Reduced chest wall compliance, respiratory response to hypoxia, ciliary function, and cough and swallowing function.
How does your vision change in late adulthood?
Decrease lens compliance, reduced tear formation, loss of cones (reduced color vision), and reduced pupil size (night vision).
How does hearing change with aging?
Nerve loss results in reduced acuity with high pitches, and reduced noise localization.
When do our cognitive abilities peak? When do they plateau and decline?
Do we become less intelligent as we age?
Peak in the 30’s, plataeu in the early 60’s, and decline in the late 70’s.
NO! We do not become less intelligent.
What is fluid intelligence and how does it change as we age?
Ability to think and react quickly; mental flexibility and information processing speed; learning new information.
It decreases beginning in the mid 60’s.
What is crystallized intelligence and how does it change with age?
It’s knowledge, experience, and verbal skills.
It doesn’t change over time.
How does memory change over time?
Remote memory is preserved (memory of things that happened years ago)
Recent memory takes longer.
With age, what type of attention becomes more challenging?
Divided.
With age, verbal abilities are preserved while _____ _____ becomes more difficult.
Work retrieval.
At the level of neurons, how does alzheimers look differently than normal aging? What about at the level of the brain?
There’s neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques.
There’s cortical shrinkage, enlarged ventricles, and shrinkage of the hippocampus.
What is the definition of dementia according to the DSM V? What are the types of dementia?
Decline in memory and other cognitive functions resulting in functional loss.
Alzheimers, vascular, lewy body, parkinsons, frontotemporal, alcoholic.
What is raptamycin used for? What benefit has it displayed in mice?
It’s a transplant immunosuppressant that increases the lifespan of mice, even when started later in life.
What is the benefit of resveratrol (as shown in mice)? What foods contain this?
Found in grapes and nuts.
May mimic caloric restriction benefits.
Overweight mice who received it were healthier and lived longer.
What effect does growth hormone have on muscles? What impact does this have on lifespan?
Increases muscle mass but not strength.
People with high levels are more likely to die young.
What is one biological marker of longevity? What effects this? Who has less of this?
Telomere length, affected by psychological stress.
Mothers of chronically ill children and caregivers of someone with Alzheimers have been found to have shorter telomeres.
In many cultures, older people are viewed with ______ and _____. What was their role?
Reverence and respect.
They are seen as a source of culture, technology, and knowledge and often passed down their tribal knowledge to younger members of the family.
How do modern Americans view older adults? What did Erikson say about this?
We generally idealize youth and devalue the aged.
He said that lacking a culturally viable idea of old age, our civilization doesn’t harbor a concept of the whole of life. He said that our fear of aging keeps us from living full lives.
