Ageing Effects on Body

When the system of a human body functions normally, it is called health. The role of CNAs is to keep patients or residents away from diseases and harm in order to maintain their health and wellness.

Because of the “wear-and tear theory”, the elderly clients are more prone to various diseases and illnesses. Moreover, the immune system of the elderly, will be even more affected if they have been involved in special treatments like cancer & chemo therapy and other invasive procedures.

The elderly should be considered at a greater risk for chronic illness; changes in mobility; poor eyesight and hearing; lesser feeling of pain and even abnormal sleeping patterns.

Ageing Effects on Mental Health

They say that elderly adults may lose intellectual abilities like that of common sense, but that is not true. Those over 60 years old may sometimes experience loss of short-term memory, the right language or have problems solving riddles. Still, these kind of memory related problems are very individual and depend largely on each patient. The key factors that determine weather a person will be mentally healthy at old age are genetics and also how mentally active they have kept themselves throughout their lives. People who have had demanding jobs that require lot of brain work, tend to be in better mental health in older age. This of course could be drastically affected by hereditary diseases like Alzheimers or Dementia.

Ageing Effects on Muscles

Ageing doesn’t need to affect the mobility of the body, the key to maintaining the flexibility and strength of the muscles is keeping them active.  However, the some elderly people won’t be able to stand, stoop or walk easily because of the changes in the joints due to chronic conditions like arthritis or muscle tremors. There will be an instance that elderly might fall accidentally due to lose of balance when its mobility is affected by their age. Lose of function and or mobility mostly happens to the elders which is the reason that their numbers of death is caused by injuries from falling.

Ageing Effects on Eye Sight & Vision

The sense of sight of in elders decreases with age. They might fall in areas where they can hardly see or with little light or during at night. Especially those with cataracts, are prone to falling because they can’t see clearly and their vision in impaired. Other eye diseases such as glaucoma, a chronic disease in the eye which the optic nerve is affected, can cause blindness in elders, if  left untreated.

Ageing Effects On Hearing

If a person has been exposed to repeated loud noise when younger, it can damage the nerve cells inside the ear causing them hearing problems later in life. This kind of ear disease is called Meniere’s disease and it  affects the inner ear,  which can also cause the elderly patients to fall. The part of the ear which controls the balance of the body will be affected thus making them dizzy and loose balance.

Ageing and Feeling Pain

Due to wear and tear of the many parts of the body and or the injury that they may have experienced, elderly people are less likely to feel pain. This can happen to those people who may have diabetes and then later have an injured area due to the progression of the disease in a specific area.

Other people with chronic illnesses can also experience such issues. It can cause other problems as well, because of the inability to sense and feel pain may injure a person more, unless taken care of. A good example would be the application of a warm compress to elderly patients who got bruises. Due to the many factors stated above which causes the person to not feel any pain, there is a great possibility that the warm compress might worsen the situation and instead burn the client’s skin.

Ageing and Obesity

Another possible factor that might affect the clients would be the obesity. It has become a great problem to the many people in America as their number increases and more and more people are not paying attention to their lifestyle. The culture and tradition play a great role in the lives of those ethnic groups that have less access to health care services.

Symptoms such as a high blood pressure also known as hypertension is an example of that symptom that if taken for granted and it could cause a lot of problems with health and then later on as it progresses into a more complex diseases that affect many organs.

Another factor that is not often talked about is the economic standing of the client. If a client is unable to pay for health care services they are likely to be in the risk group for various diseases. Other major risk factor comes from genetics, personal lifestyle choices (regarding food and exercise) as well as use of alcohol, tobacco or drugs.