Aging

Aging

Introduction

Human life is divided in various phases and parts, and each phase is characterized by its own demands and needs and has to be dealt with accordingly. It is eminent to mention here that aging is the most complex of all natural life phenomenon, as it involves deterioration and decline of the strength and power of human beings, that was on a continuous rise before. Thus, aging has its specific demands as well that have to be catered and dealt with effectively in order to make the process for aging easy for the aging individual as well as for others who have to deal with the person. The following paragraphs highlight and focus on the biological as well as cognitive changes involved in aging process and also highlight the various ways in which these can be catered efficiently.

Discussion

Biological changes due to aging

The process of aging can be simply defined as the process controlled by the randomly driven and systematic loss of molecular fidelity cased by the increase in entropy, that occurs in the last stage of life, where there is increased susceptibility to the various diseases and in addition, the increased vulnerability to death. Thus, the process of transaction from being young to old causes significant biological changes, including the slowing down of the body's communication processes, thus resulting in balance problems as well as slowing down of the reflexes (Hooyman and Kiyak, 2001). It should be noted that the various processes in human body are carried out with the help of internal communication process and the absence of such processes results in the decreases ability of dealing with the environment, combined with loss of the senses like hearing and vision. Thus, the major biological changes due to aging include the loss of vigilance, the decrease in ability to interact with environment and the slowing down of reflexes, thus a consequent depletion in the ability to perceive and deal with things.

Cognitive changes due to aging

Apart from the biological changes, a number of other changes also take place during the process of aging, with cognitive changes being the most essential ones. The major cognitive changes include decrease in perception, memory, reasoning as well as manipulation of space. It is eminent to mention here that the cognitive process continue to alter throughout the lifespan of human being, but they gain significant pace by the time an individual reaches his late twenties or early thirties. Several researches have been conducted for analyzing and highlighting the effects of aging on memory and reasoning of an individual, and it has been found that semantic memory remains the same while reasoning might decline with age (Panno, 2004). This implies that gene5ral knowledge and vocabulary of an individual remains the same till his late adulthood and aging does not places significant impact on that, while the ability to form relation between speed, time and space is generally affected as the person continues to age. In addition, memory, perception and the reasoning is also affected, thus ...