Blog 3: What is ageing?

Why do I want to know – I need to think about “How long will I live?” and “How healthy can I be?”as this affects my making plans

Whilst I started this blog to reflect on the emotional issues of being jettisoned from an expected career path this brought up huge questions about what to do, how to think of later life (not something I had done) and how to plan the next phase of life. This also brought up practical issues, such as to the old wives tales of what happens when you get older e.g.

• “After 60 you get too tired” (why do we get tired? Is this inevitable (lack of energy)?)
• Too many aches and pains (lack of exercise? Inflammation?).
• I have certainly heard many tales of people getting to retirement and then dying early and so they couldn’t do all they planned.

These tales encourage fears, even panic; urgency and stress that you won’t be able to do all the things you have wanted and promised yourself to do. Has delayed gratification stopped you doing them altogether?  Is this a lack of doing them, achieving your dreams, or dread of being doomed to a boring confined life?

Have you managed to get your life into the place where you can at least plan to fulfil your dreams?  Are your finances in the place to do them? Were these dreams really a fantasy to get you through and now you find you don’t want to do them? How can we have as great a life as possible – what is a “great life”?  How have you changed and how has what you want changed?

What do you want to do? Previous ambitions, balances finances:

For some the ambitions you had are no longer important or relevant. This may trigger a grieving process, or a feeling of being lost without them as they provided direction.

For me they still needed to be the guide to moving on. I found it difficult to accept a “trial and error” approach in adjusting to new patterns in life. It seemed to be a waste of time. My work had provided certainty, achievement and structure. I felt a panic that I needed to get on and do things before I die.  I needed to divert myself into findings ways of calming this (existential) terror. I needed to try and allow fear to come and go and not dictate your daily enjoyment.  In itself that takes time and effort. How do we cope with that? Planning is probably one of my key strategies.

I think I want to travel, the “other half” wants to holiday – we cannot go due to responsibilities at the moment – how soon realistically can we go? How can we manage the intervening time and make the best of it? And the longing? Do we spend the savings doing the trips? Will that leave us having problems later? Is it worth the sacrifice of perceived later quality of life with more money/savings to travel/holiday now?  And does fear we won’t be here or fit enough dictate that we take the risk?  What is reality for travel now? – Insurance – physical ability, I want to go on top of Indian train!!  Not even sure I can get up there let alone stay up on it at all safely. Will that nullify the insurance? How sad will I be that my earlier dream cannot be fulfilled? What is “OK” now?

(I am lucky that a mid-life event crystallised my ambitions for key trips to take in life. I got on and did the travel that was needed to achieve the key overseas ambitions and organised life to encompass the other.  Thus to some extent I am looking at quality of life and what lies ahead for me now. My favourite guru, Leo Babuta on his “Zen habits” newsletter challenges we should be living the life we want now, consistent with our values, not fantasising about a bucket list.  I agree, but I haven’t had the time freedom to travel before)

Are the fears of physical demise and not able to achieve my (and my other half’s) dreams real? If so, how real? Does the emotional side of the adjustment include unnecessary fears?

I need to think about what we are dealing with.  I need to resort to my “concrete thinking” to begin to understand what my fears are and what to do about them.

 My question was “What is ageing?” or “What do we mean by ageing?”  Getting older? Our body or part of it giving out? But that can happen at any age e.g. a chronic disease like diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis. This brings up another frequent question in my mind “What is difference between disability and aging?”  But that is for another time.  Some research on my current what s ageing question is needed.

An internet search on “what is ageing?” brought up a myriad of resources which I will take my time in reading.  The first resource looks like just the right one. Someone (João Pedro de Magalhães) has placed an essay on the subject of gerontology – the biology of ageing on his website (http://www.senescence.info) and it comes up first.  It directly addresses the definition scientifically.  I was gratified that the definition isn’t clear and that it wasn’t a fundamental failure of my brain to find the definition difficult.   The essay talks about demographic measurements of ageing, chronological ageing (our years) and pathological and physiological age-related changes.

A helpful summary might be:-

Human ageing is associated with a wide range of physiological (natural) changes that not only make us more susceptible to death but limit our normal functions and render us more susceptible to a number of diseases (pathological changes).  Death occurs when a key organ fails (and medicine cannot or can no longer help or prevent this). 

This describes for me what is happening and the end point. It helps identify the issues I think about:–

1) How to prevent ageing/strengthen nature to slow the ageing process if possible to ensure I am as fit as possible in the life I live (as I believe this helps my enjoyment and choices

2) How medicine supports our bodies to keep the organs functioning as well as possible. I remember a talk I attended by a proponent of HRT (Mr John Studd) who displayed a graph of use of health resources by age.  It showed that we tend to be “well” until the last 5 years of life when we use the health resources significantly.

3) My death, its timing and a good death.  I can examine how useful are the strategies for postponement of a healthy lifestyle. And the ever changing outlook for people with a diagnosis of cancer.

 

 

What is happening in our body as we age?

The cells of our bodies are wearing out all the time. All cells are replacing themselves by replication. (cell turnover). This occurs at different rates depending on which organ of the body you are examining.  Over time each organ gets weaker by the natural process of ageing.   (I need to find out what is natural versus what is disease).  Getting naturally weaker makes the body more vulnerable to disease /illness.  Death occurs by the failure of the weakest organ (even when dying of old age).

It would seem that our health and activity is determined by our rates and quality of organ repair by the cells. Medical health I understand at this moment will support the body’s organ to function, keeping the body functioning as well as possible.

Conclusion

I have found out my way of understanding what is at the bottom of the ageing process and so different places in this process to try and ensure I am healthy.  This may extend both my healthy life and my actual life and achieve things I want to achieve.  I hope I can incorporate healthy ways into my enjoyable life (and I need facts to help this change). I don’t know what is round the corner, but I can help be as prepared for it as possible by being healthy and perhaps not putting off plans to travel too long and dip my toe in the water of ambitions.  My neighbour wishes that he had just travelled the world when he was made redundant not wasted 10 years trying to get re-employment.  The retrospecto- scope is always 20/20.

I am back down to the issues of facing my fears, as we do at any age.  How interesting. But I do have experience in doing that and so can now think about the issues differently.

I am looking forward to exploring the ageing process and what we can do.