SUCCESSFUL AGEING

Successful Ageing

Successful Ageing

Introduction

Successful ageing requires much more than financial security. Physical and functional health are the most vital factors of successful ageing. Without these, other factors, such as high cognitive functioning and active involvement in society, are more difficult to achieve and maintain. These are the combination of factors used to define successful ageing. (Hooyman, Kiyak).

According to Dr. Teresa Seeman Professor, UCLA Schools of Medicine and Public Health, the factors that most strongly affect our lives as we age are not financial at all. They are high level of engagement with life, low risk of disease, high physical and cognitive function levels. Dr. Seeman identifies social engagements that involve physical activity as having the greatest benefit toward reducing both physical and cognitive decline. A significant number of women in my generation are now faced with caregiver responsibilities for a parent. We are learning as we go that having money is not enough to insure a successful ageing process. Although financial security provides many benefits, it cannot, alone, provide success. Money can help maintain health by providing adequate medical care and medications. Money can provide additional social engagement opportunities. Money can even provide opportunities in social involvement by allowing seniors to provide assistance to others. It's clear, however, that money cannot buy happiness in old age.

Cummings et al. showed that age and bone density independently are predictive of hip fracture: after adjusting for bone density, age-related risk increased twofold per decade; after adjusting for age, a one standard deviation decline in bone density increased the risk of hip fracture by 50%. As about 30% of people over 65 years of age experience at least one fall per year, it would be important to investigate this and other non-density causes of osteoporotic fracture more carefully. (Parfitt, 2004)Below about 40 years of age, fractures at all sites are more common in men than women and tend to occur in the cortical shafts of the long bones. They are due to trauma, not osteoporosis. Total fracture incidence starts to rise in women around age 40 years and in men around age 65 even though substantial losses of bone do not occur until after this rise in fracture rates. In women, Colles' fracture incidence rises rapidly after menopause until about age 60 years and then plateaus. Colles' fractures are about eight times more common in women than men (Wahner, 2003). Unlike hip and forearm fractures, vertebral fractures often occur spontaneously rather than after a fall. Less is known about them because they frequently occur without pain and so may not come to medical attention. In addition, some authors count only crush fractures, but not endplate biconcavities and wedge fractures, as vertebral fractures. (Pocock, 2004) This leads to widely different estimates of fracture prevalence. The naturally varying shapes of the vertebrae have led to a variety of algorithms for determining whether a vertebra is fractured.

This is just one of the many myths associated with the ageing process. John Rowe and Robert Kahn identify six of the ...