Ageing is more than just grey hairs and counting years of living. It is a natural process of getting older as we start to experience many physical, mental, physiological, and social changes.
While most of us seem to appear healthy on the outside and still look youthful, here comes our body hitting us with a few of the first signs of ageing.
Your metabolism might be declining much faster due to a couple of factors.
A slow metabolism rate will make it harder to lose weight. With poor eating habits and a lack of exercise, you are taking in more calories without burning them out for energy. Over time, these calories will accumulate inside your body as fats and increase your cholesterol levels.
Obesity can lead to many serious complications, mainly cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
Wrinkles and fine lines start to appear more visible as our skin becomes saggy due to a lack of production of collagen and elastin, two proteins important for maintaining skin elasticity. As a lesser amount of sebum (oil) is produced, the ability to retain moisture also diminishes, leaving us with a drier and coarse skin surface.
Long exposure to the sun or ultraviolet (UV) rays can cause changes in pigment cells (melanin), causing age spots to appear.
Body aches, sores and fatigue begin to creep in as you enter your 50s due to several reasons.
Women in their 50s undergo a drastic drop in levels of reproductive hormones, whereby you no longer have menstrual periods for 12 months straight—marking the end of menstruation. While this life-changing phase sounds like a relief, the transition period before menopause brings a long list of discomforts such as hot flashes, night sweats, sleeping troubles, weight gain, and mood swings.
For some men in their 50s, their male hormones (testosterone) begin to decline very slowly from this age. Different from menopause, andropause does not cause infertility nor does it affect all men.
One of the effects of menopause is decreasing level of oestrogen, a hormone that functions to support growth and maintain bone structure. The lesser amount of oestrogen results in low bone density, whereby your bones become thinner, brittle, and weaker.
Hence, women are more vulnerable to fractures or bone diseases like osteoporosis, compared to men.
Entering the 50s, we start to lose joint fluid, resulting in our joints becoming stiff due to more friction between the bones.
Not only that, the soft tissues in between the bones known as cartilage pads also gradually wear off, reducing the gaps in your joints that may lead to a stooped posture (like hunching). Hence why you may notice your height shrink as you get older.
Apart from manageable eye problems like dry eyes and reduced eyesight, ageing also causes major eye disorders. Cataracts, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and diabetic retinopathy are some of the most common ageing-related eye diseases.
Incidence rates of cancer cases begin to rise to start the age of 50s. By detecting early signs and warnings, your doctor can advise immediate treatments as prevention.
Quality of life in the 60s and older are greatly affected by a myriad of health concerns. Most of the complications at this age are long-term and can be life-threatening.
Frailty is a common ageing-related health condition characterised by:
Declining ability to hold onto things more firmly and struggle to balance our body well increases the risk of falling, especially in the bathroom. Such inconvenience may pose fear of moving around, which further discourages a person at this age from being active and taking care of personal hygiene. Hence, long-term care is essential to provide assistance with these activities of daily living.
Normal cognitive ageing (NCA) can affect how you process information, retrieve old memories, and cause distractions due to ageing.
Dementia, albeit common among older adults, is not age-related. It is a syndrome that interferes with the neural pathway in the brain, preventing the cells from communicating properly with each other. The most prevalent type of dementia is Alzheimer’s. Symptoms are more severe than NCA, to the point of affecting behaviours, mood and independence.
Going through physical and cognitive ageing can leave them feeling helpless as well as isolated, which contributes to a sense of loneliness.
Other mental illnesses often associated with ageing are anxiety, schizophrenia, and psychosis.
Ageing messes up your sleep cycle wherein you wake up ahead of time despite going to bed early the night before—a syndrome called Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder.
Apart from that, your sleep quality at night is also disturbed by various factors including:
Structural changes in the inner ears and impaired nerves from the inner ears to the brain (auditory nerve) are usually the main causes of presbycusis, where we slowly lose our sense of hearing.
Hearing loss cannot be cured, but there are ways to improve hearing through the use of hearing aids (for mild to moderate loss) and cochlear implants (for severe loss).
A common age-related oral problem is receding gums. Bits of food can get trapped within the exposed gaps, attracting bacterial growth which develops tooth decay. Having fewer teeth makes chewing a struggle that can kill your appetite, thus we see many seniors suffer from poor diet.
Your sense of taste grows faint as well, due to taste bud cells no longer reproducing as quickly. You may notice that adults in their later years tend to crave anything sweet as foods taste bland.
Ageing presents many health warnings to look out for, but the key is to start young. These tips are simple but crucial in ensuring a more thriving and potentially longer life.
