Which bodily changes are associated with aging?
With aging there are a number of changes, normal changes with aging. Let's start with your eyes, you get to be 40 or 45 you have to move that newspaper further and further and further away from your eyes and then you need reading glasses. That happens to about 95% of the population. As you get older too the lens of your eyes starts to get opacified and eventually you will develop a cataract, and that's a normal change with aging. Also glare becomes much more difficult to deal with as you get older. Colours aren't as vivid as they used to be. The amount of light coming into your eye decreases with aging. That's just examples of five changes that occur just in your eyes. Your hearing decreases with aging; you lose the high-pitched sounds with aging. You also lose the intensity of sound with aging. It's a normal change with aging. Smell decreases by almost three or four logs, which means almost by ten thousand times less, as you get older. So you can detect odours one ten thousandth as well as you could do before. Taste decreases with aging, taste for many things. And older people sometimes need more spicy foods for that. Then we'll move down to our lungs, our lungs are not as efficient as they used to be. I diaphragm doesn't move as much as it used to and therefore we're unable to run up and down the basketball court as much as we can. That results in players having to retire in their early thirties. The heart is affected by aging. The heart can't beat as rapidly as it could when you were younger in response to stress. Another factor for retirement of athletics as they get older is that your joints become less flexible. Your muscles decrease slightly in size with aging. We can help that by exercise and weight training, which are very important. But they do decrease somewhat with aging. Your kidney doesn't function as affectively at secreting waste as it used to, as you get older. And there are probably a dozen or more things that I haven't listed that do change with aging.
