Health and social care Essay

As you begin to get older your muscles within your digestive tract can start to become really weak and would possibly start giving you the risk of having a lot of constipation. Also as you get older your heart is beginning to get less efficient and would not be able to pump the blood around your body like what it used to have done. Also the other things that could happen to your organs as you begin to get older are †¢Your body metabolism starts to become more and more reduced due to the fact that the lowered performance of the endocrine glands that is in your body. †¢The breathing can start to become more and less efficient because of the fact that the respiratory muscles are becoming less weak than what they had been before when they was once younger. †¢The Gas exchange within the human lungs becomes impaired as the elastic walls of the different small air pockets called alveoli then starts to become damaged. †¢Also as you get older your blood pressure starts to get higher, this could be because of the fact that you are becoming more stressed or because it was passed on within your family genes. The physical changes that could happen within the body as you’re getting older can be: †¢As you get older your skin becomes thinner, and they also get more wrinkled, this is one of the signs that you can tell that you are getting older. Also another thing could be that as you get older your skin starts to get less elasticated and becomes really saggy. †¢Your muscles become less weak and therefore you wouldn’t be able to do certain things that you may have been able to do when you were younger. †¢ When you get older your joints can start to become much stiffer and can become extremely painful as your cartilage on the bone starts to end and becomes really thin. As the ligaments in your body helps to reinforce the joints that also weakens and becomes looser. †¢Also because of the cartilage within your legs starts to separate and the vertebrae in the backbone becomes more and more compressed than before. The spine becomes more rounded than before, and al l this could end up making you shrink and could lose some of your height. Your senses: As you get older your ability to taste and smell things start to become less active and can deteriorate and the sense of balance can become really impaired. Also the other things that could have happened as you get older are that your hearing can start to deteriorate with the failure to hear high pitched sounds. Your vision can start to deteriorate because of the fact that a range of problems and cataracts can help to develop. Last but not least your skin can become sensitive and can lead to very high risk of increased hypothermia. The many different physical changes that people go through do not just happen because we are just casually ‘wearing out’ it happens because we are getting older. Also if you take the regular exercise, you may expect to live longer and stay so much healthier than what you would expect to plus the people who wouldn’t do this are the people that wouldn’t live as long. The different physical changes that are associated with the different ageing that may come with a limit to how many times the body cells can rapier and renew themselves and then because of the damage that builds up over the long lifetime. (Health and social care level 3, Beryl Stretch/ Mary Whitehouse 2010) Cardiovascular system This is where the heart heals to pump your blood around the human body. It is known that the older you get the more likely it is for you to start to develop narrowing of the arteries and the other blood vessels due to the fact that there are fats which would be known as Cholesterol which are pushing down and padding our your blood vessels. This is normally known as ‘the clogging up’ but the professional medical name for this is Atherosclerosis and this indicates that your artistries are beginning to harden. If this happens this then could result in you gaining higher blood pressure and this could put you at a very high risk of having a heart attack or stroke, this happens because the blood supply to the brain is blocked. If these blockages happen, this could result in you having something called coronary heart disease. If your coronary artery is blocked, then the person could start to experience really bad chest pains and could become out of breath. (Health and social ca re level 3, Beryl Stretch/ Mary Whitehouse 2010) Cognitive changes: When you are getting older, it can start to involve a loss of many different  nerve cells within the brain and could cause a reduction in the ability of the nerves to transmit electrical signals. Although this is happening it doesn’t mean that people start to lose their ability to think logically or reason, many older people start to report things going missing because of their memory recall, for example ‘where did I put the remote?’ Or ‘where did I put my glasses’. Often older people forget more things as they get older, and it takes them longer to respond and react, for example if an older person was to drive, they might drive more carefully and slowly due to the fact they know that they wouldn’t be able to respond as well if they wasn’t concentrating enough. These slower response times and the difficultly recalling recent memories are not symptoms of dementia, senile dementia is not part of a general ageing process, you could in fac t inherit this through family genes or it could just come to you as you get to a certain age, this normally affects people from the ages of 85+.(Health and social care level 3, Beryl Stretch/ Mary Whitehouse 2010) Degeneration of the sense organs: Sight: Normally after the age of 45 roughly, your ability of the eye to focus on certain things begin to weaken and because of this, by the time you get to roughly the age of 65 there may be more and more of a little focusing power left in your eye sight which unfortunately makes smaller print much more harder to see. The cataracts within the eye often changes in the lens of the eye. As people grow older the lens in the eye starts to change and can start to appear cloudy looking, this often happens and stops the process of the eye lens from being able to change shape or even to transmit the light properly. The cataracts may start to form between the ages of 50 and 60 years old and can often take a while to develop. If you are known to have diabetes then that also contributes to poor cataracts. Hearing: There are hundreds of thousands of older people who sadly experience the difficulty of not being able to hear high pitched sounds. This can normally happen because of the sensitivity with the nerve cells in which can possibly result in hearing loss. Some of the older generation can start to experience an unwanted build-up of ear wax which can be quite painful and could eventually block the transmission of sound from getting to them. Dementia  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ a disorder in which is more common in ageing: When experiencing dementia, it is more than likely to just occur in older people. It is known that only 5% of people which are over the age of 65 years actually have dementia. The Alzheimer’s society normally estimates that there are as many as 20% of the people that are over the ages of 80 are actually affected by the dementia disease. There are many different kinds of this disease, but the two major types of this disease are the Alzheimer’s disease and the second one is the one that is caused by the vascular disease which involves having problems with your blood supply to the brain. There are many people in the world who has heard of this disease but who are not completely sure on what it is, dementia is a disorder that causes a great amount of damage to human brain. This disease often affects people from understanding things, also they find it hard to remember people, places, who they are and where they live. There have been some cases in which older people have gone back to their childhood and are not able to speak, read, write or eat themselves. Hormones and Menopause: Normally when you get to this age you start to experience a major decrease in your hormone oestrogen which follows the menopause. People have discovered that the environment can actually make a huge amount of difference as the exercise is known to strengthen the muscles and the bones also may help to prevent osteoporosis. Women are unfortunately at a high risk of getting this osteoporosis than what men are because of the difference between the bone strength and how it is influenced by the different reduction of oestrogen. Musculoskeletal This is when the older the person gets the more that they start to experience the following: †¢Decline in mobility †¢Muscle thinning †¢Arthritis Arthritis: this is when you start to have a lot of damage to the joint in your body; there is a substance which is called cartilage, covers all of our bone ends and helps to cushion them as we are moving on a daily basis. As we are constantly moving all the time, our cartilage can start to wear and  become a lot thinner and less elastic with your age. This is perfectly normal. In Osteoarthritis your bones can start to become thicker and even start to form bony spurs which actually help but restrict your movement of the joints within your body. When people start experiencing this situation, they normally start of within the knees and hips which then obviously effect your movement. When ageing, it can often result in a general reduction and also lead to shrinkage of the skeletal muscles within your body. Because of this loss of muscles you wouldn’t be able to do the things what you might have been able to do when you were younger, but this often starts at around the age of 40 years old. Also another way to get thinner muscles is when you do not exercise often. Nervous system This is when the ageing starts to involve the loss of different nerves cells that help to activate the different muscles within your body. The Neurotransmitters, which are the different chemicals that are then released by the nerves in order for them to help to communicate, and control the muscles within the body. They also may help to function less effectively with your age. This then also affects the motor neurone disease which is a very rare disorder that is normally common in people around the ages of 50 – 70 than in the other age groups. There are many different causes of motor neurone, but they are not really understood but it is more than possible that the genetic inheritance may play a huge role within this or that the different exposures to toxic chemicals may increase a person’s risk of developing the disease. This disease starts to cause the nerves to degenerate which results in weakness and loss of the different muscle tissues. Respiratory system The respiratory system is when the blood within your body is not able to be pumped around the body efficiently, and this then causes you to feel really breathless. When you get older, you may start to realise that the strength of your chest muscles are starting to reduce with the aging and the efficiency of the human lungs may start to deteriorate. There are serious diseases such as bronchitis may start to develop as well, this means it starts to involve inflammation of the airways that help to connect the windpipes to the lungs. Skin When people get older their skin starts to change and it is very noticeable. As you get older the amount of fat that is stored under your skin starts to decrease and it is becomes looser and then develops wrinkles. Things that can damage your skin are everywhere, for example too much sunlight can eventually burn your skin and could put you at a risk of skin cancer, this is because sunlight has ultraviolet rays which can increase freckles and spots and make your skin rough and leathery like. Also another risk that can affect your skin is smoking, by doing this the chemicals within the cigarette can end up turning your skin a yellow looking colour. Smoking can also cause cardiovascular disease with is associated with the hardening and the narrowing of the arteries which then causes high blood pressure and heart attacks. Also smoking too much can then cause a lot of damage to the cell DNA may result in your skin developing a more aged appearance. (Health and social care level 3, Beryl S tretch/ Mary Whitehouse 2010) Psychological changes: The issue Explanation Ageism: There are many older people that sometimes can be stereotyped as being very useless, unable to cope with certain things, diseased and demented. Older people often start to experience some sort of prejudice from the younger people who see them as ‘having had their lives’. There are many older people that have a fear that they will not be treated with any sort of dignity within a hospital or care home. Financial concernsThere are a few people that are aged 65+ and over there their own home and the people that there are people over the age of 65 that have a higher level of savings in general than in any other age group. When you get to this age there are normally only about one in five of those older people who actually live in poverty and most of them wouldn’t have a private pension fund. Increased leisure time Your free time may enable you and older people to start to engage in the physical leisure of activities such as walking, and holidays that are very a ctive and ongoing. When you get older you may have an increase of free time, and often the older people aged 60+ normally go for the less active and laid back hobby of gardening. Also because of all the free time in which they have now gained it is known that older people start  to take interest of learning new things, whether it is a new language or even internet or sewing skills. Loss of a partnerThis is a way of life, nobody wants this to happen to them but it happens to everyone, and sadly bereavement may result in a range of different changes that you have to then learn how to deal with. This could also cause you to start having depression or anxiety problems. The effects of Retirement Most older people do find it hard to cope with when retiring from their job, but also at the same time there are the few older people who enjoy being retired as they believe that it is their free time and they are now able to let go of all the stress and are able to just take it easy and relax. Also this is the perfect time to invest in a holiday home or to finally start that hobby that they always wanted to do. Role Changes There are a few majority of the older population that enjoy the effective social networking sights with only one person in five that start to experience a degree of isolation. For many of the people that choose to retire it helps them to provide more than one opportunity to get in contact with their family members such as grandchildren. At this age the older people are more likely to get involved with the politic side of things which result in their age group voting more than the younger generation. There are also many different types of physical changes and illnesses that could contribute towards people losing their self confidence in doing certain things but it would be very wrong for you to just assume that the physical decline automatically removes all of the general self-esteem and confidence issues. When ageing, there are many different problems that can occur and that can influence the person’s health and psychology. It is known that the majority of these are over the state retirement age and they all experience very reasonable health and a very satisfactory social life that they lead. There are only a few minority of the older generation that start to experience poor health, live in poverty and are pretty much isolated. When ageing physically, everyone has their own personal experience of psychological change and it’s more than likely to be different than everything else. There were two theories about ageing and one of those was by Cumming (19975) and he ha d argued that some people disengage from any sort of social activity when they start to get older. He argued that as  people get older they would all start to experience a reduction in social contact with people and start to become much more independent and individual that would be less concerned about what people expect from them and what they expect from others. Many do not agree with this theory and it is important that people remember that Cumming and Henry has first proposed the theory in 1961 when there was no internet so that they never had access to any sort of communication that involved technology at all. There is another famous person that had a theory and his name was Erik Erikson and he had argued that older people need to start to develop a sense of their own â€Å"ego integrity† and that they need to avoid despair during later life. Also your culture and religion can affect you as well for example, the way in which you start to react to the physical changes that you would experience during later life and it will start to depend on your different attitudes a nd your beliefs. Often, when people of the older generation retire they are lucky enough to be financially stable and they are able to do the things that they want to do and that they are able to afford now they don’t work. Also as they are not working people often take up new hobbies to take up there time, such as golfing, gardening and other things which can build up their self-esteem. Most elderly people still want to remain very much independent and to keep their dignity high, this is very much important to them because this shows that they can cope alone without having to have help with everything. Older people don’t mind help but they feel like people are taking it to the extreme at times, often they feel like people are trying to make them feel like they are not able to look after themselves when in fact they are very capable to do so. The fact that there are younger people who can stereotype the elderly people as being not useful and that they are not able to walk about without assistance, this can in fact affect their self-esteem and make them feel less confident. if someone was to constantly talk like this to the elderly person then eventually start to believe it and they start to act upon it.