Many people make uninformed decisions concerning important life style choices and consequently they experience poor health and a shortened life span. Many findings in medicine, biology, psychology and gerontology can be used to better inform people about how to alter their behavior in order to make the most out of their life. This essay is devoted to describing the type of lifestyle that translates into good health, longevity and happiness. Physical Health: A person’s body is much like their permanent home, you cannot return it or exchange it but there are many things that you can do, even when you are very young, to insure its vitality in later years. Taking care of your body is an essential part to looking and feeling good. Good health care and regular checkups are essential to maintaining your health and understanding your body and its life cycle stages. Health and vitality stem from good personal habits, which are often preventative measures. Many of these things you do not need to see a doctor for, they are things that you can do on your own, and a few of them are listed here. Everything that you put into your body counts. Human bodies need certain nutrients and people should insure that they obtain their daily requirements of vitamins, carbohydrates, lipids (fats) and proteins. Also monitoring and moderating the use of drugs including cigarettes, alcohol and caffeine is vitally important to maintaining good health. Moderating food consumption is also very important. Two of the most uncomfortable and debilitating diseases in America today are obesity and hypokinetic disease. Decreasing calorie consumption can help people decrease body fat. It is hard though to keep weight off just by dieting, exercise is vital in maintaining a health body. Exercise plays a very important role in both physical and mental health. People of any age can improve the quality of their life through moderate physical exercise (Surgeon General, 1996). Instituting an exercise regimen can save older people from discomfort, pain and diseases like osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes mellitus, and some forms of cancer. The heart is an organ that is highly damaged by the processes of aging. Older people generally have much stiffer hearts that have a much higher fat content. This necessitates that the heart work much harder to maintain circulation (Lakatta, 1995; Whitborne, 1999). Weakening of the heart and circulatory system were once thought to be normal and irreparable effects of aging. New studies show that this is not true. Damage to the cardiovascular system due to age, which was once thought to be permanent, can result in a 60-70% decrease in aerobic capacity (since young adulthood). Studies have shown though that subjects who maintained good dieting standards and regular exercise show much less of a decline. In fact older people who underwent exercise training were able to regain most of their cardiovascular health. The margin of decrement in aerobic capacity for these subjects was found to be as little as 20-25% (Trappe et al., 1996). Experimenters who created exercise routines that included moderate walking, running and weightlifting found that activity had many curative effects on aged subject groups. Exercise effectively invigorates organs, increases minute ventilation, heart capacity (cardiac output), heart efficiency, and heart strength. Exercise has been shown to increase muscle size and muscle strength in older subjects in much the same way that it does for young athletes. Many older people do not realize that they have the capacity to put on muscle mass. This is unfortunate because many of these aging people could truly benefit from added strength and vitality. Exercise has even been shown to increase health and fitness, which in turn can increase self esteem. Self esteem indirectly influences happiness but exercise actually influences happiness directly. Physical exertion, aerobic and anaerobic, results in something called endorphin release. Beta-Endorphin is a neurohormone that is released into the bloodstream from the pituitary gland. Endorphins attach themselves to specific receptor sites in the brain that affect our perception of well being and in large amounts create the feeling of euphoria. This neurohormone helps people cope with the effects of mild to severe exertion. It is the way that the body rewards you, neurochemically for the positive activity of exercise. Endorphins not only give you a sense of pleasure and well being they also help to suppress appetite, increase immune activity, elevate your mood, increase memory retention, increase learning ability and decrease sleep disturbances. Exercise has even been shown to increase fluid intelligence, one of the two major components of intellect. Of course exercise cannot influence the amount of knowledge that one has, sometimes referred to as crystallized intelligence. But it can increase the capacity of fluid intelligence, the ability to manipulate concepts and solve new problems. A study by Elsayd, Ismail, and Young, and along with many other studies like it show that physical conditioning helps people to perform better on intelligence tests, especially on the problems associated with fluid intelligence. Many older people experience decreased visual acuity because they exposed their eyes to massive amounts of ultraviolet radiation early in life. The high frequency wavelength of ultraviolet light destroys the retinal receptors in people’s eyes. Avoiding sources of bright light and wearing sunglasses on sunny days decreases the amount of ultraviolet light that passes through the optic lens. Taking precautions now can save ones vision in the future. Hearing loss is one of the most well known, normative changes associated with aging (Whitborne 1999). Loud noises are one of the leading contributors to hearing disabilities and deafness. Presbycusis, or the loss of hearing affects almost everyone as they age. The severity of the hearing loss varies greatly between individuals though and acute hearing loss is usually due to loud noise. Eliminating loud noises from one’s auditory experience can alieviate the necessity for hearing aids later in life. Extremely loud noises like those found at rock concerts, school bands performances and shooting ranges can destroy the complicated and delicate structures within the ear, including the organ of corti, the auditory nerve and other neural fibers (Soulsman 1999). Hearing and vision loss can cause more difficulties than just sensory loss. They can cause people to become increasingly frustrated because they serve as mental and social handicaps. They can even make people become hostile and reclusive causing numerous adverse emotional reactions such as loss of independence, paranoia and depression. Stress is a major contributor to bad health. Stress increases blood pressure, increases the risk of hypertension and releases various stress related hormones that have deleterious effects of health. The production of stress hormones is a physiological reaction to emotional thoughts about certain types of situations. Eliminating stressful stimuli from everyday activities, or at least acting more appropriately and thinking about them more calmly can decrease the stress and the harmful side effects as well. According to researchers Woodruff and Birren (1972), 83% of patients in hospital coronary wards describe themselves as competitive and aggressive compared to only 17% in all of the other wards. This shows us that aggressiveness, which is usually related to stress, can have very harmful cardiovascular effects. Toning down competitiveness and anger and focusing on relaxation rather than aggravation can lead to better health and longer life as well. Chronic stress has many potentially dangerous side effects including immune system suppression, increased risk of atherosclerosis, and impaired memory and cognition (Davis et al. 2000). Mental Health: Because definite decreases in cognitive capacity accompany the aging process, older people need to understand some of the mistakes that they are increasingly more prone to make. Many of these mistakes are related to reasoning and decision making. Avoiding these mistakes can decrease stress and anger in many individuals. Older adults tend to make generalizations and tend not take all factors into account when making value judgments. This can influence them to activate stereotypes more readily, to use negative self talk or a negative bias, and to make incorrect or unfair causality attributions. Older people who are more aware of these simple mistakes are much less prone to make them and less likely to “stress themselves out.” Longevity: Many factors have been shown to affect longevity. Although obesity, high cholesterol and cigarette smoking are some of the worst things for your health, toxins present in drinking water and in air pollution are thought to greatly decrease life span as well. Statistically social economic status is shown to be a factor in longevity because people with sufficient money are able to have operations and drugs that are inaccessible to many others. Statistics have shown that people that live in rural areas are more likely to have longer lives. This is thought to be because rural environments induce less anxiety and stress. Another factor observable in statistical data is the benefit of having a life partner. Lifespan can be expected to increase by several years if one is able to find a mate to create a committed relationship with (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1999). This is most probably due to the alleviation of stress that a partner can provide for you. This is also related to the fact that people in committed relationships take better care of themselves and tend to take good care of each other as well. Scientific research has given us only partial explanations for why we undergo the process of aging which later culminates in death. Some scientists have hypothesized that one’s life expectancy is related to one’s metabolic rate. Theories that relate life expectancy to metabolism are the rate of living theories. Rate of living theories assume that all animals have only so much energy to expend in a lifetime. Many correlations between the life span of certain animals and their metabolic activity have been observed. For instance insects whose wings are clipped live much longer than those that fly. Also animals which are induced to hibernate live noticeably longer lives (Cristofalo et al. 1999). Other scientists have found that reducing caloric intake, thereby decreasing metabolism, can prolong the life spans of certain animals. Decreasing caloric intake and therefore decreasing metabolism can increase longevity according to the Hayflick theory of aging (Hayflick 1996). The Hayflick theory predicts that the cells present in ones body at birth are only able to divide a certain number of times. Cells gathered from babies are able to live and reproduce in a Petri dish much longer than cells gathered from older test subjects. In fact the older the subject the less time the cells are able to thrive in the laboratory environment. Another prevalent theory of aging associates free radicals, a chemical product of cell metabolism, to cell damage. The consumption of vitamins C, E and D all can counteract the destructive effect of free radicals. Eating fresh fruit, vegetables and vitamins can help combat the proliferation of free radicals in the body and provide some of the many necessary nutrients to organs and the nutriments to cells. Happiness: There are many things that people can do to increase their happiness and feeling of life satisfaction as they age. Some of these things include exercise, eating right, taking care of one’ s body and maintaining healthy friendships. Increasing one’s involvement with other people can give individuals increased self esteem and sense of self efficacy. Studies show that increased socialization decreases one’s chances of depression. The strength and number of close friendships can vastly affect one’s life satisfaction (Fehr 1996). People who are found to have congenial social habits often end up happier than people who do not. Psychologists have found that people who self disclose are more likely to be rated as friendly by a group of peers. Self disclosure is revealing information about oneself. Letting someone know about you often leaves you vulnerable to criticism, yet people are more likely to like and trust those who are willing to open themselves up. Women are more likely than men to divulge information about their private lives. One good thing to remember about self disclosure is that people who self disclose get along better with others who self disclose and visa versa. People are internal and external in their locus of control. Internal people attribute situational occurrences to themselves and others. External people, on the other hand, attribute occurrences to external factors. Military studies show that internals do well with internals and externals with externals. You don’t want to pair up the person who is quick to point the finger with someone who never accepts responsibility. People who are low in self esteem are happiest with others who are low in self esteem, or those who are high in self esteem yet are unreasonably generous to them. People low in self esteem don’t like themselves, they often assume that others don’t like them either They are more likely to be hostile and are easily provoked to anger and heartache. When you consider what kind of people to surround yourself with, first determine what kind of person you are in terms of self disclosure, locus of control and self esteem. Understanding yourself better in these terms can help you evaluate what kind of friends and partners you will be most compatible with. Many people make trade offs all the time. They do something now that will hurt them in the future or they fail to take the time to perform important rituals only to feel the negative effects later on. For instance many people expose themselves to cancer causing substances intentionally and on a regular basis. Many people seek instant gratification, and many of these people downplay the fact that even though they are pleasing themselves now, they will have to pay later. We must learn to replace hedonic decision making with informed, conscientious decision making. This applies to dietary concerns, exercise, friendships, and competency issues as well. Competence: Many older people are not able to perform at their full ability because others expect very little of them. Many stereotypes exist about older adults that are very limiting and derogatory (Heckhausen & Lang, 1996). Also many people speak to older adults in a patronizing manner, termed elderspeak, that is insulting to older people and harmful to their sense of self efficacy. The combined effects of the stereotyping and low expectations hinder older adults and keep them from performing at their true level of ability. Successful aging involves over coming negative stereotypes, maintaining mental and physical health, avoiding disease, and feeling happy, independent and accomplished. |
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