Age-related diseases are medical conditions, illnesses, and disorders that develop and remain prevalent in people past their fifties and sixties. Age is the enabling factor for such disorders to develop among seniors.
According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people can improve their life expectancy by 19.3 years if they carefully manage illnesses and stay fit well into old age. CDC recommends hiring a nurse practitioner and to get your seniors regularly checked up by a geriatrician to ensure that they are living healthy.
Lack of Health Insurance Implications:
For better health outcomes for your senior, you need to make sure that they have access to guidance from a professional. This could either be a geriatrician or a nurse practitioner. Although accessing these professionals for seniors can cost a fortune, and they remain inaccessible for the majority.
Financial constraints in getting better health guidance hit women harder because they’re already a discriminated group when it comes to income distribution. These, and others like them, are then called as charitable cases. According to AANP, roughly 1 out of 15 patients that are treated by nurse practitioners (NP) are charitable cases.
Nurses who take in such cases are doing nothing short of philanthropic work. It’s this side of nursing—of helping those in need—that attracts thousands to this noble field. If you want to be a part of this Nobel profession, you can go for a master’s in nursing online, which is going to equip you with the right of set of skills to promote health and well-being in others.
While some diseases and illnesses that old people suffer from are rare, the following are the most common age-related disorders:
Cardiovascular (Heart) Diseases:
According to reports from the CDC, cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of death in adults over the age of 65 in America. As a chronic condition, cardiovascular diseases affect approximately 37 percent of males and 26 percent of women, who are aged 65 or older.
As people age, they become prone to heart diseases due to higher blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other such problems. These conditions also increase the probability of a heart attack or stroke in the people suffering from them.
The most common of these is the coronary artery disease. It happens when there is a blockage or narrowing of the main arteries that supply blood to the heart.
Doctors will advise dietary improvements, regular exercise, getting a good night’s rest, and maintaining a healthy weight to patients that are at risk of getting heart disease.
Cerebrovascular Diseases (Strokes):
Strokes usually occur when there is a blockage in the blood vessels that lead to the brain. Strokes are extremely fatal and need to be taken seriously as blood-derived brain cells die off immediately.
There are two types of strokes, one is the ischemic stroke and the other is the hemorrhagic stroke. Ischemic stroke is caused when there is a lack of blood flow to one part of the brain. While hemorrhagic stroke is caused when a blood vessel ruptures and then bleeds into the brain. They have the potency of causing deaths and often cause disability.
Hypertension
Hypertension is caused by increased pressure exerted by blood on the walls of the arteries as the heart continues to pump blood. It remains normal when you resting or sleeping, but speeds up considerably when exercising, excited or stressed.
However, with age, the constriction of the arteries can speed up, leading to increased blood pressure and the diseases of the heart, lungs, and kidneys. Other systems of the body also get affected.
Doctors recommend maintaining a healthy weight, regulating stress levels, limiting alcohol and salt consumption, exercising regularly, and checking blood pressure as often as possible to avoid falling victim to this disorder.
Cancer
Age is one of the most crucial risk factors for a large number of cancers. Cancers entail uncontrolled and abnormal growth of tumor cells in a certain part of the body that might then spread to other parts if not treated in time.
Cancers that a senior citizen might be prone to are of the skin, breast, lung, bladder, prostate, colorectal, and stomach. According to ACS, 77% of all cancers are diagnosed in people who are over the age of 55.
Although it is not easy to prevent cancer, you can improve the quality of your life before and while living with cancer by minimizing exposure to carcinogenic products. Moreover, you must ensure that you go for regular check-ups.
Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s is a progressive neurological disorder that causes stiffness, tremors, and even halting movement in patients. Almost 75 percent of all Parkinson’s cases have onset after 60, and age is its only risk factor.
According to research, men are more likely to develop Parkinson’s than women. Some common causes of Parkinson’s are traumatic brain injuries, genetic factors, toxin exposure, and environmental factors.
Dementia
Dementia is characterized by a significant loss in brain function; it can result in memory loss, confusion, mood changes, difficulty in communication, and even poor judgment at times.
Alzheimer’s is the most common cause for Dementia. Other causes include frontotemporal disorders, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, vascular dementia, impaired blood flow to the brain, and Lewy body dementia.
Hearing Loss
Approximately 25 percent of people between the ages of 65 and 74, and 50 percent of those over the age of 75 have disabled age-related hearing loss. This is because of the deterioration with age of the hair or nerves inside the ear that process sound.
It makes it difficult for these hearing-impaired individuals to follow a conversation in places where the ambiance is loud or to decipher or differentiate between consonant-heavy sounds or words.
Bottom Line:
Aging is one of the most prevalent risk factors for most of the diseases out there. If you can manage your age and have a healthy lifestyle, you will be less prone to age-related disorders. Physiological processes like environmental exposure to pollutants, radiation, and inflammation are detrimental to your health. Moreover, smoking, drinking, and other harmful habits can lead to a faster decline in health.