Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part VIII
Chapter Twenty-Three
Late Adulthood: Biosocial Development
Prejudice and Predictions
Senescence
Theories of Aging
The Centenarians
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield
Tattoon, M.A.
1
Late Adulthood: Biosocial Development
• the last phase of life
– 65 until death
– there are biosocial changes in the
• senses, vital organs, morbidity, mortality
2
Prejudice and Predications
• prejudice about late adulthood is
common among people of all ages
3
Prejudice and Predications
• Ageism
– a prejudice in which people are categorized
and judged solely on the basis of their
chronological age
• “Ageism is a social disease, much like
racism and sexism” in that it relies on
stereotypes, creating “needless fear,
waste, illness, and misery (Palmore,
2005).”
4
Prejudice and Predications
• Ageism Against Young and Old
– the calculation of “quality-adjusted life years”
(QALYs, Chapter 20), often discounts the
years of late adulthood--that is ageist
– Ageism is “pigeon-holding people and not
allowing them to be individuals with unique
ways of living their lives” (Butler,1998)
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Prejudice and Predications
• Elderspeak
– a condescending way of speaking to
older adults that resembles baby talk,
with simple and short sentences,
exaggerated emphasis, repetition, and a
slower rate and a higher pitch than
normal speech
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Prejudice and Predications
• Gerontology
– the multidisciplinary study of old age
– geriatrics
• the medical specialty devoted to aging
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Prejudice and Predications
• The Demographic Shift
– millions of people worldwide are
reaching old age, and it is harder to be
ageist when many of one’s neighbors
and relative are old
– demography
• the study of the characteristics of human
populations, including size, birth and
death rates, density, and destruction
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Prejudice and Predications
• The World’s Aging Population
– U.S. estimates that nearly 8% of the
world’s population today is over age 65
– most nations still have more children
than older adults
– the second oldest age group is
centenarians
• a person who has lived 100 years or
more
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Prejudice and Predications
• Graphing the Change
– demographers depict a given population
as series of stacked bars… one bar for
each age
– historically the shape is called a
demographic pyramid
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Prejudice and Predications
• Graphing the Change
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Prejudice and Predications
• Dependents and Independence
– every society has independent, selfsufficient adults and “dependents” who
need care
– dependency ratio
• is the ratio of self-sufficient, productive
adults to dependents (children and the
elderly) in a given population
12
Prejudice and Predications
• Not So Bleak a Future
– modern technology means that fewer
and fewer workers are needed to
provide food, shelter, and other goods
that society needs
– as the aged population increases we
find fewer births among long-lived social
groups
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Prejudice and Predications
• Young, Old and Oldest
– young-old
• healthy, vigorous, financially secure older adults
(generally, those aged 60 to 75) who are well integrated
into the lives of their families and communities
– old-old
• older adults (generally, those over age 85) who are
dependent on others for almost everything, requiring
supportive services such as nursing homes and hospital
stays
– oldest-old
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Senescence
• a gradual physical decline related
to aging… occurs to everyone in
every body part but the rate of
decline is highly variable
• the aging process, which is evident
from adolescence on
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Senescence
• Aging and Disease
– primary aging
• the universal and irreversible physical
changes that occur to all living creatures as
they grow older
– secondary aging
• the specific physical illnesses or conditions
that become more common with aging but
are caused by health habits, genes, and
other influences that vary from person to
person
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Senescence
• High Blood Pressure and Cardiovascular Disease
– the leading cause of death for both men and
women is cardiovascular disease
• a disease that involves the heart (cardio) and the
circulatory system (vascular)
– high blood pressure (hypertension)
• is a risk factor for heart disease, stroke, cognitive
impairment, and many other aliments of late
adulthood
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Senescence
• Diseases of the Elderly
– most elderly people, even the oldest-old, do
not have any particular disease
• disease defined as any condition that requires
ongoing medical attention and/or interferes
with daily life for at least a year
– heart attacks, strokes, lower-respiratory
diseases, and cancer are more common in
late adulthood
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Senescence
• Health Habits
– depend on individual choice and social
context
• nutrition
– with age the body becomes less efficient at
digesting food and using its nutrients
– drugs also effect nutrition (e.g., aspirin, taken
daily by many who have arthritis)
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Senescence
• Selective Optimization with Compensation
Both depend on how well people respond…
– primary aging is increasingly stressful as
aging continues
– secondary aging undermines well-being
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Senescence
• Individual Compensation: Sleep
–
–
–
–
–
older adults spend more time in bed
take longer to fall asleep
wake up often (10 times per night)
take naps
feel drowsy in the daytime
• optimization would mean making good use of
sleep time
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Senescence
• Social Compensation: Driving
– family members question their oldest
relatives driving but hesitate to do something
about it
– doctors don’t advise their elderly patients
about driving
– if older drivers crash, people blame the
driver, not the social context that allowed the
driving
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Senescence
– Exercise
•
•
•
•
•
exercise in later life is important
becomes difficult for older people
weather can keep older people inside
team sports are rarely organized for the elderly
muscles stiffen and atrophy causes less range of
motions
• less flexibility leads to aching backs
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Senescence
– Drug Use
• cigarettes contribute to adulthood lung health
problems
• alcohol use is either not at all or over used
• the elderly tend to use legal drugs and not
usually at great risk of becoming addicted to
the drugs
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Senescence
– The Brain
• primary aging causes one cognitive
change in everyone—the elderly think
more slowly
• second crucial aspect of the physical
aging of the brain—it gets smaller. Some
areas shrink more than others
• older people use more parts of the brain,
while young adults use more targeted
areas of the brain
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Senescence
– Physical Appearance
• changes continue among the elderly,
often with emotionally destructive
results
• they are treated and glimpsed at in
stereotypical ways
– Skin and Hair
• the skin reveals the first signs of aging
– becomes drier, thinner, and less elastic
– hair becomes grayer, turns white, and thins
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Senescence
• Body Shape and Muscles
– visible physical changes occur
– become shorter—losing a centimeter every
decade
• the vertebrae of the spine begin settling closer
together in middle age
– older adults weigh less than in middle age;
they have less muscle tissue—may indicate
weakness, thinner bones, fracture risk and
disease onset
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Senescence
• Dulling of the Senses
– most troubling part of senescence is the
loss of sensory ability
– senses become slower and less sharp
with each decade
• touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing
– technology can modify many of these
losses
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Senescence
• Compression of Morbidity
– a limiting of the time a person spends
ill or infirm, accomplished by
postponing illness and, once morbidity
(illness) occurs, reducing the amount
of time that remains before death
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Theories of Aging
“Can aging and even death itself be
postponed, allowing the average
person to live 100 healthy years or
more instead of 75 or 85?”
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Theories of Aging
• Wear and Tear
– a view of aging as a process by which
the human body wears out because of
the passage of time and exposure to
environmental stressors
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Theories of Aging
• Genetic Adaptation
– genetic clock
• a purported mechanism in the DNA of
cells that regulates the aging process by
triggering hormonal changes and
controlling cellular reproduction and
repair
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Theories of Aging
• How Long is a Normal Life?
– maximum life span
• the oldest possible age that members of a
species can live
• under ideal circumstances for humans, the age
is approximately 122 years
– average life expectancy
• the number of years the average newborn in a
particular population group is likely to live
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Theories of Aging
• Selective Adaptation
– the process by which humans and other
organisms gradually adjust to their
environment
– genes for the traits that are most useful
will become more frequent, thus making
survival of species more likely
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Theories of Aging
• Cellular Aging
– people grow old because of the cells of
their body becoming old, damaged, or
exhausted—new cells continually
created, each designed as the exact
copy of an old cell
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Theories of Aging
– Errors in Duplication
• this cell duplication may produce aging,
because each cell is so complex that minor
errors inevitably accumulate
• oxygen free radicals
– atoms of oxygen that as a result of metabolic
processes, have an unpaired election—these atoms
scramble DNA molecules or mitochondria producing
errors in cell maintenance and repair that, over time,
may cause cancer, diabetes, and arteriosclerosis
• antioxidants
– chemical compounds that nullify the effects of oxygen
free radicals by forming a bond with their unattached
oxygen electron
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Theories of Aging
• The Immune System
– cells become less numerous as people age
– B cells
• immune cells manufactured in the bone marrow
that create antibodies for isolating and
destroying bacteria and viruses that invade the
body
– T cells
• immune cell manufactured in the thymus gland
that produce substances that attack infected
cells in the body
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Theories of Aging
• Replication No More
…cellular aging limits the life span…
– Hayflick limit
• the number of times a human cell is capable of
dividing into two new cells—the limit for most
human cells is approximately 50 divisions, an
indication that the life span is limited by our
genetic program
– telomeres
• the ends of chromosomes in the cells, whose
length decrease with each cell duplication and
seems to correlate with longevity
38
The Centenarians
“According to some scientist, most
babies born today in developed
countries will live to become
centenarians (Kinsella, 2005)”
“How might your life be at 100?”
39
The Centenarians
• Other Places, Other Stories
– 1970—three remote places
• Republic of Georgia, Pakistan, Ecuador
• a women over 130, drank a little vodka
before breakfast and smoked a pack of
cigarettes a day
• a man 100, fathered a child
• a village storyteller 148, with an excellent
memory
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The Centenarians
• Other Places, Other Stories
– a comprehensive study found that the
lifestyles in all three regions were similar
in four ways…
• diet was moderate
• work continued throughout life
• family and community were important
• exercise and relaxation were part of daily
routine
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The Centenarians
• The Truth About Life After 100
– moderate diet, hard work, an optimistic
attitude, intellectual curiosity, social
involvement
– few calories, more respect, lots of vegetables,
strong religious faith
– no one is disease-free, many have achieved a
compression of morbidity, tend to minimize
whatever problems they have, are upbeat
about their health,
– attitude may be one reason they lived so long
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