Assignment about What Healthy Aging Means?

Running head: HEALTHY AGING 1
HEALTHY AGING
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Healthy Aging
Healthy aging is termed as the process of creating and maintaining the functional
capability that facilitates well-being in the elderly. The intrinsic capability of an individual
helps in the determination of the function ability. The key to ensuring mutual benefits for
both the young generation and the aged is the health of older people. Poor health in the aged
has a negative effect on the whole society, families, and careers. Older people may positively
contribute to society when there are in good health.
During the placement period, I was able to partner up with the older adults in planning,
delivering, and evaluating integrated health management through careful planning and the use
of proper communication skills. Proper communication skills build up trust and patient-nurse
relationship, which improves the quality of life of the aged. A care plan is based on a
conversation between a health practitioner and patient in regard to the effect that their
condition has on their daily life. It provides information on how the patient can be treated to
meet the well- being and health desires. A care plan provides detailed information to family
members, patients, health professionals, and caregivers on what medical precautions to take
on a daily basis.
Partnering with older adults is core in the provision of integrated care; thus, I was able to
get first -hand information in regard to the challenges that the aged encounter. These
challenges can be physical in terms of service delivery and physiological in regards to the
body changes due to an increase in age. The partnership aids in the exchange of ideas to come
up with appropriate mitigation strategies to enhance the quality of life of the elderly.
In our care plan, we were able to focus on the weaknesses or challenges that the aged
faced, thus did not major on the restorative care, strengths and capacity building (Veal et al.,
2018). Hence, our major objective is to help the aged to attain their health goals. Health
systems and services are a crucial aspect to consider in the provision of integrated care to the

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elderly. Hence it will aid in evaluating the techniques, skills, and the current medical
practices being carried in the health care facilities.
Psychological changes
Aging is a natural process that each person has to experience at a particular point in life.
They are numerous psychological changes that I was able to observe that had an impact on
older people. The ability of the brain to send signals and communicate minimizes due to
neurological disorder, which is affiliated to aging. The greatest fear among the elderly is the
loss of brain function. Multiple neurodegenerative conditions such as stroke and Parkinson's
disease are common with old age. Alzheimer's is an infection of the elderly that is
characterized by continuous cognitive deterioration along with the decrease daily living
activities and behavioral changes (Cuddy, Sikka & Vanstone, 2015). It is a common type of
senile and presenile dementia that causes loss of tissue in the brain and death of nerve cells.
The part of the brain that is responsible for planning, thinking, and remembering is damaged
when the brain's cortex shrivels up.
Moreover, Alzheimer's infection leads to an overall misbalance amid the age, which
causes a change in behavior and personality, memory loss, mood swings, social withdrawal,
depression, apathy, aggressiveness, irritability, and distrust. An estimate of 6% of women and
5% of the men are affected by Alzheimer's type of dementia globally.
I realized a decline in the cognitive function and impairment amid the aged, and these
changes happen due to distal life events. The proximal life events comprise early life
experiences such as physical, cultural, and social conditions that impact cognitive
development and functioning. Impaired cognition leads to increased risk amid the aged and
may cause harm to others or self.
Aging leads to hearing complications; thus, the majority of the older people had a sensory
and conductive hearing loss. The loss leads to difficulty in distinguishing consonants of

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speech. On the other hand, there is a decline in vision ability due to the change in eye
components and central processing. These changes may have an impact on balancing,
reading, and driving. Aging leads to low contrast activity, adaptation, glare tolerance, color
discrimination, and attentional optical fields.
Another common change in older adults is losing the sense of taste. The ability to detect
salt reduces; however, the taste acuity does not decline. The perception of bitterness is
exaggerated and sweet unchanged. The quality and volume of the saliva reduces since the
salivary glands have been affected. All these physiological changes make eating
uncomfortable. I was able to note that a decrease in the gustatory function leads to the
psychological reduction of density in papillae and taste acuity. Different regions of the tongue
can be affected due to aging, and there is a decline in the normal taste perception. However,
the taste threshold may commence to heighten at about the age of 70 years, which may result
in dysgeusia. The taste sensation is also affected due to the loss of teeth and the utilization of
dentures, which may cause a reduction in the productivity of saliva.
The ability to detect odors and smell reduces with normal aging. The olfactory function
reduces with an increase in age, which has an impact on the ability to differentiate smells.
The quality of life can be impaired due to a reduced sense of smell, which may lead to loss of
eating pleasure and taste disturbance that will lead to changes in digestion and weight.
I was able to note a reduction in the sense of touch due to skin changes, which have been
attributed as a result of the declined circulation of blood to touch the brain, receptors, and
spinal cord. Thiamine deficiency is one of the minor dietary deficiencies that cause changes
(Lee & Longo, 2016). The sense of touch constitutes pain and vibration. Pain, temperature,
and touch can be detected through the use of receptors such as tendons, skin, muscles,
internal organs, and joints. Reduction in the quality of touch has an impact on balance, motor

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skills, and handgrip. Balance in the aged is interfered with due to changes in the
mechanoreceptors and muscle spindles.
Management
The challenges and physiological changes in the clinical setting were managed through
risk identification strategies. Hence, before an aged patient was admitted, evaluation
measures had to be undertaken (Kaeberlein, Rabinovitch & Martin, 2015). It was important to
record pieces of information, such as the psychological changes that the patient might be
experiencing or any medical condition that might have developed as a result of aging. This
information was crucial since it would help in diagnosing the patient to ensure proper access
to medical services.
On the other hand, the aged had to be constantly monitored since some of them had
memory loss and could cause harm to others or themselves. The medical practitioners, like
the nurses, had to be empowered and trained to acquire proper communication skills that
would facilitate proper interaction with the patient. The majority of the patients were unable
to handle pain, thus changing their attitudes, and a belief towards pain was the appropriate
management strategy adopted, apart from engaging in physical activities (Cartee, Hepple,
Bamman & Zierath, 2016).
I was able to learn that the major challenge affecting older adults was ageism, which is a
form of discernment against groups of people or individuals on the basis of their age. Ageism
is viewed as a systematic process of discrimination and stereotyping people due to their age.
The older people are viewed in society as old fashioned in skills and morality, rigid in
thinking and senile. The older people are not often respected due to the negative attitude that
people have developed. Even in the health care facilities, I have observed the older people
being mistreated by health professionals, which indicates that they have developed a negative
attitude towards them. Thus minimal preventive care, screening, and treatment are subjected

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to the aged. Therefore, there is poor management in the palliative care unit (Savvas &
Gibson, 2015).
The majority of the patients who are admitted to the palliative care unit suffer from
depression due to isolation by the family members since they are considered to be less
valuable and burden due to their age. This situation reduces life expectancy and increases the
morbidity and mortality rate of older people. On the other hand, older people are vulnerable
to abuse, which may cause distress to them and often occurs with the context of relationships
where trust is anticipated. The abuse is usually in the form of physical, emotional, sexual,
psychological, neglect, and financial. The aged patients complained of passive neglect due to
unintended failure in the provision of basic care such as medication, nutrition, and cleaning.
In addition, poor value judgment leads to elderly abuse (Shlisky et al., 2017).
In conclusion, changing the mentality of the society in regards to older people and aging is
a critical aspect in the development of an integrated management system and has an impact
on my upcoming clinical practice. The realignment of the health systems to meet the desires
of the old people is crucial. This strategy will require a shift in the systems that were designed
to treat acute infections to a system that will provide additional care to older people with
chronic conditions. On the other hand, there is a need to adjust the environment that we live
by, making it more supportive and friendlier. Improper utilization of chronic health services
can be reduced through the development of the long term care systems, which will ensure that
the aged spend last years with dignity at home. In terms of the provision of care, the families
of the aged should be given a professional aid. Hence, women should be allowed to play
major roles in society since they are the core caretakers of the aged family members. There is
a fairy consistency in regard to the needs of older people across the globe. However, the
readiness and the manner of achieving the needs differ in countries depending on the degree
of inequality, inequity, and societal development.

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References
Cartee, G. D., Hepple, R. T., Bamman, M. M., & Zierath, J. R. (2016). Exercise promotes
healthy aging of skeletal muscle. Cell metabolism, 23(6), 1034-1047.
Cuddy, L. L., Sikka, R., & Vanstone, A. (2015). Preservation of musical memory and
engagement in healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Annals of the New York Academy
of Sciences, 1337(1), 223-231.
Kaeberlein, M., Rabinovitch, P. S., & Martin, G. M. (2015). Healthy aging: the ultimate
preventative medicine. Science, 350(6265), 1191-1193.
Lee, C., & Longo, V. (2016). Dietary restriction with and without caloric restriction for
healthy aging. F1000Research, 5.
Savvas, S., & Gibson, S. (2015). Pain management in residential aged care
facilities. Australian family physician, 44(4), 198.
Shlisky, J., Bloom, D. E., Beaudreault, A. R., Tucker, K. L., Keller, H. H., Freund-Levi,
Y., ... & Meydani, S. N. (2017). Nutritional considerations for healthy aging and reduction
in age-related chronic disease. Advances in Nutrition, 8(1), 17.
Veal, F., Williams, M., Bereznicki, L., Cummings, E., Thompson, A., Peterson, G., &
Winzenberg, T. (2018). Barriers to optimal pain management in aged care facilities: an
Australian qualitative study. Pain Management Nursing, 19(2), 177-185.