Changes in old age - Our sensory perceptions
"Even at sixty, you can still be forty - but only for half an hour a day." This sentence comes from Anthony Quinn, a former actor. There are many such sayings that look at aging in a casual way. But there is something disturbing behind these sayings: The sayings describe mental and physical illness, as well as weakened sensory perceptions and a declining ability to perform. It is only put in a funny light. If you can't change anything about it, you just take it with humor. Nothing to change? Yes, you can! Fortunately, you can change things! No one needs to fear aging because there are ways and means to maintain a high quality of life. In this small series of posts, "Changes in Aging," Alterix first addresses the challenges of aging. In doing so, we start with our sensory perceptions.
Our sensory perceptions in the crossfire of aging
Whether it is the aching joints or a real chaos of our senses, possible physiological problems affect the whole body. Simple to pinpoint are the changes around our sensory perceptions:
- Decreased hearing: how many people with hearing aids have you seen?
- Decreasing vision: aren't there plenty of people who rely on glasses?
- Deteriorating sense of smell and taste: Have you ever seen an elderly person salt their food very much?
- Sense of touch: Have you ever seen buttoning become a big problem?
So how exactly do our senses change as we age?
Decreased hearing
Hearing problems are divided into several types.
| Type of severity | Impact |
|---|---|
| Severity of sound perception | You can hear everything at the usual volume,but you can hardly understand it. |
| Severity of sound conduction | Here the speech is understandable,but it is perceived as too quiet. |
| Combination of sound perception and conduction severity | Both quieter and more unclear perception of speech are the result. |
| Auditory processing and perception disorder | The problem lies in the processing of the auditory material in the brain. However,loudness and quality are normal. |
| Difficulty in aging | Due to aging,hearing ability gradually begins to decrease. |
Age-related hearing loss also goes by the name of presbycusis. In contrast to it, the other types of hearing disorders can be caused by an unhealthy lifestyle and influence the changes in old age. Want an example? Some diabetics suffer from damage to the nervous system. These are then again triggers of an auditory processing and perception disorder. What are the typical causes of hearing loss in old age?
- Consequence of diseases
- Permanent exposure to noise
- Vascular changes
- Taking various medications
- Weaker elasticity in connective tissue
Decreasing visual acuity
The central point for perfect vision is the macula. It is located in the retina and focuses the incident light. Changes in visual acuity with age are usually due to a disease or disorder of the macula. Cataracts and glaucoma also belong to this category.
It will be obvious to you that nutrition has a significant influence. Specifically related to decreasing visual acuity, you can expect to get sick if you make the following mistakes:
- High sugar consumption
- Lack of calcium
- High alcohol consumption
- Malnutrition
- Smoking
If you take action and educate the people around you, the situation will be much better. People who are able to keep their eagle eyes into old age are proof of this. People always say they are just lucky. But luck alone is never enough with the body, only hard and consistent work for your own health.
Poorer sense of smell and taste
Even with the sense of smell and taste, things change. Here, the decline is a very natural process in which little can be changed. So here, regardless of lifestyle and diet, sooner or later there will definitely be a significant change. This is because a poorer sense of smell and taste result from numerous things that are perfectly normal in life: Viral infections, medications and harmful environmental influences are just some of the examples. Of course, you can do something for your immune system. But one or the other small virus and even more so the environmental influences are an integral part of every life. To prevent them, you would have to live in a hermetically sealed room.
Thus, the inevitability of harmful influences for you means that sensory perceptions around taste and smell are about how you live with the changes. You have to ask yourself the question: How do I make sure that aging in this area doesn't make for malnutrition or malnutrition?
Because the following dangers result from deteriorated tasting and smelling (cf. Tschepe-Neumann, 1990):
- Loss of appetite:
Less taste results in not being able to enjoy food as before. This in turn causes appetite to fade, one eats too little in old age, and malnutrition develops. - Hypertension and diabetes:
As the taste of food becomes less intense, aging people often turn to sugar or salt. This is harmful in terms of high blood pressure and blood sugar levels. - Swallowing disorders:
One of the reasons why we can digest and swallow food well is the release of saliva. But its release is caused by the fact that we develop appetite. If we lack this appetite - as described in the first bullet point - saliva production stops and swallowing disorders occur.
The sense of smell and taste, weakened with the changes in old age, thus forms the end of a long chain of sensory perceptions that are significantly affected in aging. However, one component still exists...
The sense of touch decreases
What few people know is the following fact: The sense of touch is also affected by changes in old age. In addition to diseases, this is also due to brain changes. The loss of mass and the atrophy of brain cells play a central role in this. Perhaps you have already noticed that one or the other older person in your environment may have problems with grasping or fine motor skills. For example, it is possible that even tying a shirt becomes a big problem if fine motor skills are impaired.
The particularly sad thing for those affected is that there are no effective approaches to help. For vision problems, there are eyeglasses, and for hearing problems, hearing aids provide relief. But what helps with the sense of touch? Since the approaches to solving this problem are manageable, it is important from the outset to eat as healthy a diet as possible, do lots of brain-preserving exercises and take other measures.
Mental discomfort due to weakened sensory perceptions
Mental effects of sensory perceptions reach deep. They influence the absorption of food and thus the well-being, the lust for life and the establishment of social contacts. (cf. Aerzteblatt) How might a person feel who, at every family meal, suddenly can no longer completely perceive the taste of the food and cannot talk about it? In a sense, he is excluded and this is all too obvious. Moreover, the situation is unlikely to improve; instead, everything tends to get worse. That's why changes need to take place that make people feel fully included in society again.
Conclusion
Sensory perception is more than just a side note. Buying glasses or hearing aids or the like is anything but simply buying an item that older people need. It is a profound change in the previous quality of life, which is due to people's unhealthy lifestyles as well as mechanisms of aging. This change causes physical and mental damage, which, however, can be at least partially or even completely mitigated or prevented by a healthy diet.
