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Pharmacy Links

GROWING OLD – PHYSICAL CONDITION

March 11, 2009

Growing old affects different people in different ways, at different times, and with different degrees of severity. Old people are no longer as physically efficient as when they were younger. An old person’s senses are less acute: for example, his hearing decreases, and he can hear high-pitched notes less easily. The disability increases with age so that some degree of deafness affects 5 per cent of men aged 50, and 25 per cent of men aged 70. The diminished ability to hear can be embarrassing, but hearing-aids help considerably. Alex Comfort has pointed out in his splendid book A Good Age that the cheapest hearing-aid is a piece of string, one end of which is put in your ear, the other in your breast pocket! If you wear this, people talk more slowly and clearly!

Your sight changes as you grow older, and your ability to focus easily decreases. These changes can be compensated by wearing spectacles. It is wise to have your sight checked periodically to detect the onset of glaucoma, or of incipient cataract, which occur increasingly with age and which are easily treated. As you grow older, your sense of smell diminishes, and your teeth tend to be less firmly fixed. Your hair becomes grey and, at a later age, white, due to a loss of the pigment cells. The time when this change occurs is genetically determined, as is baldness.

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