04 Nov Process of aging, what to expect
What happens during aging?
Growing up is part of life. We are born just to start our journey to a successful aging. We cannot stop time; we cannot stop the effects of growing up. But we can have a quality of life. During aging we discover new diseases in our body, we notice changes in our skin, like wrinkles, gray hair, sagging skin, our vision becomes lower and our motricity decreases. There are even changes in our blood and pressure.
But aging also makes us more mature, it makes us appreciate the little things and the warm moments.
Stages of aging
When growing up, we go through different life stages, and when we become older, there are a few processes in life that usually we all go through.
Here is a list of them:
- Independence. When we become older, there is a time in life where we can still do everything by ourselves. Our regular, daily basic stuff is well covered without help. In this stage of life, our health physically and mentally is pretty stable. We can go to work, do all our exercises, our medical condition is good, and we do not need someone to be there to help us or check on us.
- Interdependence. It is a stage of life where our physical health is a little bit deteriorated, our condition is not as good as before and we are starting to need help to do some of our heavy basic chores, for example, cleaning our house or maybe cook a big meal, but we still can dress ourselves. Our physical health decreases and maybe we cannot do exercise as before. Interdependence is part of normal aging.
- Dependence. In this stage, the mental health, the quality of life and the life expectancy decrease. Diseases appear more often and are harder to take care of. It is the stage where the person needs help from someone else, it becomes harder, almost impossible to do the regular chores, and even taking a shower becomes a big challenge. Family needs to be closer or a nurse, someone that can take care of the person. The quality of life has to be improved by having someone at their side. Health is the most important part of this stage.
- Crisis management. This stage of life is correlated with dependence. In this stage we can see the effects of normal aging. It is a stage where we can get frustrated, mad and probably even sad by accepting that we are close to the end of life. Elderly patients can feel dissociated by the thought of their life expectancy, but even if it sounds like it has a dark connotation, it does not have to be like that. Even if we talk about diseases, even if we talk about life expectancy, all of this is part of successful aging. Even if you are an adult with good health, the effects of growing up will affect your health. The only thing we can do to our elderly patients is to show them love and support. Help them to enjoy their days even if they cannot do much by themselves.
- End of life. Elderly patients tend to expect cardiovascular diseases, being the most common diseases by normal aging. In this stage of life, we are just waiting, so the only thing we can do is spend the time with our loved ones, creating good and beautiful memories with them. The first stage of life is being born, and at the end we just have to go. But living a good, healthy, loved life is what’s expected.
Physical changes
One of the most visible changes when aging is our body, not only in the health department but visually we do change too. We can notice gray hair, wrinkles, and dark spots on our hands. All of them are effects of getting older. Our velocity becomes slower, we have trouble doing our regular chores, we can feel some ache on our body by doing what we used to do. But hey! Gray hair is just a result of successful aging!
Changes in the Brain
The brain is one of the organs that can present a bigger change, not only our memory is affected, but also our motricity, our neurons, even the blood traveling thru our body is changing. When aging, people tend to forget easily, to be slower and to sleep less. There are people who are the exception, of course, that they keep their good memory, but usually people tend to forget more when getting older.
Our health decreases and diseases are present.
When is retirement necessary?
Retirement can be necessary when life expectancy is not as good as it used to be, when our condition is getting a little bit worse, when diseases are getting stronger in our body. Health is not as good as before, furthermore, we need someone to take care of us.
If it’s a retirement community or an assisted living place, whatever helps us to go through the stages of aging with calm, with all our necessities covered. Aging is not a bad thing, it is something that will happen to all of us, so we need to be as comfortable as we want and need. People taking care of us is good, we took care of our younger relatives and now it is time to let them take care of us. Retirement is good, taking a rest is good. Because you have done well and you deserve to rest. If you are looking for a Mexico retirement communities feel free to contact Casamar Senior Living.