How to calculate old age

About old age, age and how they are related

Inna Finochka, "The Attic"

Old age is an inevitable period in the natural course of human life in general. It is usually associated with the deterioration of health and the inexorable extinction of body functions. Old age was, old age is, old age will always be. But if you ask a specialist, he may surprise you by saying that old age has become different in our time – and it should be understood differently. That's what the correspondent of "Attic" learned after studying the data of the World Health Organization and talking with scientists.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the average age of the European population is already the highest in the world. According to forecasts, the number of 65-year-olds and older will double by 2050, and the absolute number of people aged 60 will increase to 2 billion people. People nowadays live longer than ever before. This requires changes in the economy, medicine, and social policy.

"Aging is an inevitable, unavoidable process, so at this stage we can talk about creating conditions for healthy aging. Healthy aging allows a person to do what he wants for as long as possible, to remain active and independent," said John Bird, Director of the WHO Department on Aging and Life Cycle, in his report at the symposium "Analysis of the effectiveness of modern methods and means in anti–aging medicine and Gerontology", held in May 2017 in Geneva.

From the WHO reference It took more than 100 years for the proportion of people in France aged 65 and over to double – from 7% to 14%.
Now, countries like Brazil and China will need less than 25 years for such growth. According to forecasts, the number of elderly people who are no longer able to take care of themselves in developing countries will increase fourfold by 2050.
 Many of the very old people lose the ability to live independently due to limited mobility, lack of strength or other health problems - both physical and mental. About 4-6% of older people in developed countries face various forms of ill-treatment at home (physical restraint, insult to honor and dignity, deliberate provision of insufficient care).
This can lead to serious physical injuries and long-term psychological consequences.

According to Vladimir Khavinson, the chief gerontologist of St. Petersburg, one of the fundamental challenges is that the number of people of working age is rapidly decreasing. He notes that this problem is typical for the population of developed countries. The tasks of anti-aging medicine and research are mainly aimed at prolonging the age of active longevity. "The population of St. Petersburg is 5.5 million people. About 1.2 million are people of retirement age. The higher the level of development of society, the greater the percentage of people in the older age group. There are few elderly people in Africa."

Factors of aging

Biologists study the aging processes and try not only to explain how and why this mechanism is triggered, but also to find out what is so special in the body of centenarians: what allows some people in their 80s to travel around the world, go hiking and enjoy life, while others already in their 60s feel like a wreck and leave the house except to go to the grocery store? There is already a scientific explanation for something, but much remains to be explained.

Analyzing the life expectancy of people, the structure and causes of mortality, the experience of centenarians, experts came to the conclusion that a number of factors affect life expectancy. Moreover, both genetic and environmental factors work: lifestyle, nutrition, activity level. "The functional potential of the human biological system increases in the first years of his life and reaches a peak at an early young age, and then naturally decreases. The rate of its decrease is determined, at least in part, by our behavior and the impact of certain factors throughout life," the WHO statement says.

According to Alexander Sidorenko, senior adviser at the European Center for Policy and Research in the Field of Social Well-being, a significant role in increasing the life expectancy of Russians was played by reducing stress levels. "At first, the factor of the fat years simply worked, when there were high oil prices, when people began to afford more. The stress level has decreased. They began to afford to buy housing, loans, and so on. That is, the quantitative factor worked, not the qualitative one. People were able to consume more food. The effect of the quality of the products is rather delayed – this is what we can see, maybe in the near future," he said in a conversation with the correspondent of "Attic". 

Age of old age

But do not automatically identify "advanced age" with old age! Moreover, old age, depending on many biological factors, can sometimes occur at the most unexpected age.

It is naive to believe that two 30-year-olds will be identical, says Dr. Claudio Franceschi from the University of Bologna. Moreover, he believes that we should probably abandon the usual chronological calculation of age.

The scientist explains his point of view by the fact that biological age, determined using biomarkers of aging, gives a more objective picture. "We can say that a person with diabetes and a person with dementia has accelerated aging, but it still occurs with different acceleration – it is faster in brain cells," Dr. Franceschi said in an interview with our correspondent. – When evaluated by 19 parameters (i.e. biomarkers of aging – approx. "Attic") of people with a chronological age of 37-38 years, it turns out that some of them may have a biological age of 25 years, and some of them - 60." 

While researching people with HIV, Franceschi noticed that their biological age is greater than chronological. "This is partly due to lifestyle, because people with HIV are often drug users, and also eat unbalanced. On the other hand, the disease itself significantly affects the body – it also accelerates the aging process," the scientist said.

At the same time, he believes that aging itself cannot be considered as a disease (such a point of view does exist in the academic community, and it is relatively popular). "It's very close to being a disease, but it's still different. On the one hand, aging can be the cause of the disease, on the other hand, diseases can accelerate aging," the expert explained. In general, according to Dr. Francesca, calling people "over 60" old people is rather just an established social practice. And to believe that people of the same chronological age are the same, according to the scientist, is simply naive.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru