Effects of Age on Body Structure and Functions

Questions: 1. Effects of age on body structure and functions.2. Impact of medical conditions on body structure and functions.3. Effects of Marys medical condition including infection to her routine care. Answers: 1. Effects of age on body structure and functions This part of the report deals with the consequences of age on the structure and functions of the body on a 78-year-old woman, Mary. It is said,Time takes its toll on the body. The inevitable event in the life of anyone is the of process aging. When any person reaches this stage of life, the changes in the body become less appeal in the eyes of others (Asemi et al. 2013). At the age of 78, the body part that is most affected of a woman is her skin. Skin is termed as the largest organ of the body. Her skin had lost the elasticity. The glow of her entire skin had also lost. Small lines had appeared on her face, running from everywhere to everywhere and gradually deeper wrinkles would also appear. All the muscles of her face would lose the flexibility, which would result into the drooping down of her cheeks, upper and lower lips and jowls and eyelids. Her eyes would also lose their capacity to produce tears. Thus, vision capacity would also decrease. She would even suffer from a gradual hearing loss due to the thinning of the auditory canal and thickening of the eardrum. These muscles of the body would lose the strength and flexibility with age (Binnewijzend et al. 2013). Mary would also face several functional changes. On one hand her heart, which is a muscle would become less capable of pumping blood throughout her body and on the contrary, she will have fats deposited in her blood vessels. As a result, the vessels would lose the elasticity. Such combination would lead to the decrease in the efficiency of the heart muscle, and blocked arteries would stop the proper blood flow to the different parts of the body. This would result in hypertension, minor as well as major heart attack and even heart or brain stroke (Cruikshank 2013). As the age of Mary is 78, she would also suffer from several nervous disorders. Numerous nerves in the human body lose the function with the growing age. The nerves would be unable to pass the signals between them for which there would be a lack of coordination among brain cells. Even if a single region of the brain malfunctioned then, the entire brain would fail to function properly. She would also suffer from memory loss and Parkinsons disease, which would subject her to abuses, and self-harm. She would even face sudden severe pains in her veins with her growing age (Williamson et al. 2015). 2. Impact of medical conditions on body structure and functions This part of the paper deals with the effects of hypertension, osteoarthritis, and diabetes on the body structure and functions of the 78-year-old woman, Mary. Hypertension means very high blood pressure. Blood pressure is termed as the amount of energy produced within the arteries and veins. The blood pressure differs from person to person. High blood pressure would result in progressive spoil to the arteries and veins, which could get into the way with blood flow all the way through the body. This would lead to severe stroke both of the heart and the brain, several heart ailment and failure of the heart. The other parts of the body together with the kidneys, limbs, eyes and heart also would even suffer from several damages. Severe chest pains and very irregular heart rhythms would also accompany her. She would lack a sound sleep, which would make her look pale (Malekzadeh et al. 2013). The dreadful conditions that involve the generative disease of joints, subchondral bone and articular cartilage due to the mechanical pressure on that area are termed as Osteoarthritis. It can affect any of the joints of the body, but mostly it occurs in the hands, hips, spine and knees. Usually, the women are concerned with this, as it has been reported that the woman has lesser amount calcium in their body with the increase in age. If this would occur in the fingers, then her fingers would be swollen for some days, and there would be a pain. If this would occur in the knees then the knees would have also been swollen, she would find difficulties in walking and would pain. Similarly, if it would occur in her hips or spine, she would face problem while bending and would gain excessive weight at her hips (Williamson et al. 2015). Insulin is a hormone. When the body fails to produce insulin or utilize the insulin properly then the body is said to suffer from diabetes. Diabetes causes deposition of fat bodies in the walls of the blood vessel. This could cause hardening of the blood vessels by preventing the blood flow (Gregg et al. 2013). This could affect the fingers and legs of her body. Her feet would become very sensitive. She would also suffer from severe pains while walking. Mary would lose the external glow. As she would lose the moisture content, her body would appear dry. She would also lack a peaceful sleep, which would hamper the serenity of her appearance. She would suffer from several functional disorders. If her pancreas would fail to produce insulin or if her body would fail to utilize this insulin then certain alternate hormones are used to produce energy from fats. This, in turn, would result in the generation of several toxic substances consisting of ketone bodies and even acids. Some of the s ymptoms, which she would face, are like fatigue, feeling thirsty and excretion of excessive urine. The breath would even have a fruity smell, which would depict the high level of ketone particles in her blood. Her diabetes would affect her kidneys resulting in losing their ability to filter the waste materials present in her blood. This would finally result in her kidney failure. Diabetes would also result in her gastroparesis, which may cause the symptoms of vomiting, nausea and even heart bum in her. She would gradually become prone to cold and other injuries (Williamson et al. 2015). 3. Effects of Marys medical condition including infection to her routine care This part of the paper discusses the effects of Mary's medical condition including infection to her routine care. The present medical reports of Mary depicted that due to her poor nutrition and medical condition her bones had become thinner and weaker with her age thus; it could easily break during a fall (Lam et al. 2012). Her vision has also begun to deteriorate with age, and this is called macular degeneration. Macula, the part of the eye, which allows people to see in her, was affected due to her age. The Central vision of Mary thus had become blurry, and she would face difficulties in reading and recognizing people (Wannamethee et al. 2012). Another age-related vision problem is glaucoma, which can result in blindness.. A regular medical checkup can solve the vision problem to some extent of Mary, but there would be very slight chance to get back the young age eyesight. Mary had lost the ability to hear the high-frequency sounds hearing the problem. She too had had Alzheimer's d isease (Diniz et al. 2013). In the hospital she even shared, the fear of fall due to her dizziness was increasing gradually. Her fear prevented her to step out of her house alone as she had already lost the stability of her body (Kemmler et al. 2015). She even feared to become lonely if she once goes out of her house. She had lost the ability to remember and think correctly. This had rendered her to do even basic tasks. This had led her to depression and had withdrawn herself from social activities. Due to all these reasons, Mary would require regular proper medical checkup of her bones, eyes ears, and brain. 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