Weekly Chapter Review: Chapter 4

This chapter really gave me an outlook on how I needed to reevaluate my health habits. "Many changes that take place in the body are observable: the skin loses is elasticity and becomes more wrinkled, the hair grays and thins out, and the body becomes less erect... As early as the 30s and 40s, most people develop presbyopia, a condition in which near vision is impaired and the fine print of a book or newspaper becomes difficult to see at close range. Hearing loss may occur... teeth may be lost or gums may develop disease...an older person tends to gain fat and to lose muscle strength..." (Hiller & Barrow, 2011, p. 93) While reading this passage I started realizing that all of these things will happen to me. I may not look at myself that way right now but eventually one day I'm going to wake up and look at someone completely different in the mirror than what I am used to seeing. And when that day comes, I want to be able to look in the mirror and like what I see and glad that I made some kind of effort to try and age better.

Also further into the aging process there I am more likely to have a major health problems. According to Hiller and Barrow (2011) poor living havits established early in life, such as not being active or not eating well, cause many of the "diseases of old age." And with preventative measures these can be avoided (p. 97). Some given in the book are heart disease, arthritis, hypertension, accidents such as falling, obesity, and diabetes. I personally am in line for hypertension because my mom has it, and I am my mother's daughter. So I could always find ways to start helping to prevent that

To help our aging process it is important that we work on longevity which is the role of diet, exercise, and mental health. The biggest component on diet is caloric intake. Hiller and Barrow (2011) quote Beckman (2004) in their book saying "Caloric restriction clearly increases longevity in a number of species, though it is still unclear how this works." (p. 108) Another component is nutrition. "Reasearch on nutrition is now uncovering how poor diet contributes to pathology (disease)" (Hiller & Barrow, 2011, p. 109). Exercise plays a big role as well. Just walking 30 minutes a day is better than none at all. And last but not least, there is mental health, this is important because being healthier can make you happier in the long run, and just having a good attitude can help, too. Hiller andd Barrow (2011) found a study from Harvard Sophmores (Paffenbarger & Lee, 1996; Shenk, 2009) stating: "Optimists had better health in middle and old age than pessimists, mean with a healthy outlet for stress (health or physical activity) reported being happier, those who did not take themselves too seriously, but expressed humility, were healthier and lived longer, and happiness must be shared: those with meaningful,sustained,healthy relationships with friends and family were happiest and healthiest." (p. 112)

Hillier, S., & Barrow, G. (2011). Aging, the individual, and society. (9th ed., pp. 3-28). California: WADSWORTH.