Biologic Aging Theory Explained

¶ … Caregiver The author of this report is put in a case study situation where a patient is aging and encountering some health issues. The patient is grumbling that her immediate family has not had the health problems that she has had. Those health problems include a heart attack within the last week, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis. She is doing this grumbling while her hygiene is being attended.

For the purposes of this story, it is the author of this report that is providing the hygiene and thus must give answers to these grumblings based on the perspective of an informed caregiver. The author is also charged with including the biologic aging theory in the overall answer and the patient's overall care plan. While genetics is indeed a major precursor for many major health issues, it is far from being the only one and this patient is unfortunately learning this the hard way.

Analysis The author of this report would start off by asserting to the patient that there are causes and risk factors for disease other than genetics. Even genetics itself can be a fickle thing as even inherited diseases and disorders can skip generations. They can also affect some siblings and not others depending on how the genetic dice fall.

However, everything she has, even if it is a lot to take in, can be caused by environmental factors and lifestyle choices that happen either fairly quickly or over a long period of time. For example, diabetes can be due to lack of exercise and poor diet if it is type II diabetes. A heart attack can be caused by any number of things and lifestyle is certainly among them. There is also the fact that the patient is indeed getting up there in age.

While age 65 is not normal life expectancy nowadays, it is getting fairly close to it and thus the biologic aging theory does come into play more and more as one gets longer and longer into one's life (Jin, 2010). Indeed, this patient is absolutely emblematic of the biological aging theory and this could absolutely be true in terms of the two main forms that this theory takes on. Those forms are programming and damage. Programming is comprised of programmed longevity, endrocrine theory and immunological theory.

Programmed longevity is probably what the patient was expecting in that if one's parents and grandparents generally lived long and healthy lives, the same should probably be true of the child of the parents in question. However, it all comes down to the genes that are switched on and off over the years of one's life so the history of one's parents and grandparents is no guarantee, even when looking strictly at genetics. There are also the endocrine and immunological theories.

One's immune system and endocrine system being used or not used over time obviously has an effect on how one ages. For example, the endocrine system and diabetes are strongly related because insulin is the linchpin of both. The other main part of the biologic theory is the damage theory, which refers to the wear and tear that occurs over time.

Obviously, if the patient has not taken care of their body and has not responded to prior warnings about damage occurring to one's body, the aggregate damage over time will eventually make the body react very poorly and it will start to break down. For example, prolonged diabetes can.