Today (September 21) is the 26th world Alzheimer's disease . Alzheimer's Day has been known to more people since its launch at the opening ceremony of the annual meeting of the Edinburgh International Alzheimer's Disease Association (ADI) on September 21, 1994. This disease, which is considered a "human memory killer", is also increasingly appearing in film and television dramas and our daily lives.
Just a few days ago, according to foreign media reports, the family of Microsoft founder Bill Gates published an obituary on the same day that Bill Gates' father William H. Gates II died peacefully in his residence in Washington state on September 14 due to Alzheimer's disease at the age of 94. Another report related to Alzheimer's disease shows that at present, my country has about 10 million Alzheimer's disease patients, the number of which ranks first in the world. It is expected to exceed 40 million by 2050.
Alzheimer's disease, also known as Alzheimer's disease. This progressively developed fatal neurodegenerative disease is clinically manifested by continuous deterioration of cognitive and memory functions, progressive decline in daily life ability, and various neuropsychiatric symptoms and behavioral abnormalities. In the book "When the World is Old and Poor: The Great Shock of Global Aging", Ted C. Fishman, a media person who graduated from , Princeton University, used a chapter to record how aging occurs and what changes it will bring to us. Obviously, Alzheimer's disease is one of them.
Ted Fishman mentioned that after entering the age of fifty, people begin to forget, for example, forget the work they are going to do, and can't remember what happened the day before. One of the reasons is that the hippocampus, located in the center of the brain, which is in charge of memory (where Alzheimer's disease causes the disease) begins to shrink. From the age of 65, every year, the chances of suffering from Alzheimer's disease double. Older people over 85 have half the chance of suffering from Alzheimer's disease. In addition, loneliness can double the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
This means that from the beginning of the body to the age of fifty or sixty, we begin to enter the high-risk area of Alzheimer. Then, before that, we should obviously have more knowledge about aging.
The following content is excerpted from "When the World is Old and Poor: The Great Impact of Global Aging", and has been authorized by the publisher to publish.
"When the World is Old and Poor: The Great Impact of Global Aging", written by Ted Fishman, translated by Huang Yuwen, Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore, April 2018.
Author | [US] Ted Fishman
excerpt | An Ye
Iron nail rust and free radical aging hypothesis
Everyone knows they will grow old, but few people really know how aging occurs. This topic aroused strong interest from researchers, and the research basis of many people is the well-known theory of free radical aging. The theory believes that the cause of aging is the body produces oxygen radicals, which can also be called an oxidant. When an animal digests food, the body breaks the food into molecules and sends it into the cells. Eat a piece of whole wheat bread and the body will break it down into glucose , and then combine it into a molecular chain of glucose. Once inside the cell, the molecules are metabolized by the mitochondria to the available energy.
Caleb Finch, a professor of geriatrics and biology at UC Davis, co-wrote the influential work "Aging: A Natural History" with Robert Ricklefs, describing free radicals as "chemical sparks" because they tear electrons from atoms in molecules. This process produces more free radicals, which starts the chain reaction and produces more oxidants (each cell in the body can produce up to one mega oxidant) and further weakens more molecules. Steven Austad, who worked with Finch, compared the process to rust. Just as iron nails become rusted and weakened when exposed to oxygen, when oxygen free radicals destroy animal DNA one by one and cause cell death, people begin to age and go to failure.
Our cells produce antioxidants to fight the damage caused by continuous attack of free radicals, but our cells cannot prevent all damage. Even daily activities add firewood to the activity of free radicals and make it more difficult for the body to erase free radicals, thereby accelerating the destruction of free radicals.
documentary "Horizon Series: Cure Alzheimer's Disease".
Take smoking as an example. A smoke can blow the storm of free radicals into the bloodstream. Enjoy sweets, overeating, radiation treatment, colds, influenza and other infectious diseases, many common contaminations and certain drugs, all these can stimulate the production of free radicals. Body and emotional stress also have the same effect.
However, the free radical hypothesis cannot be used as the final explanation of aging. Free radicals not only consume us, it can also protect us, and its functions cannot be underestimated. Free radicals are a response of the immune system to infection, which can continuously attack and remove foreign microorganisms that invade the human body. However, when free radicals continue to attack, it also damages healthy cells. Therefore, this hypothesis ultimately describes a physical function, which, like other causes of cell death, only has a fatal effect by chance.
Elizabeth Blackburn and her colleagues at UC San Francisco have found that high levels of stress can destroy telomere. Telomeres are DNA protein complexes that can maintain chromosome integrity. Whenever the cells divide once, the telomeres will shrink a little. Finally, telomeres will be too short to contain enough DNA and the cells will not be able to replicate. Different cells have different lifespans, and their telomeres atrophy rate is also different. There is an enzyme called telomerase. The discovery of this enzyme led Blackburn to win the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak. Telomerase sets the pace of telomeres decline, which determines the pace of healthy aging of cell life and tissues. The pressure of oxidation of
, that is, when the free radicals are in the super-speed driving state, the telomere will be shortened. Blackburn observed patients with psychological stress and found that their telomeres were shortened to a rather dangerous level. She also matches the stress with the length of telomeres and some diseases such as heart disease. Since so far the subjects studied only have psychological stress and not physiological stress, Blackburn suspects that stress itself may reduce life span for several years. We are all subject to the cumulative changes produced by cells, and as we age, the weaker our bodies become. We continually confront outsiders who invade our bodies and achieve mixed victories. Fierce attacks and accidents, physical exhaustion, emotional trauma, and our dark psychological tendencies will knock us down after a period of accumulation.
Young people are vigorous under the power of hormones, and teenagers and twenties have fun by engaging in activities that risk their lives, whether in cars, bars, beds or near their homes. On the other side of life, gravity becomes the deadly enemy of the old man. Hard floors are the most dangerous places in the world. And every environment poses a threat. We were born in the era of modern advances in public health and medical care, and this alone had a big impact, and nonetheless, our cells die every day. Moreover, although there are many individual differences, the process of aging in everyone is still general, and this is true for the whole world.
From 30 to 90 years old: How does aging appear step by step?
We begin to age not only from the inside of the body, but also under the influence of the external environment. Next, let us carefully observe how aging appears step by step.
Stills of the movie "Although Alice".
is described in a period of about ten years, tracking what changes people "incline" to appear as time passes; but not everyone will experience the same changes, and the time of change may not be exactly the same.Most people are in good health when they are over 60 years old, but most do not mean the whole thing. As adulthood, cognitive decline is a continuous process, but is very slow for some, and is quite fast for others. There are many common conditions below that can be easily dealt with, but there are also many cases that are difficult to restore to their original state. Some degradations are separate events that we can continue to move forward after they are resolved. But other deterioration, such as confusion in immune function and diseases like metabolic symptoms (including diabetes), can cause multiple complications, which are often mixed with each other.
Next we might as well learn about it.
In my thirties:
●Becomes more likely to strain muscles and sprain tendons. A quick movement may cause you to suddenly hear a pop of your legs; or you may see not the basket but the floor after you rotate.
●I found that the metabolism speed has slowed down. We have become harder to stay slim. For men, the belly is easy to grow larger because the body begins to accumulate fat and lose muscle.
●Loss the mass and strength of muscles. For most people, this recession will take years, but for those who work heavily in labor or have intensive physical activity, they will find themselves starting to be inferior to young people. Professional footballers and track and field players need strength and speed. They usually prepare to retire at the age of 30 because their natural decline in muscle strength makes them less energetic.
●There is a new reason to avoid a polysaccharide diet with a single carbohydrate: the risk of diabetes is getting higher and higher, even for people who are not overweight.
●The peak period of brain power has passed, and this peak period is usually at twenty heads. The decline of mental power began around the age of 27, but it was gradual. We begin to enter a life stage where the cancer prevalence rate continues to rise every decade, until the age of 75, when the prevalence rate will stabilize.
●Start feel that there are fewer and fewer men around you. The male population began to decline from this period. Men of all ages are more likely to suffer from illness, and once they get sick, the condition is more serious. Men are more likely to die from severe violent attacks. After men enter their thirties, the number of women of the same age begins to surpass men.
In his forties:
●Become more prone to suffering from three common eye diseases: cataracts, glaucoma and macular lesions of the elderly.
●It is easy to feel tired. This may be the result of a lack of activity or poor diet (or, in turn, fatigue is the cause of lack of activity), or it may be a change in the secretion of hormones in the body (such as menopause and menopause) that makes us tired. Fatigue may be a precursor to more serious illness. Fatigue has only recently become the focus of intensive research, but it is still unmeasurable for fatigue. According to a certain benchmark, 5%-20% of people over 38 are troubled by fatigue, and the number of women is twice that of men.
●Start searching for good physiotherapists and surgeons everywhere. By the age of 40, our joints are more susceptible to injury, especially shoulders, wrists, knees and ankles. Once we reach our forties, the number of joint surgeries begins to increase significantly.
●Start to resew the folded edges of our old pants. Time will shorten our height by 2.5 cm every ten years. British researchers found that men with a height of more than 3.6 cm in their forties or fifties will have a probability of dying in the next twenty years 6.45 times that of men with a height of less than 1.27 cm at the same time.
●I feel that my joints are becoming stiff. Some people start to develop arthritis.
●Start to see gray hair, or hope to have hair. Some people's hair begins to grey, others begin to retire. While losing hair, the remaining hair began to turn white. Faced with this situation, you can only accept it calmly.
●Seeing the bags in the eyes are becoming more and more obvious. Swelling is the result of the common and rapid loss of elasticity, youthful color and tissue of the skin. This is partly due to our lymph nodes. When we are over forty years old, the lymphatic system gradually loses its ability to detoxify. When the lymph nodes are not functioning well, we start to "swell".
●Dilm that doesn't look so cute. That's actually cellulite. Subcutaneous fat cells in men and women begin to leave ripples in cellulite on the skin. For women, this change is most often found on the hips and thighs; for men, cellulite may be spread across the neck and abdomen.
●The major changes that may occur in
● are sexual characteristics. In women, this process begins with the emergence of menopause, and the actual menopause most often begins around the age of 50. Women have various experiences of menopause, and the loss of reproductive ability and menstruation are just the most common characteristics. Women from certain ethnic groups will experience more serious physiological and psychological effects during menopause.
In his fifties:
●We are more susceptible to the most influential risk factors: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, excessive weight, excessive drinking, smoking (always), heart abnormalities and unmarried (for men).
●It is more likely to fracture. Unlike the general idea, it is not only women who are at risk of fractures.
●Consider a new joint. Rheumatoid arthritis and degenerative arthritis are beginning to cause many people to suffer. One in every five people suffers from rheumatism. In the next decade, most people will start using steroids, painkillers or simply replacing joints to relieve severe pain in their hands, arms, legs, neck and back.
●The gums begin to retract, making them more and more prone to tooth decay, and periodontal disease may occur. We are also becoming more and more likely to lose teeth.
●Cannot retain moisture, the body becomes dry, sweat less, and the body temperature is easily increased.
●Weight is not easy to increase, especially it is difficult to increase muscle and fat-free tissue.
●Smell and taste are not as sharp as before.
●More likely to suffer from heart disease. Women after menopause originally had estrogen that could reduce the incidence of heart disease, but now the reduction of estrogen has made them a new high-risk group.
●The belly is getting bigger and bigger (female) because our bodies redistribute fat and our muscles are constantly decreasing. If we smoke, we age early, and damage to the lungs can also reduce the average life span of about ten years. In addition, drug use and alcohol use also cause us to lose the ability to fight stress. The American Heart Association report pointed out that "middle-aged and older marijuana users will increase their risk of heart disease, especially within one hour after smoking, with a probability of more than 4.5 times higher." Long-term alcoholics will accelerate and age early, and even if they quit drinking now, it will not change this fact.
●Osteoporosis begins to occur, especially in women. This only worsens even more decades after the discovery of osteoporosis and bones become prone to fragmentation. Women have more osteoporosis than men.
Stills of the movie "Although Alice".
●Start forgetting everything. We can't speak the word "know" but our mouths can't speak. We forgot what we were going to do, and we couldn't even remember what happened the day before. One reason for this is that the hippocampus, which is located in the central brain in charge of memory, begins to shrink.
●Many people’s eyes are starting to have problems. After arthritis/rheumatism and heart disease, loss of vision is most likely to affect the daily activities of people over the age of 70.
●Start to become a high-risk group for degenerative arthritis, the most common joint disease in the world. It is most likely to appear on the small joints of the knees, hips and hands.
●As long as you are a man, you always worry about whether you have cancer when you are sitting. When we are in our fifties, it is possible that our prostate is hypertrophy. Nine out of ten men experience benign prostate hypertrophy after the age of 50. While affecting urination, it also causes frequent urination. Not only troublesome, but also painful. People will pray that they don’t have cancer, but the best way is to check it out.
When I was in my sixties:
●We are worried about our hearts. Age is the number one risk factor for heart disease, and heart disease is the world's number one killer.In developed countries, heart disease is the main cause of death, but in low- and middle-income countries, 80% of the causes of death are cardiovascular disease . In the United States, 83% of the population over the age of 65 die from coronary artery disease. Globally, nearly 30% of the causes of death are cardiovascular disease.
●If it is a male, the prostate will continue to be enlarged. The proportion of men suffering from prostate hypertrophy has increased year by year. This disease affects men's sleep at night and makes them go to the toilet extremely frequently every day.
●Start feel the changes in the skin. The skin becomes thinner and loses a certain barrier function, which cannot moisturize and prevent external objects from invading. Older spots begin to appear, and the skin's resistance to cancer is gradually weakening.
●Our noses and ears seem to have grown bigger, partly because the fat surrounding the nose and ears is reduced.
● Loss the ability to regulate body temperature to a certain extent, and is more likely to feel cold or heatstroke than before.
Stills of the movie "Although Alice".
●Become a high-risk group for cancer. If you don’t have cancer, you can almost be sure that someone with a friend or family member has cancer.
●Can gradually lose hearing. The ability of the ear and brain to recognize sounds, two mechanisms usually deteriorate with age. The most common form of hearing loss is "hearing decline in the elderly", which not only affects the ears, but also impairs the ability to listen to various sounds.
●The walking speed gradually slows down. The normal walking speed of healthy elderly people is about one-fifth slower than that of young people. The distance for elderly people to walk will not change much due to age, but their pace will shrink.
●As mentioned earlier, the elderly have to face the dangers brought by gravity. According to research from Cleveland Medical Center, falls are the main cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries to the elderly.
In our seventies:
●We forget more things and we process information slowly. People inevitably make mistakes in memory, and we have good ways to solve and make up for such mistakes. However, if you are worried that you may have Alzheimer's disease, there are new ways to test it out to determine whether you are Alzheimer's disease now or whether you will have Alzheimer's disease in the next decade. It can better integrate experience and knowledge into your own unique insights, and it can also focus more on positive emotions. At the same time, several aging phenomena have also emerged, including hormone changes and cognitive decline, which may lead to depression.
●The ability to control excretion is gradually decreasing. The bladder wall becomes less elastic, thus reducing the amount of urine that could be stored. Our bladder muscles become weak, making it increasingly difficult to empty the urine in the bladder, which in turn leads to urinary incontinence. For elderly people over 65 years old, one in ten people has bladder control problems.
●Slowly lose sensory abilities. By the age of seventies, our vision and hearing gradually degenerate to a point that can affect our lives. For the elderly over 70 years old, one out of six people has serious visual problems. When they are in their 80s, this proportion will double. One of the four people, over 70 years old, has hearing impairment.
When we were in our 80s:
●If we were still alive, some people with less healthy bodies began to get sick from their fifties, sixties and seventies, and they also came to us at this time. In addition, we are increasingly likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. From the age of 65, every year, the chances of suffering from Alzheimer's disease double. Older people over 85 have half the chance of suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
●The loss of subcutaneous fat makes our skin thin, sagging and bruising easily. Elderly people who lose a lot of body fat will feel that their skin is directly hanging on the bones.
stills of the movie "Poetry".
When we were in our nineties:
●We live longer than almost all those born in the same year. The proportion of people who live to this age continues to rise every year, but in some ways, we are often healthier than many of our friends in our 80s. People of this age are often staggeringly resistant to illness.If we live to the age of 100, we may be surprised that we are still alive; what is even more surprising is that there are still many people who live to the age of 100.
Loneliness and isolation accelerate the occurrence of elderly diseases
In order to break the restrictions on elderly diseases, people need social interaction, but the elderly often cannot take this step because of shame. The elderly are trapped in loneliness and isolation, which is a kind of sadness. Loneliness and isolation accelerate the occurrence of elderly diseases. A survey of people who think they are lonely in their fifties found that these people are more likely to have arterial stenosis problems, which may cause hypertension in severe cases. Loneliness can also cause physical depletion, which is not surprising because it aggravates some inflammation and increases the stress level of a person.
stills of the movie "Poetry".
Loneliness doubles the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The mortality rate of lonely people is higher than that of non-loving people. They are more likely to recur old diseases, including cardiovascular disease, viral infections, hip fractures and cancer. Loneliness and isolation can also change our genetic structure, thus causing adverse effects. "The biological impact of social isolation can penetrate into our most basic internal processes, which are our genetic activities," said Steve Cole, a researcher at the UCLA School of Medicine. Cole's team found that people who have been in a state of loneliness for a long time "have a specific pattern of genetic manifestations in their immune systems." They found that the genes of these lonely people tend to be over-expressed, which triggers activation and inflammation of the immune system.
This article is excerpted from "When the World is Old and Poor: The Great Impact of Global Aging". It has been deleted and modified from the original text. The subtitle was added by the editor and is not owned by the original text. It has been authorized by the publisher to publish.
Author丨[US] Ted Fishman
excerpt丨An Ye
edit丨Wang Qing
proofreading丨Zhao Lin
Source: Beijing News
