Maintaining Flexibility Through the Years

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 If you're active, have a cardiovascular balance, strengths, and a workout style, you might think you've got it covered. But no, that's not the case, not at all. There's still another area that most people, a lot of men, overlook: flexibility. For those of you who can't remember the last time you did yoga or did a toe curl without bending your knees, flexibility is much more vital than you think, and improving it could even add years to your life. Here's what you need to know: Being flexible isn't just about extending your legs or performing difficult body contortions like you would at the gym, but also about maintaining movement. Flexibility is the ability to move through the range of motion of a joint, according to Alex Rothstein, an American exercise physiologist and professor of exercise science at New York Tech. Elasticity is the passive ability to move through a range of motion, and mobility is the active ability to move, he adds. Here are five re...

The Role of Social Health in Longevity

 Based on the premise that social factors are key to male health, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the University of California (UC) San Francisco have created a database of older men's social attributes, which they condensed into a very useful questionnaire that helps determine how long an elderly person will live, according to a comprehensive and revealing study. Recently published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), this work, which was featured in the Spanish journal Entre Mayores, has applications in both clinical and research settings, both in population health.

The study in which the analysis was conducted based its data on 8,250 adults over the age of 65, 22 of whom had died during the four-year study period. The prediction methods were based on a machine learning tool called LASSO, which focused on 183 possible social predictive factors. After decoupling those 183 factors, it was found that eight of these, or actually eight, predicted the person's death in that four year period living in a dirty neighborhood, having a low perceived level of control over one's economic situation, having infrequent meetings with children.

Longevity and aging

Regarding this topic, it is not unusual to recall that there are studies that highlight the risk that loneliness poses to human health, similar to the risk posed by smoking, physical inactivity, or being overweight. Lonely people have more cortisol, the hormone that generates stress, which makes them more prone to various pathologies such as heart disease, Alzheimer's, and hypertension. Sachin J. Shah, a scientist and physician at MGH and a faculty member at the School of Based on the findings, they developed a nineteenth century survey that uses age, gender, and social characteristics to predict life expectancy, as previously mentioned.

He calls it the Social Fragility Index, and in his own words, it also predicts other important outcomes for older adults, such as independent living. Therefore, stated another of the study's authors, Kenneth E. Covinsky, a clinical researcher in the Division of Geriatrics at UC San Francisco, "ignoring social risks can worsen inequalities. Shah and his colleagues are currently working on every aspect of testing their finding in the future and for their survey to be included in medical research as complementary activities to the prophylactic use of advanced care planning to help older adults undertake advanced care planning and balance interventions with other chimpanzees.

The impact of chronic conditions on the elderly

However, it must be handled with care and cannot be used to reduce support for older patients at risk above average, since a patient is "socially fragile." However, it will undoubtedly be of enormous help in identifying those who, in the social stakes, make the measures they have adopted to address the social problems that affect their health, according to what policymakers and professional researchers often see developing in fields related to aging and health. The aim to increase the lifespan of human beings is hardly a new case for science.

Thus, we recall the successful measures achieved in recent research, conducted over 13 years by researchers from a biotechnology company spun off from Harvard's Wyss Institute, who were able to double the lifespan remaining in several old" mice through cellular reprogramming. But not only that, it is crucial to give years to life and also to give life to the years through active and healthy aging, through health promotion and prevention. Good ageing, or active and healthy aging, is the way to move forward in the health and quality of life of older people.

The importance of prevention

Life expectancy in Spain is one of the highest in the world, equal to 83 years, 86 for women and 80 for men. However, it adds that the number of years of healthy life, or life expectancy in good health, is 66 years, because chronic diseases or mental and physical problems increase with age, and the quality of life decreases. Healthy life expectancy introduces a new perspective to the quantity life, also measuring its quality. Spain ranks fourth in Europe in terms of the highest number of older people within the European Union, slightly behind Germany, France, and Italy. Currently, 20 percent of the Spanish population is over sixty-five, but with the imminent arrival of the baby boom generation, this 20 percent is expected to surpass that number and reach 30 percent by 2050.

Chronic diseases significantly impact the older population, causing not only a series of health problems but also a range of quality of life issues. Therefore, they are the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 63% of all unintentional deaths annually. Understanding age increases the risk and likelihood of developing and decompensating for most chronic diseases. Chronic diseases are defined as those that, by nature, are long-term illnesses or disorders that develop gradually. Chronic diseases are the new major epidemic of the 21st century, according to the Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology.

Conclusion

The WHO defines chronic diseases as those with a percentage of long-term morbidity and slow progression, and are often a significant factor in premature mortality. Their onset and development are highly dependent on the age, social class, lifestyles of older adults, and quality of life. All of this, without forgetting mental health and depression, especially as a consequence of unwanted loneliness, which shortens life expectancy, worsens health, and diminishes happiness. As we already know, being single in Spain is a risk factor.

After the age of 75, the probability of unwanted loneliness in Spain is 12%, with a higher incidence among women. Finally, we shouldn't forget to mention the so-called geriatric syndromes, or complex health syndromes, that occur in old age. Sepsis is frequently caused by a series of underlying factors that affect health, such as frailty, urinary incontinence, collapse, delirium, and pressure ulcers, among others. Geriatric syndrome has two relevant characteristics its behavior and the way it occurs. It is due to a combination of two or more diseases or problems related to the passage of time.

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