module 1: aging and frailty

what are the two perspectives of aging in terms of society?

• positive: natural, wisdom etc

• negative: anti aging tools, something to fight against

what is aging?

• biological elements

• infancy → older physiological decline

how old really is your body?

it depends!! some is brand new some is as old as you are

how often are are hairs on your head replaced

2 - 7 years

how often are your fingernails replaced?

every 6 months

how often is gut epithelium replaced?

2 - 9 days

how often is the epidermis replaced?

2 - 4 weeks

how often are red blood cells replaced?

4 months

how often is the skeleton replaced?

every 10 years

how often are muscles replaced?

every 15 years

how long does the lens last?

for your entire life

what is chronological age?

how old you actually are

what is visible age

how old you look

what is psychological age

how old you feel

social age

how others perceive us

what do we know about aging?

• universal

• inevitable

• can be influenced by genetic and environmental factors

• normal

• decreases ability to internal/external stressors

what happens when we age?

increased vulnerability to frailty, diseases and mortality

THE HALLMARKS OF AGING

what is genomic instability?

damage to dna leading to deleterious affects

what is telomere attrition?

as we age telomeres shorten - leading to derogation of cell survival

what is epigenetic alterations?

chemical modifications to our chromosomes to our DNA

what is loss of proteostasis

proteins that function normally become damaged leading to an over/under production of proteins

what is deregulated nutrient sensing?

what is mitochondrial dysfunction?

we will have less energy

what is cellular senescence

cells that rapidly divide slow down - can result in apoptosis

what is stem cells exhaustion

stem cells slow down or stop being produced?

what is altered intercellular communication?

a breakdown in communication impacting our physiological function

what is happening to the average human age?

it is rising - due to medical, nutrition and environment changes

what is the average lifespan in canada?

80 - 85 maybe even higher

what is happening due to people living longer?

we are seeing more age related diseases

what is fraility?

a clinical recognizable state of increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes

do you have to be older to be frail?

no

what is pre frail?

exposed to stressor (fall) and is able to rebound back to same health level prior to exposure

what is a frail ?

exposed to stressor (fall) and is NOT able to rebound back to same health level prior to exposure

domains of frailty

• physical (e.g. low grip strength, low physical activity, sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass & strength))

• nutritional (e.g. low energy, unintentional weight loss)

• sensory (e.g. reflexes, gait, and/or balance deficits)

• cognitive / mental (e.g. attention deficits and or disease)

what are ways of assessing frailty?

frailty phenotype

frailty index

what is frailty phenotype

when a person has 3 or more of the following: weight loss, weakness, poor endurane, poor enegry, slowness and low physical activity.

if a person has 2 then theyre pre frail

what is frailty index?

a ratio of how many tasks you struggled on out of total tasks

why is it important to study fraility?

frail people are the largest users of our health care systems - studying frailty could help us improve frailty