17 december 2015

Ageing is one of the oldest concerns of the human being, and knowing its symptoms and causes help us to better understanding it ant to be able of delaying it. The life expectancy has considerably increased in the last century and the medical advances make ageing slower and not as lethal as it was in the past. 

We age because the macromolecules that compose our organism lose their function with the passage of time. Which are the ageing symptoms and how are they expressed? We explain here the most important characteristics of the ageing physiology: 

1. Reducing the skin’s collagen and absorption of proteins: apparition of the first wrinkles. This is usually the first ageing symptom and it is the most noticeable symptom at first sight. The skin loses elasticity in some areas and marks the facial expression signs; with the passage of time the wrinkles are expanding to other areas of the human body. 
2. Loss of agility and of knee-jerk reaction capacity: Over the years, the time we need to respond to an stimulus lengthens. The knee-jerk reactions become slower and  to this is added the loss of agility, which can lead to the need of carring out a bigger effort when practising sports or doing basic tasks. 
3. Appearance of senile dementia: Alzheimer’s disease physiology can be diagnosed until 20 years before its most serious phase and its first symptoms are one of the characteristics of ageing. Such symptoms can be the loss of short-term memory or suffering disorientation episodes, which many times are attributed to stress but if they remain over time, they can be much more serious. 
4. Decrease of the immune capacity: with the passage of time is easier to be transmitted infectious diseases such as the flu. When the subjects are younger, they have a bigger immune capacity and can protect from these virus, but over the years this capacity is reduced.
5. Progressive loss of the hearing, taste and sight senses. Other of the most known ageing signs is the loss of hearing, which is linked to the progressive loss of other sense, such as the taste or sight. Senses are deteriorating little by little and due to ageing we lose capacity to see or listen clearly. 

Human ageing starts when the repair capacity of the body’s cells is lower than the damage that these cells suffer due to the passage of time.  In each persons this process occurs in different moments and its progress is unstoppable, but its effects can be reduced when eating a healthy diet and having a healthy lifestyle. 

In the Master in Physiology from the University of Valencia you can choose an  optional subject (if the year of start of the master is odd) on the 'physiology of the aging'. You can see more on this subject here and you can see the full curriculum of the master here.