Old age, one of the important stages of life, is a progressive and general loss seen first in functional spare capacity and then in functional structure. When does aging begin? I think the correct answer starts with birth. After birth, the development of the individual's body continues and aging also accompanies it. Functional capacity increases continuously in the early years of life and reaches its maximum level in adolescence and young ages. The decrease in functional capacity is a physiological process that begins to manifest itself in the thirties and continues throughout life. In this process, the biochemical composition of tissues changes, the response to changes in the organism decreases, and the capacity to adapt decreases. Old age is not a disease. Psychologically, old age begins with the loss of spiritual excitement. The aging process is slow as long as the excitement about life remains. As aging accelerates, the risk of disease development and thus the death rate increases.
THE ELDER is a person who has reached the last stages of his life, the capacity of his vital functions has decreased, and his relationship with the environment has begun to become difficult. Nowadays, senility and old age are increasing rapidly. The rate of old age has also increased in our country. The old age of the society is defined according to the proportion of people over the age of 65 in the society. If 7% of the population is under the age of 65, it is called a young population. If 14% of the population is over the age of 65, we are talking about an elderly society. In addition, the transition period from the young population to the elderly population is also important. While these periods are around 100 years in developed countries, they are shorter in underdeveloped and developing countries. For example, while aging is 115 years in France, it is 27 years for China and 21 years for Tunisia. It is estimated that these values will be similar in our country. The increase in the elderly population has accelerated in Turkey. Life expectancy has increased in our country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has made sub-definitions for the elderly population. The age of 65 is generally accepted as the beginning of old age. WHO defines those aged 65-74 as "young" elderly, those aged 75-84 as "middle" elderly, and those over 85 as "advanced" elderly. He calls those over 100 years old "centenarians". Today, there are over 5000 "centenarians" in Turkey. There is an essence.
In addition to calendar age, what is actually important is biological age. What is important here is not the date of birth, but the affected state of the organs and tissues. While in the past only age at birth was taken into account in treatment processes, today life expectancy and biological status have begun to be taken into consideration. Biological aging can be delayed by people's education, diet, exercise and sports. In developed countries, the population of healthy elderly people and their social impact is increasing due to the increase in the elderly population. Old age should be taken into consideration in situations such as labor force participation, illness, nutrition, medicine, migrations, tourism, education and international relations. It may be possible to increase access to health, improve physical conditions, increase social solidarity, enable the elderly population to live healthy and reduce the burden on society.
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