ANT220H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Superoxide Dismutase, Vascular Dementia, Rheumatoid Arthritis
Document Summary
Increased susceptibility to disease se to loss of vitality: extended exposure over a life time to stresses causing disease, the accumulated effects of wear and over usage of various body parts. Increases in the average lifespan have depended primarily on preventing infectious diase and reducing infant mortality. How age is not only influenced by our evolutionary past but also our biocultural present. Lifestyle has a tremendous influence on mortality in old age. At around 30 years old facial wrinkles start to develop as a result of several different age related processes: collagen declines, which makes skin stiffer, the skin becomes thinner. After age 40, scalp hair becomes thinner: diamerter and distribution, mald pattern baldness. As people get older, they get shorter long term efecys of gravitu which leads to comprssion of the vertebral column. People become heavier: basal metabolic rate declines ar a rate of about 3 percent every 10 years.
