WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING AGE RELATED CHANGES DECREASE IN OLDER PEOPLE (SELECT ALL THAT APPLY).
A) Pain, touch and tactile sensation
B) Conduction speed in CNS
C) Pulmonary blood flow
D) Force of pulse
E) Intellectual capability
F) Sound Judgement
G) Cerebral blood flow.
Answer.
Pain, touch and tactile sensation-
The skin muscles have receptors which recognize touch sensation, including pain. These receptors take the touch signal to the brain, which results in the feeling of touch. With age, blood flow to these receptors reduces, so, the receptors receive less signal; therefore, less signal reaches the brain. Overall, one can say that touch sensation is reduced with age.
A normal individual has about 9,000 taste buds. At the age of 40, these taste buds start decreasing and the remaining taste buds also start to atrophy. The amount of saliva production also reduces. Therefore, tactile sensation reduces with age, mostly by the age of 60.
Conduction speed in CNS- reduces in older people, especially above the age of 65. This makes them learn new things late.
Heart attack and pulmonary obstruction ranks among top five reasons for death among older adults in America. So, reduction in pulmonary blood flow occurs in older people.
Force of pulse: Blood pressure slows down with age. So, pulse also reduces, but if an old person is suffering from anxiety, then his/her pulse will be increased.
Irreversible deterioration of intellectual capability is commonly known as dementia. This is not much prevalent, and occurs in about 5-7% adults of ages above 65. On the contrary, about 30% adults over the age of 85 suffer from dementia.
Sound judgement- Moderate hearing impairment is always found in older people above the age of 65. Males suffer more from hearing impairment in comparison to women. Hearing difficulties are greater in people above the age of 75.
Cerebral blood flow also reduces with ageing. This is so because of tissue atrophy/degeneration with age.
So, all the above 7 options are correct. All of these age-related functions decrease with age.