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 An aging body is like an old car. From the outside, its age is obvious. Gray hair and wrinkled skin are as much signs of years gone by as rust and chipped paint. On the inside, aging is a lot more complicated. Body parts, like car parts, don’t all respond the same to time’s passing. Just as brakes wear faster than an engine, knees may be creaky while the brain is still sharp
Though sense perceptions such as taste and smell dull with age in some, it is not something that occurs in all individuals. Marc Heft, Ph.D., director of the Claude Pepper Center for Research on Oral Health in Aging at University of Florida’s College of Dentistry, has found, for example, that despite the fact that women are better than men at distinguishing subtle differences in fragrances, the ability to smell at age 80 is not significandy different dian at age 16. “,” says Dr. Heft. “The trudi is mere is only a modest change in sensory functioning. There are a number of older folks diat can smell and taste just as well as many of die young.” Dr. Heft and his associates found that less dian 10% of the differences in sensory perceptions are age-related.

There is a belief that with aging, everything deteriorates. This may not be completely true. Though sense perceptions such as taste and smell diminish with aging it does not occur in all individuals. There are a number of elderly persons who can smell and taste just as well as any young person. But many other functions of the body do decrease with aging. As many as 30 million Americans experience some hearing loss, which increases as one ages. But the deterioration in hearing may also be partly genetic or due to   accumulated exposure to excessive levels of noise. Many old persons living in quiet places have perfect hearing well into their eighties and nineties.

One major malady of aging is the decrease in mental capacity and susceptibility to brain degenerative ailments. Mental ability decline need not be a natural and unavoidable con­sequence of old age. While mental abilities decline and dementia double every five years above age of 60, this decline that does not occur always is often preventable or even reversible. Many cases of impaired brain function can be due to poor blood flow to the brain, toxin accumulation in the brain, or deficiencies of various nutrients, such as vitamins B12 and E.  By focusing attention on these issues a very healthy mental capacity can be maintained.  More importantly the mind should always be subjected to challenges by using it productively and more often.

Aging can be made as successful and gracious as possible. Many studies have clearly shown that middle-aged people who adopted a healthy lifestyle, who maintained proper weight, didn’t smoke, and who exercised, lived longer than those who did not. More importantly they had fewer health related problems and remained free of even minor disabilities almost till their end which was well into nineties and above. 
 

Individuals who had the worst lifestyles were 50% more likely to die by age 75, and twice as likely to be disabled.7 Given the increasing scientific focus on aging and accelerating increase in medical knowledge in the field of longevity, extraordinary discoveries and achievements in life exten­sion surely await us.

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