Dr. George L. Dixon - "Talking Fitness"

Lets talk about getting older. (If you are interested, please read on) There are three phases of life: 1. embryonic, 2. healthy adult, and 3. senescence. The first two can be discussed elsewhere.

Senescence is when cellular maintenance, renewal and repair become less effective and cells begin to die and do not get replaced, and collections of cells called organs don't function as well.

Renewal failure is when tissue and cells which normally do so, fail to regenerate and divide.

Deterioration and death of specialized cells occurs. Those cells which don't normally regenerate and divide such as brain tissue, neurons, and muscle tissue cells.

Chemical changes occur in the tissue which connects all of your parts together, called connective tissue (whoever said doctors don't use sensible words!), which results in some loss of elasticity and some stiffness of all your moving parts.

The causes of aging are just beginning to be unraveled. They seem to be split into genetic possibilities and physiological theories.

Genetic possibilities are that we are totally programmed from birth and we are just going to live so long and that's it and you had better enjoy it. Other thoughts are that the program is indeed an evolutionary biological clock but that it is not programmed for the ending; but is programmed for events. Life ends by accumulated errors in the program events when cells begin not to repair and divide, etc.

Physiological theories point to decline in control mechanisms which many think is due to stress. (Certain amounts of stress are necessary to defend yourself as a organism through life.) Decline in control mechanisms may lead to slow impairment in the immune systems which leads in turn to renewal failure, deterioration, and chemical changes which we talked about before.

Your main purpose in reading this far is to have me tell you the way to reverse these processes and delay the onset of physical and mental problems. The simple answer is I don't know. I do know that raising your physical and mental activity levels will provide the most effective deterrent to the changes.

We will talk about specific physical and mental changes of aging and how to recognize those that you can avoid and those you probably cannot in later columns .

THE OLDER I GET, THE BETTER I WAS.(Pastor Gary Benjamin, Garnett, KS, 1996)

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