1. The Developing Person Through the Life Span
Late Adulthood:
Biosocial Development

2. Prejudice and Predictions
Ageism
A prejudice in which people are categorized and judged solely on the basis of their chronological age.
Considers people as part of a category and not as individuals, can target people of any age.
Elderspeak
A condescending way of speaking to older adults that resembles baby talk, with short, simple sentences, exaggerated emphasis, repetition, and a slower rate and higher pitch than normal speech.

3. Believing the Stereotype
The Elderly’s View of Ageism
Ageism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stereotype threat can be as debilitating for the aged as for other groups.
Ageism: prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a person's age.
Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about
their social group.
The opposite of stereotype threat is stereotype boost, which is when people perform better than they otherwise would have, because of exposure to positive stereotypes about their social group. A variant of stereotype boost is stereotype lift, which is people achieving better performance because of exposure to negative stereotypes about other social groups

4. Gerontology and Geriatrics
The multidisciplinary study of old age.
Geriatrics
The medical specialty devoted to aging.

5. The Demographic Shift Demographic shift Centenarians
A shift in the proportions of the population of various ages
Once there were 20 times more children than older people
Centenarians
People who’ve lived 100 years or more
The fastest-growing age group
Americans are more racially and ethnically diverse than in the past, and the U.S. is projected to be even more diverse in the coming decades.
Asia has replaced Latin America (including Mexico) as the biggest source of new immigrants to the U.S.
America’s demographic changes are shifting the electorate – and American politics. The 2016 electorate will be the most diverse in U.S. history due to strong growth among Hispanic eligible voters, particularly U.S.-born youth. There are also wide gaps opening up between the generations on many social and political issues. Young adult Millennials are much more likely than their elders to hold liberal views on many political and social issues, though they are also less likely to identify with either political party: 50% call themselves political independents.
Millennials, young adults born after 1980, are the new generation to watch. They have likely surpassed Baby Boomers (born ) as the largest U.S. generation and differ significantly from their elders in many ways. They are the most racially diverse generation in American history: 43% of Millennial adults are non-white, the highest share of any generation. And while they are on track to be the most educated generation to date, this achievement has come at a cost: Many Millennials are struggling with student debt. In addition to the weak labor market of recent years, student debt is perhaps one reason why many are still living at home. Despite these troubles, Millennials are the most upbeat about their financial future: More than eight-in-ten say they either currently have enough money to lead the lives they want or expect to in the future.
Women’s role in the labor force and leadership positions has grown dramatically.
The American family is changing. After decades of declining marriage rates, the share of American adults who have never been married is at an historic high. Two-parent households are on the decline in the U.S., while divorce, remarriage and cohabitation are on the rise. About one-in-six American kids now live in a blended family. And the roles of mothers and fathers are converging, due in part to the rise of breadwinner moms. Dads are doing more housework and child care, while moms are doing more paid work outside the home. Americans are conflicted about some aspects of this change: While nearly half of two-parent households have a mom and dad who both work full time, 51% of Americans say children are better off with a mother at home.
The share of Americans who live in middle class households is shrinking. The share of U.S. adults living in middle-income households fell to 50% in 2015, after more than four decades in which those households served as the nation’s economic majority. And the financial gaps between middle- and upper-income Americans have widened, with upper-income households holding 49% of U.S. aggregate household income (up from 29% in 1970) and seven times as much wealth as middle-income households (up from three times as much in 1983). Most Americans say the government doesn’t do enough to help the middle class, and neither political party is widely viewed as a champion for middle-class interests.
Christians are declining as a share of the U.S. population, and the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion has grown. While the U.S. remains home to more Christians than any other country, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christian dropped from 78% in 2007 to 71% in By contrast, the religiously unaffiliated have surged seven percentage points in that time span to make up 23% of U.S. adults last year. This trend has been driven in large part by Millennials, 35% of whom are religious “nones.” The rise of the “nones” is not a story unique to the U.S.: The unaffiliated are now the second-largest religious group in 48% of the world’s nations. Americans are well aware of this shift: 72% say religion’s influence on public life is waning, and most who say this see it as a bad thing.
The world’s religious makeup will look a lot different by 2050: Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion, mostly because Muslims are younger and have more children than any other religious group globally. By 2050, the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians. In the U.S., the Muslim population will remain small, but is projected to grow rapidly.
The world is aging. The demographic future for the U.S. and the world looks very different than the recent past. Growth from 1950 to 2010 was rapid — the global population nearly tripled, and the U.S. population doubled. However, population growth from 2010 to 2050 is projected to be significantly slower and is expected to tilt strongly to the oldest age groups, both globally and in the U.S. Public opinion on whether the growing number of older people is a problem varies dramatically around the world. Concern is highest in East Asia where large majorities describe aging as a major problem for their countries.

6. Demographic pyramid
A graphic representation of population as a series of stacked bars in which each age cohort is represented by one bar, with the youngest cohort at the bottom.

7. Three reasons for traditional pyramidal shape
The Demographic Shift
Three reasons for traditional pyramidal shape
Far more children were born than the replacement rate
Before modern sanitation and nutrition, many children died before age 5
Middle-aged people rarely survived adult diseases like cancer and heart attacks
Fewer babies and more elders means countries’ demographic stacks become rectangles rather than triangles, as in Germany, Italy, and Japan.

8. Old, Older, and Oldest Young-old (70%) Old-old (20%) Oldest-old (10%)
Healthy, vigorous, financially secure older adults (those aged 60 to 75) who are well integrated into the lives of their families and communities.
Old-old (20%)
Older adults (those aged 75 to 85) who suffer from physical, mental, or social deficits.
Oldest-old (10%)
Elderly adults (those over age 85) who are dependent on others for almost everything, requiring supportive services such as nursing-home care and hospital stays.

9. Primary and Secondary Aging
Primary aging
The universal and irreversible physical changes that occur to all living creatures as they grow older.
Secondary aging
The specific physical illnesses or conditions that become more common with aging but result from poor health habits, genetic vulnerability, and other influences that vary from person to person.

10. High Blood Pressure and Cardiovascular Disease
The Cardiovascular Health Study
Participants: More than 5,000 people over age 65 in the U.S. without coronary problems.
Six years later, some participants had developed heart disease.
The likelihood of CVD was strongly related to six risk factors (all more common with age):
Diabetes
Smoking
Abdominal fat
High blood pressure
Lack of exercise
High cholesterol

11. Cardiovascular disease
Disease that involves the heart and the circulatory system

12. Facts about CVD
CVD is considered secondary aging because not everyone develops it.
No single factor (including age, hypertension, inactivity, and smoking) makes CVD inevitable.
The links among aging, risk, and CVD are undeniable.
A 90-year-old is 1,000 times more likely to die of CVD than is a 30-year-old, even if both have identical genes, social contexts, and health habits
Less than half those over age 65 have CVD, diabetes, or dementia but almost everyone has at least one of these three by age 90.
Risk factors and diseases of the aged are not distributed randomly: If a person has one risk factor, it is likely that he or she has several.
CVD: Cardiovascular disease

13. Selective Optimization with Compensation
Individual Compensation: Sleep
Older adults spend more time in bed, take longer to fall asleep, wake up more often, and feel drowsy in the daytime more often.
Social Compensation: Driving
Older adults drive more slowly, may not drive at night or when there is bad weather and may give up driving altogether.
Selective Optimization With Compensation. Selective Optimization With Compensation is a strategy for improving health and wellbeing in older adults and a model for successful ageing. It is recommended that seniors select and optimize their best abilities and most intact functions while compensating for declines and losses.

15. Compression of Morbidity
A shortening of the time a person spends ill or infirm before death; accomplished by postponing illness.
Due to improvements in lifestyle, medicine, and technological aids.
North Americans who live to be 95 are likely to be independent almost all of those years
Morbidity refers to the unhealthy state of an individual, while mortality refers to the state of being mortal. Both concepts can be applied at the individual level or across a population. For example, a morbidity rate looks at the incidence of a disease across a population and/or geographic location during a single year. Mortality rate is the rate of death in a population. The two are often used together to calculate the prevalence of a disease — e.g., measles — and how likely that disease is to be deadly, particularly for certain demographics.

16. The Effects of Falling
With age, bones become more porous, losing calcium and strength. This can lead to osteoporosis where bones can be broken easily.
Most common liability elders experience from falling is fear so they reduced their activity which caused them to become sicker.

17. The Senses Senescence is pervasive and inevitable
Obvious in appearance (skin gets wrinkled, bodies change shape) and the senses.
Only 10% of people over age 65 see well without glasses.
Taste, smell, touch, and hearing are also impaired (e.g., by age 90, the average man is almost deaf, as are about half of the women).
Senescence or biological aging is the gradual deterioration of function characteristic of most complex lifeforms, arguably found in all biological kingdoms, that on the level of the organism increases mortality after maturation. The word senescence can refer either to cellular senescence or to senescence of the whole organism. It is commonly believed that cellular senescence underlies organismal senescence.

18. The Senses
Technology and Sensory Deficits: Technology can compensate for almost all sensory loss.
Visual problems:
Brighter lights and bifocals or two pairs of glasses are needed.
Cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration can be avoided or mitigated if diagnosed early.
Elaborate visual aids (canes that sense when an object is near, infrared lenses, service animals, computers that “speak” written words) allow even the legally blind to be independent.

19. The Senses

20. The Senses Auditory problems:
Small and sensitive hearing aids are available but many people still hesitate to get aids.
Missing out on bits of conversation cuts down on communication and precipitates many other social losses.
Younger people tend to yell or use elderspeak, both of which are demeaning.
Elderly people are less vulnerable to stereotype threat if they have positive interactions with the younger generations.

21. The Society and Sensory Loss
A passive acceptance of sensory loss increases morbidity of all kinds.
Problems:
It is often difficult to individualize available technology.
Ageism is inherent in the design of everything from airplane seats to shoes.
Many disabilities would disappear if the environment were better designed.

22. Theories of Aging Wear and Tear Genetic clock
A process by which the human body wears out due to the passage of time and exposure to stressors.
Genetic clock
A mechanism in the DNA of cells that regulates the aging process by triggering hormonal changes and controlling cellular reproduction and repair.

23. How Long Can Humans Live?
Maximums and Average
Maximum life span
The oldest possible age to which members of a species can live, under ideal circumstances. For humans, that age is approximately 122 years.
Average life expectancy
The number of years that the average person in a particular population is likely to live.
In the U.S. today, average life expectancy at birth is about 75 years for men and 81 years for women.
Dramatic variations from nation to nation

24. Cellular Aging Oxygen free radicals Antioxidants
Atoms of oxygen that have an unpaired electron and which can, over time, cause cancer, diabetes, and arteriosclerosis
Antioxidants
Chemical compounds that nullify the effects of oxygen free radicals by forming a bond with their unattached oxygen electron.

25. The Immune System B Cells T Cells
Immune cells made in the bone marrow that create antibodies for isolating and destroying bacteria and viruses.
T Cells
Immune cells made in the thymus gland that produce substances that attack infected cells in the body.
HIV is a virus that attacks the immune system, which is our body’s natural defense against illness. The virus destroys a type of white blood cell in the immune system called a T-helper cell, and makes copies of itself inside these cells.
AIDS refers to a set of symptoms and illnesses that occur at the very final stage of HIV infection.
Testing regularly for HIV means you can access treatment if you need it and stay healthy.

26. Replication No More Hayflick limit Telomeres Telomerase
The number of times a human cell is capable of dividing into two new cells
Telomeres
The ends of chromosomes in the cells
Telomerase
Enzyme that increases the length of telomeres
Calorie restriction
Slows down aging Calorie restriction (CR) is, to date (2016), the most successful intervention to delay ageing progression or the development of age-related chronic diseases.
The Hayflick limit is the number of times a normal human cell population will divide until cell division stops. Empirical evidence shows that the telomeres associated with each cell's DNA will get slightly shorter with each new cell division until they shorten to a critical length.
(2003) - Calorie restriction (CR) extends life span and retards age-related chronic diseases in a variety of species, including rats, mice, fish, flies, worms, and yeast. The mechanism or mechanisms through which this occurs are unclear. CR reduces metabolic rate and oxidative stress, improves insulin sensitivity, and alters neuroendocrine and sympathetic nervous system function in animals. Whether prolonged CR increases life span (or improves biomarkers of aging) in humans is unknown. In experiments of nature, humans have been subjected to periods of nonvolitional partial starvation. However, the diets in almost all of these cases have been of poor quality. The absence of adequate information on the effects of good-quality, calorie-restricted diets in nonobese humans reflects the difficulties involved in conducting long-term studies in an environment so conducive to overfeeding. Such studies in free-living persons also raise ethical and methodologic issues. Future studies in nonobese humans should focus on the effects of prolonged CR on metabolic rate, on neuroendocrine adaptations, on diverse biomarkers of aging, and on predictors of chronic age-related diseases.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 78, Issue 3, 1 September 2003, Pages 361–369,
Published: 01 September 2003

27. The Centenarians Lifestyles that promote old age:
Diet: little meat or fat
Work: even the old do work
Family and community: well integrated into family and community
Exercise and relaxation: most walk often, nap, and socialize

28. The End