My readers may have wondered my silence over the past three months. I was in hospital; over two periods of eight days, for health check in January and February 2023, each at two different hospitals in Essex. What I learned over this period is something I will never forget.
One of my Consultants at Queen’s Hospital, Romford when questioned stated, “don’t worry when you reach your age, diseases common to ageing like dementia have lost their potency, or don’t have their virility. Another Rheumatologist asked me whether I had gone home to Sri Lanka. When I told him it was over six years ago, he said,: “You are natural sunshine starved, it is high time you some of the natural sunshine, so go and spend a long overdue holiday in the Sun,” as he prescribed me high strength (dosage) Vitamin D tablets.
The ageing – from youth to old age
In your twenties, you are OK, with life and expectations just getting started. You are excited with all the opportunities that open to you.
Your thirties, are generally a hard grind, hard work, kids and mortgage.
Your forties, are pretty good with life’s challenges.
Your fifties are really awesome.
Your sixties are even better, with the mid-sixties learning to live retirement.
Your seventies start to get harder in many ways.
Your eighties are a real struggle, everything hurts and your friends are all passing away, leaving you lonely and seeking solace?
Your nineties, if you live that long, seems like, “what was that dear?” or “who are you?” or” are we there yet?” You are really not able to tend for yourself, you try to “walk like a duck” and” talk very little, about yourself?”
Life as we age feels like a bell curve. I guess, it is different for every “oldie?” But one thing for sure, we get slower and slower doing the chores that we took seconds, if not momentary minutes, or took for granted?
Age come with ailments
As anyone might expect, age is not a number, it comes with ailments. Slowing down process is part and parcel of ageing. More pain, in places, I thought I didn’t know existed. Tending to not eat much anymore, losing weight, muscles weak. Dependency, is the synonym for old age. Really, depending on way the health-wind blows, longing for the sun to come out of the clouds?
Longevity is another word for ageing
There is a lot of truth on the assessment of family history of longevity. My Grand dad, (my mother’s father) lived well into his nineties, my family genealogy, rather genetic makeup too, needs more scrutiny.
The body ageing is not anything new, but the process of ageing is at different rates, at different countries. When you were born, and what was happening to the world around you, I think, has a lot to do with longevity.
In most developed countries, advances in our knowledge of age are associated with treatment of disease, some with medicine, but most, I reckon, with mind-set. Diseases have far outpaced advances in the understanding of the fundamental ageing process. The onset and spread of the ageing process are also fairly individual, and sometimes depending on the decade of birth, the health condition, nutrition, exercise, work environment among other considerations?
All in all, my question to my readers, “Can you control the ageing process? If so in what way, is it still a possibility?
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