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Asked by anon-181139 on 1 Jun 2018.
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Liza Selley answered on 1 Jun 2018:
You’d think so listening to your parents complaining about birthdays and wrinkles but ageing is actually a natural process. It shares some features with diseases e.g. muscle loss and can leave us more susceptible to diseases like heart failure or cancer but the process itself is quite normal. There are plenty of good lifestyle choices we can make to help us stay healthy for longer so I’m not going to worry about it just yet!
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Donna MacCallum answered on 1 Jun 2018:
good question… ageing is not a disease, but is a natural process… cells can only divide so many times and most of the cells in our body aren’t actually dividing any more… eventually they will die.
You could call ageing a disease as it is a progressive thing which is a disorder of the normal structure or function, but it is not an infectious disease…
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Jason Chu answered on 2 Jun 2018:
Like Liza and Donna have said, I completely agree. Ageing isn’t a disease, it’s a completely natural process! And different factors can affect how long we live.
But as a side-point that I have always found interesting.
Many different species in the animal kingdom (e.g. octopus, squids and salmon) don’t live as long as humans. After these animals have carried out their important role of having children and passing on their genes – they die. So, why do other species stick around and get old? -
Alex Haragan answered on 2 Jun 2018:
I don’t disagree with the others on this – but as an alternative point of view:
I think it depends on what you mean by disease.
You might say that “disease” means when some or all of your body isn’t working normally.
Now normal for a 5 week old baby is very different to a 5 year old child. And normal for 18 years and normal for 80 years is also very different!
But even a fit and healthy 100 year old can’t run a marathon as well as someone much younger than them (on average, and certainly compared to how that same person might have done at 30).
Aging is normal – but if we had the ability to stop it would we?
I don’t think its really a disease – but it does shares features with the general notion of disease (such as loss of function), and if we had a “cure”, I suspect many people would take it.
Just food for thought – its not like we can do anything about it (yet) but as the others have said – we can do lots to make sure we age healthily!
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Hannah Farley answered on 3 Jun 2018:
No. It’s a risk factor for some diseases, but then being a kid puts you at higher risk of some diseases too (generally infectious things like coughs and colds, and some things that only affect newborns). and things like ezcema and asthma tend to be worse in children. When you’re in hospital or at the doctors then often they will take a “history” to work out your particular risk factors for different diseases. You can’t control aging (also no aging = no birthday cake or presents) but you can control other risk factors, like smoking and physical activity levels.
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Laura Hemming answered on 4 Jun 2018:
From a psychological point of view, aging itself isn’t a disease. In fact, in terms of mental health problems, there tends to be a peak in children and adolescents, and then later again in life around mid-30’s. This isn’t to say that older people don’t experience mental health problems though. In fact, there is currently a lot of research which looks at this, as this population are often ignored in mental health research.
Comments
Damian commented on :
Yes it is! If it happens faster than normal, , or as a result of another disease, or to parts of the body when and where it shouldn’t. In fact, ageing and cancer share quite a lot of similar biological processes. And especially, ageing can contribute to certain diseases. This is why diseases like cancer and osteoarthritis and dementia occur much more commonly in older people than younger people.