Two state experts on aging are warning about a potential health care crisis as the nation’s population ages, health care prices increase, and more people contract multiple agingrelated diseases.
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University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center faculty members Marie Bernard and Bruce Carnes, both with the department of geriatrics, contributed to an analysis published in the British Medical Journal in July that calls for more research on slowing the aging process.
“If you could affect the aging that gives rise to a whole array of diseases, then the modification of aging could either delay or at least reduce a whole range of diseases,” Carnes said.
Preventing illness
Preventing aging-related diseases could result in social, economic and health dividends never before seen, the study’s researchers said.
According to the report, preventative measures against individual agingrelated illnesses have been largely unsuccessful.
Diseases like Type 2 diabetes, congestive heart failure, osteoporosis and most cancers share some of the same mechanisms of aging and often accompany one another.
Aging mechanisms, according to the researchers, are adjustable and more research is needed.
Some research suggests that dietary intervention and some genetic alterations can postpone cognitive decline and autoimmune diseases — conditions that include memory loss, lupus and osteoarthritis.
Norma Muth, 70, stretches at the beginning of her exercise class at the Integris Pacer Fitness Center in Oklahoma City.
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- Video: Seniors exercise at Integris Pacer Fitness Center
WHAT THEY SAID
HEALTH ‘STARTS IN THE HOME’
Nancy Shidler, exercise physiologist and director of the Integris Pacer Health Services in Oklahoma City, knows that preventative maintenance and proper care of the body can help people transition into their older years without suffering from diseases that often accompany advancing age. She wishes that people would take care of themselves before things go wrong. “It starts with children,” she said. “Parents have an obligation to their children to demonstrate healthy behavior. It starts in the home, it starts young."
TEACH CHILDREN RESPONSIBILITY
Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a renowned expert on preventative medicine and a native Oklahoman, says that there are practical things people can do to prevent the onset of many agingrelated illnesses. Cooper said it is important to take responsibility for one’s health and prevent the illnesses that have become a part of getting older. He thinks children must also be taught responsibility and prevention when it comes to health. “People are so overwhelmed by the costs of their diseases that they can’t prevent them,” Cooper said.
Aging population grows
By the year 2030, at least 20 percent of the U.S. population will be 65 or older. This will put enormous strains on the nation’s health care system, according to Oklahoma Health Sciences Center faculty member Marie Bernard and an Institute of Medicine report published earlier this year.
BY STAFF WRITER VALLERY BROWN
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Leave a comment. Log in below or sign up (it's free).Editor's note: It is not our intent to offer comments on crime or fatality stories.