Ageing and Disabilities

Introductions

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 600 million persons aged 60 and more in the year 2000, with that number expected to rise to 1.2 billion by 2025 and 2 billion by 2050. Aging can be viewed as a societal accomplishment, but it also poses a challenge in terms of health care and continuing healthy functioning for this rapidly growing population. As a result, it's critical to ensure that these extra years are not only free of chronic disease or disability, but also that mental and physical functionality is maintained. This will lessen the population's massive economic and social responsibilities. Nearly half of all health-care spending occurs after the age of 65, according to estimates.

One of the most often used expressions to describe a healthy old age is "successful aging," which was coined in the 1960s by R. J. Havighurst and defined as "adding life to the years." Throughout the decades, there was a growing recognition among biomedical experts that the quality of life may be just as significant as the number of years added to life. While a specific definition of successful aging has yet to be agreed upon, it is widely agreed that it comprises the freedom from chronic disease and the ability to operate well in old age, both physically and cognitively.

Relationship between disability and ageing

There are two kind of relationship between disability and ageing:

1. Ageing with disability -which refers to people with disability that can age with previous health disabling conditions and thanks to the increasing of the quality of socio sanitary services and sanitary services now have an increasing of life expectancy for people with disability, so they can age and live more years,
2. Disability with ageing- which refer to ageing people that become people with disability only during his/her ageing process, mainly due to age-related conditions.

Consequences between ageing and disability

Three kinds of consequences between ageing and disability.

1. Disability-related secondary conditions-People with disabilities are more likely to develop secondary conditions, either directly or indirectly (any additional physical or mental health conditions that may arise as a result of a primary disabling condition but are not a specific feature of it), which are similar to those that ageing people experience in general, but they occur 20-25 years earlier and are often referred to as premature or atypical.
2. Age-related conditions—these conditions are related to ageing and the long-term consequences of exposure to environmental risks, as well as the effects of poor health behaviors—that may be experienced by ageing persons and also by ageing people with disabilities. Hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, osteoarthritis, heart disease, gait and mobility issues, falls, respiratory infections/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, urine incontinence, osteoporosis, skin disease, hearing and vision loss, and dementia are examples of these conditions.
3. Multiple Chronic Conditions- the risk of having two or more chronic conditions at the same time, either in dyads (hypertension and diabetes) or in triads (hypertension and diabetes) (cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes).

These three kinds of relationships between ageing and disability are very closely related to one another and they have clear influences on health, quality of life, daily life, participation for ageing people and social costs, and subjective and objective burden for family and relatives. the three kinds of consequences could happen in people with disability or ageing people,with qualitative and quantitative differences, but also with similarities: persons aging with disability and older adults share a set of chronic conditions, both as a disability related secondary conditions and as age-related chronic conditions. Moreover, people with disability could experience also age-related chronic conditions and disability-related secondary conditions and ageing people and people with disability can have multiple chronic conditions. So, the similarity between the two groups is more than the differences and an approach that does not take into account these aspects could have the risk of not promoting health and wellbeing of people. Aiming to overcome these risks, a proposal is make to close the gap and create a bridge between ageing with disability and disability with ageing (and also between ageing and disability) and to focus attention to health promotion programs aimed to reduce the burden of chronic conditions of people ageing with disability.

Behavioral risk factors

Physical and social exposures, including behaviors, during the life period have a significant impact on disabilities that appear later in life. resulting in an accumulation of risks as one gets older. The four main behavioral risk factors includes: smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol, poor diet and low levels of physical activity. Behavioral risk factors in midlife have been linked to good ageing and the primary prevention or delay of disability, according to research.