Do more for senior citizens in their twilight years

by A.L. Ibralebbe, SLAS

It is a fact that man has to pass through several stages in his life such as the infancy, childhood, the teenage period, the middle age and finally the old age out of these it can be said that the most challenging period one has to face is the final stage in life which brings in its wake its own challenges and problems.

The foremost among the issues connected with old age is the sense of desolation and loneliness that sets in. Having led a life of intense activity and hard work and either retiring from service or reducing the work load one suddenly finds that there is hardly anything to do in life other than pondering over all what had happened in the past. When physical ageing process starts, a person becomes unable to perform activities in the same way that they used to do before.

The immediate family members too discourage him from doing something on his own fearing that he may lose his balance.

For those who have got used to the habit of reading books and papers could be good companions. The illiterate who cannot read have nothing to but sit idly.

Fortunate

It is not everybody that retires or becomes old who are financially sound.

Those who are fortunate enough to receive a pension or derive a good income from their properties or the interest from their saving could to some extent stand on their own feet and not depend on relatives or friends. It is the plight of those old people who have no means of any income whatsoever that is heart rending.

They become unwanted people within the family circle and in some cases even their very children forsake them or leave them in elder's homes.

When the parents become feeble due to their old age they even get their property written in their names and drive the old couple on to the road. Such is the unfortunate situation that is prevailing, mostly in the Asian; African and Latin American countries unlike in the western world where there are special safeguards for elderly people.

In almost every country in the West there are state sponsored health insurance schemes for the elders. The moment someone falls sick he is given the best medical facilities and the state doctors even visit the patient's homes. Moreover, even the private medical institutions and pharmacies in the west charge a very nominal rate for elderly patients. In countries such as our's it is the other way about. There are no such special concessions for aged patients. It is a common sight to see scores of elderly people waiting for hours in government or private medical institutions with no special consideration shown to them.

On the emotional side too the aged people stand sidelined. Due to the age gap the members of the younger generation misunderstand and mistrust them. The values cultivated by both sides are quite contradictory. The younger generation lives in a world of its own and the advice and counselling of the elderly members in the family are no longer sought. This too affects the mental balance of the elders.

As one grows old, health complications too becomes a factor, Nowadays one could hardly find a elderly person who does not use some kind of a drug for an ailment peculiar to him. The prices of the drugs are now exorbitant and beyond the reach of a poor person. Some injections cost as much as thirty to forty thousand rupees.

Resource

As the days pass by, people forget the fact that older people are a huge resource base. They have higher educational qualifications, higher amount of training in varied fields and long experience. Over the years they have gathered a vast amount of knowledge, higher amount of training and experience.In Sri Lanka there is a very high rate of migration-both internally and externally. Many young people do migrate seeking better job opportunities leaving their old parents behind.

As a result the ageing population suffers from a high degree of isolation. When the partner dies too the surviving one would have to retire into a world of utter desolation and loneliness. Moreover, in Sri Lanka's context males are usually taken care of by females. So if the wife dies early, the husband becomes totally isolated. Therefore, taking into consideration the factors enumerated above, it is time that the society as a whole looks at the problems of the elders from a different angle and evolve constructive measures to enliven the lives of the senior citizens of the country in their twilight years.

Suggestions

1. Social Organisations should undertake a thorough study of the problems confronting the elderly in Sri Lanka.

2. A free health insurance scheme should be introduced to cover at least those who are within the age bracket of 65 years and beyond.

3. The print and electronic media must be used extensively to focus attention on the need to look after the elderly people.

4. The government too could utilise the vast store house of knowledge and experience the elderly possess by opening avenues for them to get engaged in work in a constructive manner.

Scientists can gauge skin's true age with new laser technique

Wrinkles, dryness, and a translucent and fragile appearance are hallmarks of old skin, caused by the natural aging of skin cells. But while most of us can recognise the signs of lost youth when we peer into the mirror each morning, scientists do not have a standardised way to measure the extent of age damage in skin.

Now a group of Taiwanese researchers has used a specialised microscope to peer harmlessly beneath the skin surface to measure natural age-related changes in the sizes of skin cells.

The results, which are published in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Biomedical Optics Express, can be used to study the general phenomenon of skin aging and may help provide an index for measuring the effectiveness of 'anti-aging' skin products.

In the study, Chi-Kuang Sun, a distinguished professor at National Taiwan University and chief director of the university's Molecular Imaging Center, along with medical researcher and dermatologist Yi-Hua Liao and colleagues, evaluated 52 subjects ranging in age from 19 to 79 years old.

The researchers focused a brief burst of infrared laser light into the skin of the subjects' inner forearms, an area that is generally protected from sun damage, which accelerates natural aging. The beam penetrated to a depth of about 300 millionths of a metre, or approximately where the epidermis (the upper layer of skin) and the dermis (the lower layer) meet.

The researchers used a technique known as harmonic generation microscopy (HGM), which has previously been used to study developing embryos. In the procedure, a concentrated beam of photons is sent into a material.

The photons naturally oscillate at a particular frequency, and as they interact with the material, they generate "harmonics" - vibrations that are multiples of the original frequency, which are characteristic of the material structure and properties.

For example, the second harmonic is twice the original frequency and the third harmonic is three times the original frequency. In an imaging system, harmonics can reveal different structures at very high resolution.

In their study, the team scanned for reflected second and third harmonic photons, and from those measurements, produced a high-resolution 3-D map of the tissue that revealed structures within the skin cells.

Natural aging, the scanning showed, caused a significant increase in the overall size of cells known as basal keratinocytes - the most common cells in the outermost layer of skin - as well as in the sizes of their nuclei.

However, other types of skin cells, known as granular cells, did not show a similar pattern.

Thus, says Sun, the relative changes in the two types of cells can serve as an index for scoring natural or "intrinsic" skin aging - the aging of skin caused by programmed developmental or genetic factors.

"No one has ever seen through a person's skin to determine his or her age from their skin," says Sun. "Our finding serves as a potential index for skin age."

A skin age index would provide a standardised, quantitative scale that could be used rate the true "age" of skin, from young (less age-related damage) to old (more age-related damage).

The scale could give doctors another tool to monitor the overall health of skin - by investigating whether the skin of certain individuals or populations ages faster or slower than average, tracking the aging of an individual's skin over time, or testing how effective anti-aging treatments are at slowing the rate of skin aging.

Intrinsic, or chronological, aging is different from extrinsic aging, which is caused primarily by sun exposure. "There are a lot of extrinsic factors that can accelerate the aging process, such as smoking, ultraviolet light, and stress" says Sun. The researchers found that the extent of extrinsic skin aging in their study subjects varied depending on occupation, personal habits, and skin type, but because the researchers looked at skin on the sun-protected inner forearm, their findings provide a measure of the primarily genetically-based intrinsic skin aging.

"This could provide an index for someone who cares about the health of their skin and might also provide a test-bed for measuring the effectiveness of 'anti-aging' skin products," Sun says.

"Of course," he and Liao joke, "you could set an HGM scanner at the entrance to a bar, so you can know whether a person is over 21 years old and permitted for entry."

- MNT

Generic drugs often have incorrect safety labelling

Despite U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations requiring generic medications to carry identical warnings to those on corresponding brand-name products, a study by Regenstrief Institute researchers has found that more than two-thirds of generic drugs have safety-warning labels that differ from the equivalent brand-name drug.The investigators reviewed 9,105 product labels for over 1,500 drugs available on DailyMed, an online repository of labeling information maintained by the FDA and the National Library of Medicine. Of the 1,040 drugs with more than one manufacturer's label, 68 percent showed some discrepancies within their safety information.

The majority of generics showed relatively small differences across their labels, but nine percent showed differences of more than 10 side effects. Errors included out-of-date information, incomplete data and, in one case, information for the wrong drug altogether. "Physicians frequently use labeling information, either directly or indirectly, to make prescribing decisions. They need to know about side effects, drug interactions and other safety issues," said Regenstrief Institute investigator Jon Duke, assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, who led the study.

"We found that generic drug labels may contain incomplete or incorrect safety information. Until this problem is resolved, physicians and patients should rely on brand drug labeling only, even when the patient is getting a generic version of a drug."

Information on medication side effects are often conveyed to patients by their doctors or by pharmacists through information sheets accompanying a pharmacy purchase. These information sheets are based on the medication labels.

Safety studies are conducted by the brand name manufacturer before the medication goes on the market. The FDA does not require that the generic manufacturer duplicate these studies.

The researchers extracted drug safety data from medication labels using the Structured Product Label Information Coder and Extractor, or SPLICER, a software application created by Dr. Duke and colleagues. In a previous study, SPLICER was shown to have an accuracy of 94 percent.

"The solution to the problem of labeling inconsistency may be a centralised listing of drug side-effects, maintained independently of individual manufacturer labels. Drug labels would simply reference this common repository rather than attempting to maintain all the information within a single document. Clinicians could refer to this resource for the most up-to-date safety information regardless of generic manufacturer," Dr. Duke said.

- MNT

Experts discover why Rudolph's nose is red

Researchers solve the age-old mystery of why Rudolph has a bright red nose

Rudolph's nose is red because it is richly supplied with red blood cells which help to protect it from freezing and to regulate brain temperature.

This superior "nasal micro-circulation" is essential for pulling Santa Claus's sleigh under extreme temperatures, reveals a study in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com.

Tiny blood cells (known as micro-vessels) in the nose are vital for delivering oxygen, controlling inflammation, and regulating temperature, but few studies have assessed their function in detail.

Knowing how important this regulation is for flying reindeer, who have to deal with extremes of temperature while pulling a sleigh, researchers in the Netherlands and Norway set out to test whether Rudolph's infamous red nose was due to "a highly dense and rich nasal micro-circulation" compared with human noses.

Using a hand-held video microscope, they first assessed the noses of five healthy human volunteers and found a circulating blood vessel density of 15 mm/mm2.

When the technique was applied to two reindeer noses, the researchers found a 25 percent higher density of blood vessels, carrying a super-rich concentration of red blood cells.

They also found a high density of mucous glands scattered throughout the reindeer noses, which they say helps "maintain an optimal nasal climate during changing weather conditions and extremes of temperature as well as being responsible for fluid transport and acting as a barrier."

Infra-red thermal images showed that reindeer do indeed have red noses.

"The micro-circulation of the nasal mucosa in reindeer is richly vascularised and 25 percent denser than that in humans," say the authors. "These factors explain why the nose of Rudolph, the lead flying reindeer employed by Santa Claus to pull his sleigh, is red and well adapted to carrying out his duties in extreme temperatures."

- MNT