As you get old – By Dr Harold Gunatillake
Transcript: When you are young and healthy, you enjoy life, drink with friends, patronise the local restaurants frequently with your partner and social friends, not caring about your health, going through the stress of earning wealth, a challenge we all go through.
When you are 60 and over, your life may change for a quieter life when you think of your health getting the early signs of an illness, in most cases.
Let us today discuss such early symptoms of chronic illnesses that you can take care of. Knowing these early symptoms are very important to ward off most chronic diseases.
Putting on weight due to excess eating the wrong foods and lack of exercise would be an early sign of many diseases.
You lose your youthful profile and, in most cases, get a pot belly and more generalised underthe-skin fat distribution.
This is a sure sign that plaques get formed in your arteries and increased fatty acids in your blood as triglycerides and cholesterol.You need to nip these in the bud by changing to regular exercise and going more for a plant-based diet.
Early detection of metabolic syndrome
Metabolic disease, a syndrome, i. e, a collection of symptoms, should be minimised throughout your life. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that increase your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. These conditions include increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels.
Check your blood pressure weekly with your own digital BP device. Control your blood sugar by eating foods with low glycaemic index. Check the lipid levels in your blood annually.
If you come from a family with diabetes, you need to be extra careful not to eat high glycemic foods like sweets, puddings, much rice, Rotties and so on.
You can reverse metabolic syndrome by walking daily for an hour and being careful with your diet.
Coronary heart disease
We all are scared of heart disease, mainly due to sinful lifestyles, consuming excessive fatty foods, carbs and lack of exercise.
Familial predisposition is one of the most critical risk factors for cardiovascular disease. This is also known as genetic predisposition, a hereditary condition or susceptibility to a particular disease.
If you have such a predisposition, you need to take extra care to change to a healthy lifestyle.
Kidney disease
Kidney disease is quite common among Sri Lankans. In the early stages of chronic kidney disease, you might have few signs or symptoms. You might not realise kidney disease until the condition is advanced.
If you have type 2 diabetes and are not well controlled, the kidneys may take the brunt of it, leading to kidney failure without your knowing it.
3 Warning Signs That You May Be Experiencing Kidney Failure
Dizziness and Fatigue. One of the first possible signs of weakening kidneys is the experience of overall weakness in yourself and your overall health. …
Swelling (Edema) …
Changes in urination.
You can control kidney disease by doing blood and urine tests to check long before you get such symptoms.
It would help if you did annual blood tests such as the blood creatinine and urea levels, plus a urine analysis to determine whether you are getting early kidney disease.
eGFR test, which you should know about.
What is eGFR? eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate) measures how well your kidneys work. Your eGFR is an estimated number based on a blood test and your age, sex, body type and race. eGFR is considered the most reliable test for doctors to know how well your kidneys are working You will have a blood test to see how much creatinine is in your blood. Creatinine is a waste product in your blood that comes from your muscles. Healthy kidneys take creatinine out of your blood and send it out of your body through your urine. If your kidneys are not working
the way they should, creatinine will build up in your blood.
The eGFR test report will give a number that will tell doctors the amount of creatinine in your blood. You will also get a lab report that will contain this number.
A normal eGFR is 60 or more. If your eGFR is less than 60 for three months or more, your kidneys may not work well.
In Moderate kidney function, when your eGFR drops below 45, you may have swelling in your hands and feet, back pain and urinating more or less than usual.
Keep a healthy blood pressure of less than 120/80 for most people, control your blood sugar if you have diabetes, and follow a healthy low salt- low saturated fat eating plan.
Gastro-intestinal issues
Age-related digestive and gastrointestinal flora modifications have raised the danger of developing gastrointestinal diseases in older adults. Two of the most frequent are the pylori of Helicobacter, which can trigger a fever, nausea, and heavy abdominal pain and result in long-standing illnesses like gastritis; and the increasingly prevalent infection of diarrheic.
Gut Bacteria Change as You Get Older—and May Accelerate Aging
Your large gut contains trillions of good bacteria or microbes and harmful bacteria. New findings show that the gut microbiome could help restore ageing-related immune and cognitive impairments.
A study has found that ageing is associated with microbiome changes and that these alterations are distinct from those connected to diseases or medication use. The findings raise the possibility that shifts in gut bacteria help drive the ageing process—and that protecting these microbes could help people lead longer healthier lives.
Older people had more bacteria such as Enterococcaceae, Enterobacteriaceae and genus Bacteroides, “and those are all groups of bacteria that can cause human disease.
For instance, E. coli bacteria belong to the Enterococcaceae family and can cause diarrhoea and urinary tract infections. Overall, bacteria diversity also declined as people got older, going down as people headed towards age 80. Low diversity has been linked to health problems too,
Studies have found a relationship between low bacterial diversity and Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and colorectal cancer, among other conditions.
To maintain beneficial bacterial diversity, you must focus on prebiotic and probiotic foods. Considering the gut microbiome as a factor affecting health and longevity is no new idea.
Elie Metchnikoff, believed the father of probiotics, proposed more than a century ago that targeting the gut by consuming lactic acid bacteria, such as those found in yoghurt, could delay the onset of cognitive decline associated with ageing.
So, as we age, we need to exercise more and consume plenty of pre and probiotics to delay the onset of chronic diseases.
I hope this video presentation was helpful. Stay safe, and goodbye for now.
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