Why can most 80-90 year old people barely walk (and not run) anymore?
In: Biology
People don’t treat their bodies nicely when they’re young and the damage stacks up over time. There are mobile old people but those people put in a lot of effort to main tain their mobility and flexibility.
It is usually a combination of joint cartilage wear & tear, cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis and other diseases associated with old age and a sedentary lifestyle. You will have outliers who can still run marathons but they made a conscious effort of maintaining an active lifestyle.
Some parts of our body regenerate/renew regularly. If you get a papercut today, your body will show no sign of that papercut in a few months.
Other parts start out the best they will ever be and just decline from there. Joint cartilage is one of those parts. It lubricates the motion of our limbs and provides some cushioning when the bones in the joint are pressed together. It’s especially crucial to the operation of knees and hips (which are, in turn, essential for walking).
When you’re in an upright position, your head and torso are pressing down on your legs. Without adequate cartilage in the hips and knees, this pressure will cause the bones to grind together as you walk. This is painful, and it also slows you down. That’s why older people will use canes or walkers. They remove some of the pressure on the lower body and place it in the upper body instead.
As you age, so does your body. Your organs are declining continuously and you lose your estrogen and testorone. Men have estrogen+testosterone in their body and woman also have testosterone+estrogen. After 50ish. It starts declining. Your body goes through hormonal change, and organs are declining and your body is much more tired from decades of work etc. That makes it difficult. I’m indian american, but my grandfather is Indian, and served in world war 1. He lived up to 90 years old, and could run and worked out often, quite a heavy smoker, he would smoke around 5 or more cigars per day. Great man.
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