Review lecture 20 chapter 20

Editor's Notes

• #4: 3
• #5: 4
• #6: Instructions: Click to start video. According to the animation, what are the indicators of senescence in the brain during middle adulthood?
• #7: 6
• #8: Instructions: Click to play a video about changes in vision during adulthood. Based on the demonstration in this video clip, how would you describe what seeing is like for someone who has experienced age-related vision changes?
• #9: 8
• #10: 9
• #11: Instruction: Click on each of the graphs to reveal data. Rates of smoking for women increased in the twentieth century, so decreased later than for men. Fifty years ago, more women died form the “female cancers” (breast, uterine, or ovarian) than from lung cancer, but in 2008, about twice as many women died from lung cancer as from the combined total of those other three types (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2009). The World Health Organization calls tobacco “the single largest preventable cause of death and chronic disease in the world today” (Blas & Kurup, 2010, p. 199). In China, for example, where 350 million adults now smoke, the rate of lung cancer deaths almost tripled from 1975 to 2005 (Xin, 2008).
• #12: Instruction: Click twice to reveal the corresponding data for all countries by gender. In the United States, longitudinal research finds that adults gain one two pounds a year on average, much more than their grandparents’ generation did during adulthood. The basic problem is consumption of too many high-calorie foods combined with too little activity—a combination that leads to obesity for about half of all U.S. adults over 30 and about one-fourth of adults worldwide (World Health Organization Global InfoBase, 2010).
• #13: Instruction: Click each group to reveal the data from the year 2007. Excess weight increases the risk of every chronic disease; one example is diabetes, rapidly becoming more common and causing eye, heart, and foot problems as well as early death. The United States is the world leader in obesity and diabetes. Regular physical activity protects against serious illness even if a person has other undesirable health habits such as smoking and overeating. Exercise reduces blood pressure; strengthens the heart and lungs; and makes depression, osteoporosis, heart disease, arthritis, and even some cancers less likely. In general, eating fewer calories and less fat is more important for weight loss than are specifics. Also, the best predictor of maintaining weight loss is an hour of exercise a day (Shai & Stampfer, 2009).
• #14: Instruction: Click to reveal the data. On average women live five years longer than men. This gender difference could be biological—the second X chromosome or extra estrogen could protect women from some illnesses. It also might be cultural since women tend to have more friends and take better care of themselves. Morbidity does not necessarily correlate with mortality. In the United States, almost half of older women have osteoarthritis, but none die of it. Women also have higher rates of morbidity for almost every chronic disease.
• #15: Instructions: Disability occurs because of some physical, mental, or emotional condition. Vitality refers to how a person feels physically, intellectually, and socially. Click to reveal one person’s DALY calculation. Click to reveal one person’s QALY calculation. A major reason for calculating DALYs or QALYs is to decide how to allocate public funds for health. No society spends enough to enable everyone to live life to the fullest. Without some measure of disability and vitality, the best health care goes to whoever has the most money. Here’s one example involving the use of tax dollars: Does a community spend this money on extremely low-birth-weight newborns or young college students’ kidney dialysis? If care of 500-gram babies costs $10 million per life saved yet those infants who survived were severely disabled, while dialysis cost $10,000 per life saved and the survivors led vital adult lives, then dialysis would be the priority. But would it matter if those damaged kidneys were the result of drug abuse?
• #16: Instruction: Click to reveal data for each racial group. This study shows that in the United States, those who are foreign-born appear to be healthier than those who are native-born. Could an explanation be that higher SES and healthier people immigrate—even though in the United States they may be at he bottom of the social ladder? Research suggests that something more than this “healthy immigrant” theory is at work (Bates et al., 2008). Perhaps there are psychological or ethnic influences in other cultures that reduce drug use and increase nutrition and exercise.