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The
aging process itself also introduces many changes in normal bodily processes.
These changes may range in severity and potential for harm, from fairly
innocuous to mildly inconvenient to significantly troublesome. In addition,
they can complicate other health problems and their treatment. Some of
these changes include:
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Changes
in liver and kidney function—these changes are complex,
but in general produce a slowdown in the rate at which these organs
can process, excrete, and clear certain substances, such as medicines,
from the body. Since standard dosages of medicines are based on how
long they stay in the average person's body before they are eliminated,
this slowdown in older people's elimination systems means that those
standard dosages could be way off and need adjustment.
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Changes
in sleep patterns—as people age, they tend to have
greater difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and maintaining
the deeper sleep cycles needed for full restful slumber, all of which
can have significant effects on health and general wellbeing.
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Changes
in percent of body fat—this figure tends to rise with
age, which can have consequences for cardiovascular health. Also,
since many medicines are fat-soluble and thus tend to persist in a
person's body fat, an increase in body fat can interfere in complicated
ways with the dosages of medicines taken by older people.
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Menopause and post-menopausal issues—the
end of the reproductive cycle in women not only produces a number
of uncomfortable side-effect, but also has been shown to increase
the risk factors for a number of health issues, including osteoporosis
(as mentioned before), certain kinds of cancer, and Parkinson's disease,
just to name a few. However, some forms of hormone replacement therapy
given to combat these risks and side-effects have been shown by some
medical studies to raise risks of other health problems themselves,
such as breast cancer and heart disease.
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