IN my growing up years Zambia was a lot gentler. People were much more forgiving of each other and family was a lot more important.
The countryside was much more peaceful and people took you based on your word. Families were a lot larger and the extended family a lot more extended.
Zambia was a lot richer and jobs a lot easier to find. With economic decline in the late 1970s and 1980s life became harsher and so did the people.
In those days in the 1960s family meant something. We knew where our village was and we knew our kith and kin. I am not sure if that can be said of many of our children now.
Zambia now 50year, itself, has aged weather for the better or not is a matter perhaps of opinion.
We took at least one trip a year to both my mother and father’s village outside Mansa in the area of Chipili Mission. My father always spoke of retiring to the village and farming.
So, I got to know both my maternal and paternal Grandparents quite well. The two men were a stark contrast to each other.
My maternal grandfather, a man of royal descent, at least so we were told, lingers in my memory as a slight man, seated in a low wooden stool made of animal skin smoking a pipe.
My paternal grandfather was a loud active man with a fenced off compound in front of his house which was always alive with the local brew and lots of elderly men.
He drunk the local brew out of a snout and criticized the social failings of his children and grandchildren.
My maternal grandmother was a kindly woman who split her time between hustling up food for us from her declining kitchen and restraining her husband from constantly insulting the grandchildren. I never had the pleasure of meeting my maternal grandmother who died years before I was born.
With the decline in life expectancy over the years in Zambia the health of the elderly has been in rapid decline.
With the change in life style, habits and communities the health of elderly people has come under decidedly heavy pressure.
In this respect men suffer worse in health deterioration with increasing age than women do. Therefore, you will observe that even in Zambia men will die at least 5 to 10 years earlier than women do. The current life expectancy for men in Zambia is 54years while that for women is 58 years.
Most people resist ageing. Women in particular do it by refusing to talk about their age. Some stagnate their age artificially at 35years.
The process of ageing is indifferent to all these attempts at holding on to youth. Therefore, eventually we all have to succumb to the effects of ageing. However, it is perhaps prudent to accept early that ageing is inevitable and to co operate with the ageing process in such a way as to retain youthful health for as long as we can. The art of doing this will be the core of our discussion. The Ageing process begins generally at 50years and three key areas of ageing are
1.The Mind
2.The Soul (Heart)
3.The Body
The Mind
It is ironic that the first organ to develop is the brain and it is also perhaps appropriately one of the first to suffer the effects of ageing.
By the age of 2 the brain is fully developed. It helps to guide the development of all other organs. With increasing age the number of cells in the brain begins to decline.
Therefore, as you get older both your cognitive (reason capacity) and memory (recall) begin to decline.
The brain generally becomes smaller as people age. The ability to make rapid complex connections within the brain circuitry, which is important in learning declines.
I notice this all the time when I try to play computer games with my son. When this deterioration is severe or rapid the result is a condition called dementia.
This is the typical grandparent who forgets his own name and also gets lost in his own house. He or she keeps asking the grandchildren each time they visit, so whose children are you?
The eyes and ears don’t fare any better. Around 40 years old most people will be holding a book at arm’s length to read, a condition called presbyopia.
The lens of the eye becomes stiff and their reading distance becomes longer. So like me you have reading glasses scattered all over the house and office.
The hearing mechanism also decline and typically you have to shout right into the ears to be heard.
Memory for recent events decline while typically grandfather remembers the Second World War in graphic detail and the appearance of the famous Sir Evelyn Hone the last Governor of Northern Rhodesia.
How can one preserve this nature decline in brain function? The secret is to preload the brain. Much like the road engineers preload the Ndola Kitwe dual carriage way when they know that copper laden trucks will drive down that way compared to what they might do in a road for domestic traffic.
In simple terms, make sure you stretch the brain to its maximum capacity, so that when it begins to decline with age it is big enough to take the hit.
So in short be active with your mind through, reading writing and various creative activities that foster the nerve cell to develop.
This will preserve you intelligence, speech and memory. Your diet and vitamin suppliments with Zinc, Selenium and Omega 3 fats will preserve the nerves and delay nerve ageing.
The Soul.
More precisely the heart, unlike the brain the heart never rests. The heart is a mechanical pump. If you buy a water pump from the shops, and the shop assistant tells you this pump has a life span of 20 years. No doubt you will think the person is joking.
This is because most mechanical pumps will fail within 5 years of use and need replacement. The heart is an amazing organ in this regard, because it keeps pumping without resting for close on to 75years, for many people in the world.
With age the heart muscle weakens, the blood vessels clog up with food and thicken. This means the heart pumps against more resistance and therefore needs to do more work inspite of its getting older.
This is why high blood pressure is common with increasing age. That little extra bit of salt you love so much sucks into the blood stream a little bit more fluid and makes the lifting of the blood by the heart that much harder.
The heart lifts 40kgs of blood every minute that comes to one 2.5 ton truck every hour. With age the vessels narrow and there is less blood reaching the tips of the fingers and toes.
The results are that many elderly people get cramps in their calf muscles when they walk or climb stairs.
Some will have numbness in the feet and painful sores on the feet. When the heart is over worked and not getting enough blood itself then a person may get a heart attack.
Heart attacks or Myocardial infarction is more common in the elderly. When this clogging occurs in the blood vessels to the brain the condition is called a stroke.
Strokes are more common with increase in age. What can be done to keep the heart working well and healthy as one gets older.
The simplest advice is regular exercises. The easiest is rapid walking that raises the pulse above 100 beats per minute. This trains the heart to work well, long and efficiently.
You must make this cardiovascular conditioning exercise part of your lifestyle. You must do this daily for at least 15minutes in a day.
The next important thing to do is make sure you do not eat food that may clog up and narrow your vessels.
Eat white meat such as fish and chicken that contains good fats (polyunsaturated fats). These fats clean the blood vessels and keep them from clogging. Take low dose aspirin daily 75mg per day. This makes the blood thin and allows it to flow easily in the blood system. – kbowa@yahoo.com
(WE WILL CONTINUE, EXPLORING ON THE BODY AND CONCLUSION NEXT WEEK)
The author is Professor of Urology at the Copperbelt University; he is Dean of the Copperbelt University School of Medicine. He is author of the popular motivational book “Making the Cut”