In my own life, 40 has finally arrived. Am I old? No. Should I feel old? Why?
School is twenty years in the past for myself, and yet, everyday is a learning experience for me. I am still learning astronomy and engineering from The Science Channel, and I am engaged in a daily pursuit of learning to be a better computer programmer.
I was one of those unlucky soles in that I graduated from high school in 1983. My choice career since 1979 was that of a computer programmer. In 1983, when I entered college, I was stoked. I was going after my dream to be a computer programmer.
Unfortunately, I was relegated to gaining my education from a two-year college, whose computer science teacher chose to live in the past. The college that was close to my home was my starting point in my college career, and they were stuck in the technologies of the 1960's and 1970's.
While in high school, I had been privileged enough to be able to have Personal Computers in the classroom. I was able to be schooled in computer programming on TRS-80's (fondly called Trash 80's by those who used them) and on the first Apple Computers to enter the marketplace.
The writing was on the wall. The future of computer programming was in the personal computer market. Yet, our instructor would only teach us Fortran, an already dying language. (By the mid- to late-1980's, nearly every major business had done away with those massive mainframe computers that relied upon the Fortran operating system.)
It was a very frustrating time in my life. I left college, disillusioned in the fact that I could not learn the kind of programming that I wanted to do in my life.
Move forward eleven years into the future. It was 1994 and Windows 3.11 was the computer operating system of choice. Now, that was a long time ago.
In 1994, I hooked myself up with my first personal computer, and then began the self-teaching process. In 2001, I began teaching computer programming to students who were paying for Adult Continuing Education courses as our local vo-tech.
For me, programming is an everyday learning experience. This past weekend, I was finally able to break through in my understanding of a concept that I had previously had a lot of problems in comprehending.
It was two days past my 40th birthday, and I had a major learning breakthrough. Even at 40, I am still young in heart and mind.
If I were to contribute only one thing to my youthful feelings that would be the fact that even at 40, I find time in my day to learn new things.
Are you continuing your education, or are you among the poor folks who are praying for time to race by so that you may enter into retirement? (the average person lives only 3 years past retirement. why should you be racing to the grave? instead, contemplate the possibility of racing to a life worth living...)
Adult Continuing Education is a worthwhile endeavor, whether you are 25, 40 or 85. Please endeavor yourself to learn something new today. You will feel much better once you have done so.
You Are Getting Old
The condition results in aches, pains and swelling in the joints and the areas immediately near them that it sometimes becomes too painful to move around. Gout is a more aggrevated form of arthritis but there are in fact a lot of types of arthritis to begin with but all of them have one thing in common which is the pain and swelling. More known as osteoarthritis, it mostly occur in people over 40 that have experienced excessive wear and tear of the joints and the bones within. Our bones have ends that are coated with a soft flexible material similar to collagen that acts as the main lubricant and brevents bone to bone contact. As one ages, the process of building and rebuilding the protective layer diminishes and results in inflammation due to bone contact. This is painful and debilitating without medication.
The disease has to do with the lubricating sac which sits in between major limb joints such as the ones in the knees and foot. It is a chronic disease and can even relust in the loss of function of the affected limb if not corrected. The areas between the joints of the bigger bones have a fluid sac (synovium) that contains synovial fluid that acts like the hydraulic fluid that fills shock absorbers on your car. This flud regulates and absorbs much of the forces that are excerted on the bones preventing them from contacting one another thus from damage. In rheumatoid arthritis, the synovial sac becomes inflammed and uncorrected can thin down so much it leaves the bones in contact with each other destroying the cartilage and bone in the process. The process of inflammation that is so characteristic of rheumatiod arthritis is not restricted to the bones but can also affect other organs in the human body.
The disease is a result of too much uric acid in the blood that the body fails to eliminate through urine. the excessive urates in the blood forms urate crystals in and around the joints that produces swelling and pain that can also be mistaken for arthritis. The pain becomes so unbearable that it can prevent movement of the affected joints so much that it restricts activity. Hyperurecimia is the name of the condition whereby the human body fails to eliminate the urates in the blood which leads to the disease but is easily corrected with the intake of uric acid expelling medication that enhances the ability of the body to expel such in the urine.
As the human body ages, certain parts fail to repair themselves and you might be surprised to find out that hearing loss is 4 times more common than vision loss among the elderly. Conductive hearing loss results form excessive earwax that accumulates inside the ear canal preventing sound from travelling all the way through. There can also be some changes in the brain that causes this to occur and along with mechanical damage (results from trauma to the inner ear that is mostly irreversible) leding to deafness. Mechanical damage can happen to younger people as a result of injuries to the head or ear itself as with a foreign body that pierces the ear membrane that can cause an infection. Tinnitus is characterized by a distressing noise within the hearing system and its many parts that can be brought about by old age. Menieres Disease is worse than the previous for it has vertigo accompanying the hearing loss and deafening sound often resilting in imbalance. Most of the inner ear once damage is beyond repair except for some that can be operated on and corrected through mechanical means.
Memory loss is one of the trademarks of old age but new studies that engaging the mind in rigorous activities and getting it to work keeps it active and at pace with the world. Old age memory can be compared to an overloaded switchboard that prevents memories from getting stored. As far as research is concerned, memories are formed when neurons interconnect with each other, a process which slows down with age. Neurons halt or develop slowly as age takes hold with forgetfullness as a result. Stress, even at a younger age promotes the production of a chemical compound called cortisol that is harmful to the brain cells. Reducing stress thereby reduces the amount of he compound in the brain reducing the degenerative effects of age on the brain and body.
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