High school is hard. On top of having to deal with immature boys, teen drama, an annoying brother, an annoying father, and an annoying mother, I am also on the precipice of adulthood. And it feels like standing at the edge of a mountain, staring down at the unknown abyss only hearing the sounds of those who came before. I mean you, you’re all set. Your life is gooood, who wouldn’t want to be a judge at a forensics tournament waking up early on a Saturday morning that you can usually spend sleeping in just to support a kid here; who may or may not end up going home with a big shiny trophy, that seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by and will eventually end up being another remnant of their idyllic teenage years. I on the …show more content…
Professor Denham Harman at the University of Nebraska states that “aging can be defined as the accumulation of diverse deleterious changes occurring in cells and tissues with advancing age that are responsible for the increased risk of disease and death”. So in the words that people like us can understand, aging is “the process of growing old.” We all age and grow up, we are all older than we were the day before. But how do we grow up? Well, aging affects our bodies, both physically and mentally. So let’s start off by getting physical… with aging. As time passes, aging affects the way we appear, starting right when we are conceived. One factor that changes as we age is our height. During our birth and puberty, we have growth spurts; however, Gerontologists have discovered that once we reach the age of 40, we actually begin to shrink about four-tenths of an inch every decade. The disks between the vertebrae of our spines progressively become thinner as we age which compresses our spines. Other signs of aging can be found on our skin. As the years pass, ultraviolet light penetrates our skin and breaks down the elastic fibers, damaging them and causing our skin to become less elastic, causing wrinkles to develop. Aging affects us in many ways, especially our …show more content…
With every day that passes, more information is found that causes us to fear aging, more so in women than in men. Society has molded a shape and form we must look, defining what beauty is by their rules and where aging characteristics don’t fit in. With this fear, it is passed down through generations, where children begin grow fearful of aging. Every imperfection people see today lead them to make rash decisions to fit the mold of what beauty is, attempting to improve their looks, and their self-esteem. These decisions result from an increase in “teen toxing”, where teens receive anti-aging injectables. However, the increase in plastic surgery and Botox is not only found in the younger generations. There has been a 509 percent increase in all ages using these procedures in the past 15 years. If people can’t afford reversing aging with Botox, people invest their income in products like creams and masks to prevent aging. People are so focused on stopping aging from affecting their futures with these short term solutions, that they don’t realize they’re ruining their opportunity of living a long and healthy life. So, instead of going to the easiest method of preventing aging, we should accept our futures and our fate to make out the best of it. That’s what people in Blue Zones do. Blue Zones are areas in the world where people live better and longer lives than others from different areas. What makes these