Maintaining Sensual Aliveness – Adult Health and Wellness

What Are the Physiological Changes of Normal Aging?

From conception to our early twenties, aging involves growth, maturation, and learning. Then, sometime in our late twenties, the growth process slows down and deterioration begins. Some human abilities, such as athletic strength, agility, and sexual potency, tend to peak for many of us by age 30. Other abilities, such as business acuity and social savoir-fair, continue to expand and improve with practice over a lifetime.

• Height

Height tends to gradually decrease due to normal posture changes and increased compression of joints, spinal vertebrae, and discs. By our 80’s, some of us have lost as much as 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) in height.

• Hearing

Decline of hearing acuity, especially with higher pitched tones, changing speech tones, and background noise, tends to accelerate after age 55, and decline more rapidly in men (which can be frustrating to female partners with higher pitched voices). Shorter stature from birth and loss of height may also be associated with hearing loss.

A study conducted at the University of Sweden compared the hearing acuity of two groups of about 500 men.

- Among the workers exposed to noise at work, those who were short had worse hearing than expected for their age
- Short workers were three times more likely to have hearing loss compared with taller workers
- Short workers were 12 times more likely than taller workers to be taking medication

• Eyesight

Beginning in our 40’s, as the lens becomes more flexible, most of us experience a decline in near vision, peripheral vision, depth judgment, clarity of colors, visual sharpness, and night vision. From our 50’s on, many of us have decreased visibility with glare, with lower levels of light and more difficulty detecting moving objects. From our 70’s on, ability to distinguish fine details may decline. Puffiness and skin folds under the eye are caused by thinning of the connective tissue septa that holds the orbital fat in position.

• Taste

As we age, there is a decrease in taste buds and saliva, which tends to lower our ability to distinguish between different flavors. To improve our enjoyment of food, it is important to display foods with a variety of colors, textures and smells.

• Smell

Our ability to detect different smells also tends to decrease as we age. Adding additional spices and varied flavors is helpful.

• Touch and Kinesthetic Sense

Aging is associated with decreased sensitivity to touch, often leading to lowered sexual activity, but perhaps requiring greater sensitivity from partners, enhancement of all the senses, and longer periods of time to allow sensual pleasure to increase. Aging is also associated with decreased ability to balance, often leading to accidents and injuries, which can be prevented by becoming more careful and deliberate in one’s physical actions.

Dr. Erica Goodstone has helped thousands of men, women, couples, and groups to develop greater awareness of the issues in their relationships and their lives, to overcome and alleviate stressors and discords, and revitalize their relationships and their own mind-body-spirit connection. Dr. Goodstone can be contacted through her web sites at http://www.DrEricaWellness.com and http://www.SexualReawakening.com