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Two Things that Bite Surreptitiously
Cardiac disease
- Sudden, unpredictable incapacitation
- Two new terms for you:
- Vascular biology
- Endothelial dysfunction
Senility
- Gradual, subtle erosion of intellect and judgment
- Alzheimer's versus multi-infarct dementia -
- Alzheimer's: a disease of the brain substance
- Multi-infarct dementia: a disease of the brain vessels
- In 1964, Spieth showed that pilots who had heart disease experienced more mental deterioration than healthy older pilots.
Notes:
If we are interested in unexpected physical problems that occur with age, and that can cause incapacitation, two are very important.
More than half of men and women die of cardiovascular disease, and every year 6 to 12 of us die while piloting airplanes. This is not trivial to the folks living in the houses below, nor to the passengers and the heirs.
Senility is not common, but is important because it sneaks up on us unawares, and may be too subtle to notice.
The two main causes of senility are Alzheimer-type dementia and multi-infarct dementia (due to sick blood vessels).