The following article was posted at UnitedHealthcare’s ‘Medicare Made Clear’ resource website. It’s a great read for aging individuals.
Here is an excerpt of the article:
Just because you?re getting older, it doesn?t mean you should accept becoming frail. Frailty is not a natural part of aging, as some may think. It is a clinical condition first defined in a 2001 paper in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. The paper also proposes criteria for identifying the condition.
Some medical experts believe that doctors should screen all adults over age 70 for frailty. Six international medical organizations issued a joint call to action to that effect in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA). The statement outlines the recommended screening criteria, treatment and prevention.
What Is Frailty?
Frail older adults are tired, thin and listless. They often have many medical problems and have difficulty recovering from illness and physical set-backs. As a result, frail adults may be at greater risk of becoming disabled, dependent and dying earlier than healthy adults. A health problem such as the flu or a broken hip can become life-threatening for the frail.
A person must have three or more of the following characteristics to be considered frail:
- Low physical activity
- Muscle weakness
- Slowed performance
- Fatigue or poor endurance
- Unintentional weight loss
The entire excellent article can be found here.
