Via practica 12/2007

THE PROCESS OF ANTIAGEING (PREVENTION IN GERONTOLOGY)

All people are getting old in the same way, however, aging is an individual process in every human. Senescence is characterised by heterochronicity – variousness of onset of the visible symptoms of growing old, and various expression of aging process in different structures of organism (e.g. in kidney), as well. Some parameters of organism are progressively diminishing after reaching mature age, others are not changing or are increasing. There are general basic mechanisms and symptoms of aging and individual variability of them as well. Gerontology focuses on prolonging of individual life span – and maybe of mankind as such, on improving quality of life, and on prevention of the age-related deterioration and pathology. In addition to aging, there exists a process of antiageing which is a common notion in scientific literature. Antiageing is not only a counterbalance of the process of getting older, but it primarily triggers new forms of functional organisation promoting the increase of organims adaptibility during the evolution. In other words, ageing and anti-ageing are important factors of the organism evolution.

Keywords: antiageing, ageing, gerontosociology, prevention.