Review Article
Trevor Archer
Abstract
Normal ageing is not as harmonious and regulated as the television advertisements would have us believe: anxiolytic and pain-treating compounds are prescribed widely in a population particularly sensitive to stress with a penchance for stress-inducing cognitions and encumbered by deficits in problem-focused and emotion-focused coping styles, elevated depressive mood, and a lack of divergent thinking in these older and elder older adults. Taken together with the situation that normal human cells experience telomere shortening with each successive cell division and that aging is accompanied by a decline of executive function, a less than optimistic form of reality arises to encompass elderly population; nevertheless, it is found regularly that resistance/aerobic exercise training induces moderate improvements of cognitive domains (i.e., attention, processing, executive function, memory) in senior citizens. The purpose of the present account was to review and describe the probable and possible situation confronting ageing populations in the context of affective status and satisfaction with life, the necessity of exercise and coping applications and the preservation of telomeric length.