Physical Frailty: A Biological Marker of Aging?

Excerpt

Intrinsic capacity is defined as the resilience that an individual has to overcome a variety of environmental, physical and psychological factors (1). A person’s intrinsic capacity is created by their genes and a number of life style factors, e.g., exercise and diet, health care, e.g., vaccines and environmental. Intrinsic capacity tends to peak between 30 to 40 years, after which it slowly declines (2) (Figure 1). Frailty is defined when a person declines at a more rapid rate than that normally seen with the decline in age-related intrinsic capacity. Frail persons are at a greater risk of decline when exposed to stressors (3). In modern geriatrics frailty is interpreted as being a transitional process between a resident individual and one with disability (4, 5).

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