Why is Healing Slower in People with Old Age?

Taking care of yourself when you were young is the utmost priority by your parents. But as you age, you get to be responsible for your safety and health. You might notice when you were young that you often get bruises, scratches, and wounds that usually heal after a couple of days, and you're good to go.

According to Medline Plus, wounds are injuries that break the skin and other tissues found in the body. They added that these injuries might come from accidents; however, they also emphasize that surgeries, sutures, and stitches may also cause a wound. They emphasized that wounds should be cleaned and treated no matter how serious it is.

(Photo: Hans Braxmeier)

But as you age, the healing of these wounds is getting slower, and you might feel the pain more than when you were younger. According to a professor of medicine from the University of Pittsburgh, Matthew Steinhauser, MD, said in the conversation that decades of life slow down healing for most tissues and wounds in the skin can offer a window into why the slowdown process happens. He also mentioned that there are stages of wound healing.

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Stages of Wound Healing

According to Dr. Steinhauser, as stated in the conversation, the first stage is inflammation, where it is the cleaning process of the body in the wound area. He added that during this stage, phagocytes protect and discard bacteria on the area of the wound. Then, the regenerative process will begin, where the replacement of skin cells will undergo. Dr. Sheinhauser notes that the regenerative phase is quick, although the new skin is fragile. He stresses that the final remodeling as the third phase activates and usually lasts until a couple of years as the new skin is reinforced and strengthened by various parallel processes.

How is it affected by Age?

The healing process will always be absolute and remain in these three stages for a healthy and almost perfect reinforcement of the wounded area. However, Harvard Medical School said that healing becomes slower because there are lower stem cells and growth factors in the skin as we age. According to Harvard Medical School professor and Brigham and Women's Hospital's Wound Care Center Medical Director, Dennis Orgill, MD, Ph.D., said in Harvard Health Publishing that chronic disease, especially blood vessel disease, and malnutrition, may also be able to slow the healing process.

Dr. Steinhauser said in the conversation that aging can disrupt the well-organized progression of healing through health problems that roots from diseases an individual gets as they age. He utilized diabetes as an example in his article, in which he said that this disease negatively affects the healing through the narrowing of blood vessels. He emphasized that this condition affects the distribution of vital nutrients, and oxygen will not reach most of the wound to progress to the regenerative phase.

Also, Dr. Steinhauser added that cells age through time and lose their ability to divide, which is essential in wound healing. He furthered that aging and senescent immune cells cannot defend the wound from dangerous bacteria, causing a serious risk for infection. This only means that taking care of the body while young and diminishing oneself of the risk for serious chronic illness and blood vessel diseases will make healing wounds still efficient and functional.

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