Risk and Resilience

By 2030, it is estimated that 20% of the US population will be over 65 years of age, and that by age 80, 75% of adults will have one or more severe disabilities. Determining preventive models for age-related diseases, frailty, and functional decline is critical. As such, we are confronted with an old question; one that is being faced with an increasing sense of urgency. Simply put, "What does it mean to age?" Research in the healthcare field has maintained a long-standing conflict between the mind-body division in understanding the course of aging. Risk and Resilience was written as a means to [once again] bring that conflict into question by studying the long-term aspects of stress over time, and its effects on neuroendocrine and immune systems’ biological markers that contribute to the aging process. Studies have shown that dysregulation of inflammatory pathways and hormonal axes have been identified in age-related diseases. Risk & Resilience supports these findings by identifying the interrelationship of specific psychosocial stressors and biological markers in the aging process as well as the possibility to develop at-risk and resilient profiles for the aging individual.