Experts sometimes speak in a language hard to understand. Please use the glossary if you need an explanation of a term. It covers most of the terms.
Words are listed in alphabetical order and only those meanings related to age-related diseases and disorders are included in this glossary. This information is not a substitute for medical advice or consultation with a qualified healthcare professional.
A
ACE inhibitors
ACE stands for angiotensin-converting enzyme. These medications lower blood pressure by encouraging the blood vessels to relax and open. This promotes the free flow of blood.
Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. The word dementia describes a set of symptoms that can include memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language. These symptoms occur when the brain is damaged by certain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Analgesics
An analgesic (painkiller) is any member of the group of drugs used to achieve analgesia, relief from pain. Analgesic drugs act in various ways on the peripheral and central nervous systems. Technically, the term analgesic refers to a medication that provides relief from pain without putting you to sleep or making you lose consciousness.
Angina
Angina is a type of chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart and is a symptom of coronary artery disease. Angina, which may also be called angina pectoris, is often described as a squeezing, pressure, heaviness, tightness or pain in your chest.
Arthritis
Arthritis is an inflammation of the joints. It can affect one joint or multiple joints. There are more than 100 different types of arthritis, with different causes and treatment methods. Two of the most common types are osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Asymptomatic atrial fibrillation
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with a substantial morbidity that is primarily related to troublesome symptoms, heart failure, and thromboembolic events.People with AF suffer a variety of symptoms including chest pain, palpitations, shortness of breath, and fatigue. Some patients have no symptoms, a condition referred to as asymptomatic or “silent” AF.
Atrial fibrillation
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with a substantial morbidity that is primarily related to troublesome symptoms, heart failure, and thromboembolic events.People with AF suffer a variety of symptoms including chest pain, palpitations, shortness of breath, and fatigue.
Autonomic dysfunction
Autonomic dysfunction, or dysautonomia, develops when the nerves of the ANS (automatic nervous system) are damaged. Autonomic dysfunction can range from mild to life-threatening. It can affect part of the ANS or the entire ANS. Sometimes the conditions that cause problems are temporary and reversible. Others are chronic, or long term, and may continue to worsen over time.
Autonomic nervous system
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls several basic functions, including: heart rate, body temperature, breathing rate, digestion and sensation. You don’t have to think consciously about these systems to work, The ANS provides the connection between your brain and certain body parts, including your internal organs.
B
Benign prostatic hyperplasia
Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), also called prostate enlargement, is a noncancerous increase in size of the prostate. Symptoms may include frequent urination, trouble starting to urinate, weak stream, inability to urinate, or loss of bladder control.
Beta blockers
Beta blockers are medications that reduce your blood pressure. Beta blockers work by blocking the effects of the hormone epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. When you take beta blockers, your heart beats more slowly and with less force, thereby reducing blood pressure. Beta blockers also help blood vessels open up to improve blood flow.
Blood-brain barrier
The blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a highly selective semipermeable membrane barrier that separates the circulating blood from the brain and extracellular fluid in the central nervous system (CNS).The blood-brain barrier acts as a strict control point for what can enter the brain and is created by tight junctions between endothelial cells lining blood vessels, astrocytic endfeet and a basement membrane. The ability to cross the blood-brain membrane must be considered for drugs administered peripherally, but whose target lies inside the brain.
Botox
Botox is a drug made from a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Doctors use it in small doses to treat health problems such as an overactive bladder, chronic migraines and certain neurological disorders. Botox injections work by weakening or paralyzing certain muscles or by blocking certain nerves. The effects last about three to twelve months, depending on what you are treating.
C
Cardiovascular disease
Cardiovascular disease generally refers to conditions that involve narrowed or blocked blood vessels that can lead to a heart attack, chest pain (angina) or stroke. Other heart conditions, such as those that affect your heart's muscle, valves or rhythm, also are considered forms of heart disease.
Cardiopulmonary
Of, relating to, or affecting both the heart and lungs.
Cerebrovascular disease
Cerebrovascular disease includes a range of conditions that affect the flow of blood through the brain. This alteration of blood flow can sometimes impair the brain’s functions on either a temporary or permanent basis. When such an event occurs suddenly, it’s referred to as a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). The most common types of cerebrovascular disease are stroke, aneurysm and vascular dementia.
Chronic diseases
Chronic diseases are long-lasting conditions that usually can be controlled but not cured. People living with chronic illnesses often must manage daily symptoms that affect their quality of life, and experience acute health problems and complications that can shorten their life expectancy.
Chronic ischemic heart disease
When arteries are narrowed, less blood and oxygen reach the heart muscle. This is also called coronary artery disease and coronary heart disease. This can ultimately lead to heart attack. Ischemia often causes chest pain or discomfort known as angina pectoris.
Cognitive decline
Cognitive decline is a response to the aging of neurons and the decreased speed at which the brain functions. Cognitive decline simply means that your brain doesn't work as well as it used to.
Comorbidities
Comorbidity is the presence of one or more additional diseases or disorders co-occurring with (that is, concomitant or concurrent with) a primary disease or disorder; in the countable sense of the term, a comorbidity (plural comorbidities) is each additional disorder or disease.
COPD
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common lung disease. Having COPD makes it hard to breathe. There are two main forms of COPD: chronic bronchitis, which involves a long-term cough with mucus and emphysema, which involves damage to the lungs over time. Most people with COPD have a combination of both conditions.
Cortisol
Cortisol is a steroid hormone that regulates a wide range of processes throughout the body, including metabolism and the immune response. It also has a very important role in helping the body respond to stress.
Cystoscope
A cystoscopy is a procedure to look inside the bladder using a thin camera called a cystoscope. A cystoscope is inserted into the urethra (the tube that carries pee out of the body) and passed into the bladder to allow a doctor or nurse to see inside.
D
Dementia
Dementia is not a specific disease. It's an overall term that describes a group of symptoms associated with a decline in memory or other thinking skills severe enough to reduce a person's ability to perform everyday activities. Alzheimer's disease accounts for 60 to 80 percent of cases.
Depression
Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed.
Diabetes
Diabetes is a number of diseases that involve problems with the hormone insulin. Normally, the pancreas (an organ behind the stomach) releases insulin to help your body store and use the sugar and fat from the food you eat. Diabetes can occur when the pancreas produces very little or no insulin, or when the body does not respond appropriately to insulin. As yet, there is no cure. People with diabetes need to manage their disease to stay healthy.
Diuretics
Diuretics, also called water pills, are medications designed to increase the amount of water and salt expelled from the body as urine. There are three types of prescription diuretics. They’re often prescribed to help treat high blood pressure, but they're used for other conditions as well.
Dysuria
Dysuria is the feeling of pain, burning, or discomfort upon urination. Although dysuria frequently indicates the presence of a urinary tract infection (UTI), it can have a variety of causes.
Dopamine
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional responses, and it enables us not only to see rewards, but to take action to move toward them. Dopamine deficiency results in Parkinson's Disease, and people with low dopamine activity may be more prone to addiction.
Dyskinesia
Dyskinesia is an abnormal, uncontrolled, involuntary movement. It can affect one body part, such as an arm, leg or the head, or it can spread over the entire body. Dyskinesia can look like fidgeting, writhing, wriggling, head bobbing or body swaying. It doesn't happen in everyone with Parkinson's, and in those who do have it, it occurs to different degrees of severity. In some people, dyskinesia may be painful or bothersome to the point that it interferes with exercise, social life or other daily activities. Dyskinesia tends to occur most often during times when other Parkinson's symptoms, such as tremor, slowness and stiffness, are well controlled. (This is what doctors and researchers call "on" with dyskinesia.) Stress or excitement can exacerbate dyskinesia.
E
ECG
An ECG (electrocardiogram) records the electrical activity of your heart at rest. It provides information about your heart rate and rhythm, and shows if there is enlargement of the heart due to high blood pressure (hypertension) or evidence of a previous heart attack (myocardial infarction).
Erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction (impotence) is the inability to get and keep an erection firm enough for sex.
F
Frailty
Frailty is theoretically defined as a clinically recognizable state of increased vulnerability resulting from aging-associated decline in reserve and function across multiple physiologic systems such that the ability to cope with everyday or acute stressors is comprised. In the absence of a gold standard, frailty has been operationally defined by Fried et al. as meeting three out of five phenotypic criteria indicating compromised energetics: low grip strength, low energy, slowed waking speed, low physical activity, and/or unintentional weight loss.
Frontotemporal dementia
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a group of related conditions resulting from the progressive degeneration of the temporal and frontal lobes of the brain. These areas of the brain play a significant role in decision-making, behavioral control, emotion and language.
H
Heart disease
Cardiovascular disease generally refers to conditions that involve narrowed or blocked blood vessels that can lead to a heart attack, chest pain (angina) or stroke. Other heart conditions, such as those that affect your heart's muscle, valves or rhythm, also are considered forms of heart disease.
Heart failure
Heart failure, sometimes known as congestive heart failure, occurs when your heart muscle doesn't pump blood as well as it should. Certain conditions, such as narrowed arteries in your heart (coronary artery disease) or high blood pressure, gradually leave your heart too weak or stiff to fill and pump efficiently.
Hematuria
Hematuria is the presence of blood in a person’s urine. The two types of hematuria are gross hematuria—when a person can see the blood in his or her urine microscopic hematuria—when a person cannot see the blood in his or her urine, yet it is seen under a microscope.
Hypertension
Hypertension is another name for high blood pressure. It can lead to severe complications and increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, and death.
I
Incontinence
Urinary incontinence is the involuntary leakage of urine. It means a person urinates when they do not want to. Control over the urinary sphincter is either lost or weakened.
L
Lewy Body
Lewy body dementia (LBD) is a disease associated with abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein in the brain. These deposits, called Lewy bodies, affect chemicals in the brain whose changes, in turn, can lead to problems with thinking, movement, behavior, and mood.
M
Malignancies
A term for diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and can invade nearby tissues. Malignant cells can also spread to other parts of the body through the blood and lymph systems.
Micturition
Urination, also called Micturition, the process of excreting urine from the urinary bladder. Nerve centres for the control of urination are located in the spinal cord, the brainstem, and the cerebral cortex (the outer substance of the large upper portion of the brain). Both involuntary and voluntary muscles are involved.
Metabolism
Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. During this complex biochemical process, calories in food and beverages are combined with oxygen to release the energy your body needs to function.
Multifactorial intervention
An individualised multifactorial intervention is an intervention with multiple components that aims to address the risk factors for falling that are identified in a person's individual multifactorial assessment.
Myocardial infarction
A heart attack. Abbreviated MI. The term "myocardial infarction" focuses on the myocardium (the heart muscle) and the changes that occur in it due to the sudden deprivation of circulating blood. The main change is necrosis (death) of myocardial tissue.
N
Neurotransmitter
Neurotransmitters are often referred to as the body's chemical messengers. They are the molecules used by the nervous system to transmit messages between neurons, or from neurons to muscles. Communication between two neurons happens in the synaptic cleft (the small gap between the synapses of neurons).
Nitroglycerine
Nitroglycerine, also known as glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), is a medication used for heart failure, high blood pressure, and to treat and prevent chest pain from not enough blood flow to the heart (angina). This includes chest pain from a heart attack. It is taken by mouth, under the tongue, applied to the skin, or by injection into a vein.
Non-pharmacological treatment
Refersto therapy that does not involve drugs. For example: physical therapy.
O
Obsessive compulsive disorders
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common, chronic and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over.
Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is a bone disease that occurs when the body loses too much bone, makes too little bone, or both. As a result, bones become weak and may break from a fall or, in serious cases, from sneezing or minor bumps. Osteoporosis means “porous bone.”
Outpatient procedure
Outpatient surgery allows a person to return home on the same day that a surgical procedure is performed. Outpatient surgery is also referred to as ambulatory surgery or same-day surgery.
P
Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson's disease affects the nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine. Parkinson's disease symptoms include muscle rigidity, tremors, and changes in speech and gait. After diagnosis, treatments can help relieve symptoms, but there is no cure.
Pelvic floor exercises
Pelvic floor exercises strengthen the muscles around your bladder, vagina or penis, and back passage. Strengthening your pelvic floor muscles can help stop incontinence and treat prolapse.
Person-centered care
Person-centred care is a way of thinking and doing things that sees the people using health and social services as equal partners in planning, developing and monitoring care to make sure it meets their needs.
Peripheral artery disease
Peripheral artery disease is a common circulatory problem in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to your limbs. When you develop peripheral artery disease (PAD), your extremities — usually your legs — don't receive enough blood flow to keep up with demand.
Pisa syndrome
Pisa syndrome is defined as a reversible lateral bending of the trunk with a tendency to lean to one side. It is a frequent and often disabling complication of Parkinson's disease,
Physiotherapy
Physiotherapy helps restore movement and function when someone is affected by injury, illness or disability.Physiotherapists help people affected by injury, illness or disability through movement and exercise, manual therapy, education and advice.
Polypharmacy
The use of multiple medicines, commonly referred to as polypharmacy is common in the older population with comorbidity, as one or more medicines may be used to treat each condition.
Post-void dribbling
Post void dribbling is defined as the leakage of a small volume of urine immediately or shortly after completing the act of urinating.
Progressive illness
A disease or physical ailment whose course in most cases is the worsening, growth, or spread of the disease. Diseases can be rapidly progressive (typically days to weeks) or slowly progressive (months to years).
Q
Quantify self-movement
Incorporates technology such as sensors and wearables to acquire data on various aspects of an individual’s life—especially health and fitness—with an aim to improve self-sensing, self-awareness and human performance within the digital health industry.
R
Renal system
Renal systemis the organ system that includes the kidneys, where urine is produced, and the ureters, bladder, and urethra for the passage, storage, and voiding of urine.
REM sleep disorders
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder is a sleep disorder in which you physically act out vivid, often unpleasant dreams with vocal sounds and sudden, often violent arm and leg movements during REM sleep — sometimes called dream-enacting behavior.
S
Spirometry
Spirometry is a common and effective diagnostic test that can easily be done in a doctor's office or at a nearby hospital or clinic. The test involves taking a big breath, and then blowing as hard and long as you can into a machine. The machine measures how much air you can blow out from your lungs and how fast you can blow it out. Spirometry is the most reliable way to test the lungs for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and asthma.
SSRI’s
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most commonly prescribed antidepressants. They can ease symptoms of moderate to severe depression, are relatively safe and typically cause fewer side effects than other types of antidepressants do. SSRIs ease depression by increasing levels of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is one of the chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) that carry signals between brain cells. SSRIs block the reabsorption (reuptake) of serotonin in the brain, making more serotonin available. SSRIs are called selective because they seem to primarily affect serotonin, not other neurotransmitters. SSRIs also may be used to treat conditions other than depression, such as anxiety disorders.
Stroke
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of your brain is interrupted or reduced, depriving brain tissue of oxygen and nutrients. Within minutes, brain cells begin to die. A stroke may be caused by a blocked artery (ischemic stroke) or the leaking or bursting of a blood vessel (hemorrhagic stroke). Some people may experience only a temporary disruption of blood flow to the brain (transient ischemic attack, or TIA) that doesn't cause permanent damage.
T
Thyroid
The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped organ located in the base of your neck. It releases hormones that control metabolism—the way your body uses energy. The thyroid's hormones regulate vital body functions. The thyroid is part of the endocrine system, which is made up of glands that produce, store, and release hormones into the bloodstream so the hormones can reach the body's cells.
Tremor
Tremor is an involuntary, rhythmic muscle contraction leading to shaking movements in one or more parts of the body. It is a common movement disorder that most often affects the hands but can also occur in the arms, head, vocal cords, torso, and legs. Tremor may be intermittent (occurring at separate times, with breaks) or constant. It can occur sporadically (on its own) or happen as a result of another disorder.
U
Urgency (incontinence)
Urge incontinence is a sudden and strong need to urinate. You may also hear it referred to as an unstable or overactive bladder, or detrusor instability. Urge incontinence can be linked to stroke, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and other health conditions which interfere with the brain's ability to send messages to the bladder via the spinal cord. These conditions can affect a person's ability to hold and store urine.
Urinary incontinence
The loss of bladder control. Many people experience occasional, minor leaks of urine. Others may lose small to moderate amounts of urine more frequently.
Urinary retention
Urinary retention is the inability to empty the bladder completely. Urinary retention can be acute or chronic. Acute urinary retention happens suddenly and lasts only a short time. People with acute urinary retention cannot urinate at all, even though they have a full bladder. Acute urinary retention, a potentially life-threatening medical condition, requires immediate emergency treatment. Acute urinary retention can cause great discomfort or pain.
Urinary tract infection
A urinary tract infection (UTI) is an infection in any part of your urinary system — your kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra. Most infections involve the lower urinary tract — the bladder and the urethra.
V
Vascular dementia
Vascular dementiais a general term describing problems with reasoning, planning, judgment, memory and other thought processes caused by brain damage from impaired blood flow to your brain. You can develop vascular dementiaafter a stroke blocks an artery in your brain, but strokes don't always cause vascular dementia.
Voiding
To urinate. The term void is also sometimes used to indicate the elimination of solid waste (defecation).