Department of Anthropology and School of Public Health, The Ohio State University, 4034 Smith Laboratory, 174 W. 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210-1106, USA.
J Physiol Anthropol. 2022 Jan 3;41(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s40101-021-00274-w.
Before developing agriculture, herding or metallurgy, humans occupied most of the world. Multiple socioculturally-based responses supported their migration, including building shelters and constructing niches to limit environmental stressors. Sheltered settings provided social support and security during stressful times, along with opportunities for injured, aging, and frail members to survive. Modern built environments are designed for similar purposes, to support human growth, development, reproduction, and maintenance. However, extended survival in modern settings has costs. With age, muscle (sarcopenia) and bone loss (osteopenia, osteoporosis), along with somatic, physiological, and sensory dysfunction, reduce our physical capabilities, increase our frailty, and impede our abilities to interface with built and natural environments and manufactured artifacts. Thereby, increasing our dependence on built environments to maintain autonomy and quality of life.What follows is a conceptual review of how frailty may limit seniors within modern built environments. It suggests age-related frailty among seniors provides specific data for those designing environments for accessibility to all users. It is based in human ecological theory, and physiological and gerontological research showing senescent alterations, including losses of muscle, bone, and sensory perceptions, produce a frail phenotype with increasing age limiting our mobility, activity, use of space, and physical abilities. As an individual phenotype, frailty leads to age-related physical and performance declines. As a physiological assessment, frailty indices amalgamate individual measures of functional abilities into a single score. Such frailty indices increase with age and differ betwixt individuals and across groups. To design built environments that improve access, usability, and safety for aging and frail citizens, today's seniors provide living samples and evidence for determining their future abilities, limitations, and design needs. Designing built environments to accommodate and improve the quality of human-environment interactions for frail seniors will improve usability and accessibility for most user groups.
在发展农业、畜牧业或冶金术之前，人类占据了世界的大部分地区。多种基于社会文化的反应支持了他们的迁移，包括建造住所和构建利基以限制环境压力源。有遮蔽的环境在压力时期提供了社会支持和安全，同时为受伤、衰老和虚弱的成员提供了生存机会。现代建筑环境是为类似的目的而设计的，以支持人类的成长、发展、繁殖和维持。然而，在现代环境中延长生存时间是有代价的。随着年龄的增长，肌肉（肌少症）和骨骼流失（骨质减少、骨质疏松症），以及身体、生理和感官功能障碍，会降低我们的身体能力，增加我们的脆弱性，并阻碍我们与建筑和自然环境以及制造的人工制品进行交互的能力。因此，我们越来越依赖建筑环境来维持自主性和生活质量。
以下是对脆弱性如何限制老年人在现代建筑环境中的概念性回顾。它表明，老年人的与年龄相关的脆弱性为所有用户设计环境提供了具体的数据。它基于人类生态学理论以及生理和老年学研究，这些研究表明，衰老改变包括肌肉、骨骼和感官知觉的丧失，会随着年龄的增长产生脆弱表型，从而限制我们的移动性、活动能力、空间利用和身体能力。作为一个个体表型，脆弱性导致与年龄相关的身体和表现下降。作为生理评估，脆弱性指数将个体功能能力测量值合并为一个单一分数。这种脆弱性指数随着年龄的增长而增加，并且在个体之间和群体之间存在差异。为了设计改善老龄化和脆弱公民的可达性、可用性和安全性的建筑环境，当今的老年人为确定他们未来的能力、限制和设计需求提供了生活样本和证据。为脆弱的老年人设计容纳和改善人与环境互动质量的建筑环境将提高大多数用户群体的可用性和可访问性。
