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CONSTIPATION AND AGING: WHEN TO GET MEDICAL HELP
Everyone becomes constipated or has an upset stomach from time to time. However, the following symptoms are signs of real disease: (1) stomach pains that are severe, last a long time, are recurrent, or occur with shaking, chills, and cold, clammy skin; (2) vomiting blood or vomiting recurrently; (3) jaundice (yellowing of the skin) or dark, tea-colored urine; (4) pain or discomfort when swallowing food; (5) ongoing loss of appetite or unplanned weight loss,- (6) diarrhea that wakes you up at night; (7) blood in your stools or coal-black stools; (8) a sudden change in your bowel habits (e.g., diarrhea or constipation) lasting more than a few days.
If you have any of these problems, call your doctor. Although our digestive system normally changes very little as the years advance, diseases of the digestive tract are not rare. In fact, they cause more hospital admissions than any other type of physical problem.
There are two errors people make in dealing with physical aging. Some stoics deny that anything is different and run the same ten miles on a sweltering day at age seventy as they did at twenty. Others make an equally destructive mistake: they leap to embrace the idea that aging means limitations and err on the side of doing too little.
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GENERAL HEALTH
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