463 - Is COVID-19 Aging Us?
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2022
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emerging research shows that COVID-19 infection can accelerate the aging process, especially for older people with chronic conditions. But the pandemic may also be aging those who haven't been sick, from social isolation and depression to burnout and worsening of chronic conditions. Hopkins geriatrician Dr. Alicia Arbaje talks with Stephanie Desmon about how chronic stress and uncertainty may be affecting us. They also discuss implications of the health care staffing crisis, including an increased burden on an "invisible workforce" of caregivers.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 5 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore, Maryland. |
| 0:21.7 | Our goal with this podcast is to bring scientific evidence and experience to shed light on critical |
| 0:27.5 | health issues. If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health |
| 0:33.0 | question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:42.7 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith Rogers, producer of public health on call. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to |
| 0:48.4 | Alicia Arbahi, a geriatrician at Johns Hopkins, about how COVID-19 is accelerating the aging process and not only for those |
| 0:57.0 | who have been ill. Let's listen. Alicia Arbaugh, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. |
| 1:03.7 | Delighted to be here. So today I wanted to talk to you about COVID and older people. COVID has |
| 1:10.7 | manifests itself in many ways and I understand that there's |
| 1:14.6 | sort of this emerging idea that it is actually accelerating the aging process. Can you tell us more |
| 1:20.6 | about that? Absolutely. I think it's such an important point that COVID has effects beyond the |
| 1:26.7 | actual time people are ill. And I think we've been |
| 1:29.3 | learning that as we hear about people with long COVID, but I think it's more complicated than that. |
| 1:35.3 | I think there are two effects that we are interestingly becoming more intrigued by, and that's |
| 1:40.4 | the direct effect of COVID illness and the indirect effect of COVID illness. |
| 1:44.9 | So for an older person who may have multiple chronic conditions, hypertension, diabetes, heart |
| 1:49.8 | disease, stroke, we see that COVID may worsen those underlying illnesses or it may actually |
| 1:56.5 | unmask illnesses that were coming down the pike or were maybe under control, but now are really |
| 2:03.2 | with a stress to the immune system, really flaring. And we think that that's partly related to |
| 2:09.2 | accelerated aging, more inflammation, more stimulation of the immune system. And all of that is |
| 2:16.0 | indirectly related to the illness. |
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