Cross-Cultural Studies of Biological Aging

Cross-Cultural Studies of Biological Aging reviews papers that tackle issues of biological aging from a cross-cultural perspective. The studies emphasize the interaction of biological, cultural, and environmental factors that provides the data about the range of variation in certain biological process. The book is comprised of 12 chapters that cover various concerns about the aging process from a cross-cultural perspective. Chapter 1 discusses the biological function, activity, and dependency among elderly Sherpa in the Nepal Himalayas, while Chapter 2 deals with work, aging, and dependency in a Sherpa population in Nepal. The third chapter tackles the population genetic models in the study of aging and longevity in a Mennonite community, and the fourth chapter talks about the secular changes in age-specific cause of death in Sanday, Orkney Islands. Chapter 5 covers the developmental and genetic responses to differential childhood mortality, while Chapter 6 discusses how mortality is related to cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus in a modernizing population. The seventh chapter tackles the biocultural risks in longevity of Samoans in California. Chapter 8 discusses the changes with age of anatomical distribution of fat, while Chapter 9 provides a comparison of visually estimated age with physiological predicted age as indicators of rates of aging. Chapter 10 reviews a longitudinal study about the patterns of adult weight and fat changes in six Solomon Islands societies, and Chapter 11 discusses aging in selected anthropometric dimensions in a rural Zapotec-speaking community in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. The last chapter compares blood pressure at rest and during exercise among Sherpas and Tibetan migrants in Nepal. The text will be of great interest to researchers whose work involves understanding other factors that have causal relationship with biological aging.