Mobility

When we see commercially made images of older adults, they often include the person with a cane or walker. Similarly, commercial videos often have them shuffling along at a snail’s pace. While society should not generalize to all older adults, it is true that mobility can be a highly visible sign of aging. Indeed, mobility is an important function for older adults’ performance of basic activities of daily living—from getting out of bed, to moving from room to room and up or down stairs, to eating and maintaining hygiene—to moving outside of the home to perform instrumental  activities of daily living (e.g., shopping, banking) or enhanced  activities of daily living (e.g., going to see a movie). Most of the body's systems are required for mobility to be optimal. There are the obvious ones required for mobility: joints and muscles, and the nerves that control them. But many other systems are required as well: vision (so we don’t crash into something), hearing (so we adjust for events outside of our visual fields), heart and lungs (so that fresh oxygen reaches our muscles), and the digestive system (so energy sources and building blocks reach our joints and muscles).