The Physics of Frailty

Abstract

The contribution of frailty to human morbidity and mortality is immense. Yet it lacks a conceptual framework. By borrowing from the hypotheses provided by the thermophysicists, frailty can be understood in a way that both interrelates the relationship between form and function and provides medical science with an operational insight that yields clinical benefit. Frailty results where the organism is uncoupled from its environment yielding a break in the forward feedback cycle of stimulus to reaction to growth to increased functional competence to improved response to stimulus. Recognition of the centrality of this interrelatedness to health becomes a key theme for illness prevention and therapy. 1993 The American Geriatrics Society