Do we not understand enough about the human body? I have heard that we don’t fully understand the mechanism behind aging and this got me wondering. I mean our body seems to be like one of the first things we’d investigate, and yet we seem to know less than I had originally thought.
In: 70
How come we don’t have any idea what latest? It will be interesting to see with all of this data crunching and problem-solving is AI has some answers in the next few years. But it’s a very good question
An emerging way of framing aging is as cellular information loss.
Your cell doesn’t know how old it is, in fact most cells are constantly either dividing or being renewed from stem cells (also dividing).
This means there are few cells as old as you are. Your cells don’t know if you are 15 or 150. In fact there are plenty of examples of longer lived species (whales, trees, turtles etc)
So it must be the information that the new cell gets from the old cell that is somehow getting “older.”
This means it must be connected somehow to DNA, since the rest of the new cell gets built from the DNA of the old cell.
This is like having to build a new building every time from a blueprint but during construction and while you have the building your blueprint keep getting coffee stains and tears and scratches on it. You keep repairing it but eventually the mess adds up and the blueprint stops being readable. You lose track of which floor gets the stairs and where the foundations go.
The DNA equivalent of a coffee stain is DNA damage (from UV, free radicals, that ultra-processed fluorescent mac &cheese you ate etc). This damage is usually repaired but sometimes it gets repaired wrong, and you get mutations and epigenetic drift, a fancy way of saying the wrong parts of the DNA become silent and active.
Once this information is lost, there is no easy way to fix it, since your cell doesn’t have a third copy. In fact this is the reason you get two DNA strands to being with, it’s more robust than just one.
One solution is you can get rid of the old cell, which your body does all the time, but eventually you run out of “fresh” cells or stem cells, since they too get too much information loss and noise.
Without a way to return this information to the cell, I.e fix the blueprint, eventually cells start to grow out of control (cancer) or start being toxic (senescent), or just don’t work really well.
Eventually tissue and organs start to fail and something important stops working, which kills you. We can this dying of old age.
This means that although it’s absolutely complex and multifaceted, there’s actually a central locus we can target: DNA information loss in the cell. There are now numerous startups working on this issue, and really ground breaking work happening in this area.
We do. It’s excess sugar, malnutrition, excessive stress, lack of activity, and lack of sleep, mainly.
We do. It’s excess sugar, malnutrition, excessive stress, lack of activity, and lack of sleep, mainly.
We don’t have a theory on aging as a single thing thet most people think is right yet.
One idea is that the body just gets damaged over time in lots of little ways, like a car yo have had for years.
Another is that the body’s clean up system starts having random mistakes, and those add up, allowing other parts to start having problems.
A third is that your bodies cells become worse and worse copies of the old ones as the body’s process of replacing them goes on. The bad copies eventually don’t work.
But some plants and animals don’t age. Naked mole rats and squid and some trees.
We haven’t figured it out because we have only started to understand the really tiny parts of the body well.
For a long time we have only noticed big things, like diseases.
We don’t have a theory on aging as a single thing thet most people think is right yet.
One idea is that the body just gets damaged over time in lots of little ways, like a car yo have had for years.
Another is that the body’s clean up system starts having random mistakes, and those add up, allowing other parts to start having problems.
A third is that your bodies cells become worse and worse copies of the old ones as the body’s process of replacing them goes on. The bad copies eventually don’t work.
But some plants and animals don’t age. Naked mole rats and squid and some trees.
We haven’t figured it out because we have only started to understand the really tiny parts of the body well.
For a long time we have only noticed big things, like diseases.
There was a royal institute lecture on this. I recall the researcher saying that aging is a result of multiple biological processes, and the current theory is that it is caused by something around 7-11 separate processes, each theoretically can be managed. And he said there are a few known organisms that do not age, so this supports the idea that it is possible to cure aging, but it would require a series of treatments that addressed each of those things.
The researcher also projected that stopping the aging process would have us living an average of around 200 years, because we wouldn’t be immortal and die of cancer, some disease, or trauma.
There was a royal institute lecture on this. I recall the researcher saying that aging is a result of multiple biological processes, and the current theory is that it is caused by something around 7-11 separate processes, each theoretically can be managed. And he said there are a few known organisms that do not age, so this supports the idea that it is possible to cure aging, but it would require a series of treatments that addressed each of those things.
The researcher also projected that stopping the aging process would have us living an average of around 200 years, because we wouldn’t be immortal and die of cancer, some disease, or trauma.
It’s Entropy my friend (which is random & disorderly).
Humans strive to bring order into the disorderly systems.
It’s Entropy my friend (which is random & disorderly).
Humans strive to bring order into the disorderly systems.
Latest Answers