For example: Someone has a disease, why cant the body just reset itself to how it was before it had the disease to get rid of the negative effects?
In: Biology
Also cell division usually produce two daughter cells so they cannot be in the exact same place as the original parent cell
Ever use a copy machine? Like one of those monster Xerox machines from the 80s?
First copy is pretty good right? Well let’s say you toss the original. So you make another copy of the copy. And it’s pretty good too. So you keep making copies like that. Maybe after a while a hair, or a little dirt gets on the copy. It’s no big deal though because you can still read it just fine. Then maybe the paper gets a little crease and you lose a bit of a line. Oh well, you still can get the general idea. And on it goes. Eventually that copy is pretty much so full of smudges, blurred out words, and other errors that it’s basically worthless.
Well that’s your cells as they divide. The words on the sheet are your DNA. Eventually the DNA gets smuded and the new cells don’t have anything but the crap DNA to copy
Cells don’t have “memory” or perhaps a better word is cognition. The way it replicates is from the “program” encoded from the prior generation. Cells have no sense of “this will work better if I reverted to an earlier model” because there is no “earlier model” stored somewhere. It only “knows” what it inherited.
The body isn’t capable of going back to a previous version like computers can. Outside of it’s primary function, a cell’s only purpose is to create an exact copy of itself. This raises an issue. Each time a cell divides, it loses a small part of itself, specifically the telomeres, and eventually is no longer able to divide. This would tale place over a lifetime, until the individual has passed.
From what I understand, there’s a decent amount of research going into slowing down the decay of telomeres, but I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been any major breakthroughs. Any success would probably dominate global news for a while.
New cells are made from old cells. If the old cells have a problem, the new cells will usually have that problem too.
It’s a false assumption that our body is replaced new cells every 7 to 10 years. Cells in your body can be divided into 3 types generally based on how they divide:
1. Always dividing: These are generally found in places that generally face a lot of wear and tear, like the skin, or the mucosa lining the inside of your mouth, stomach and intestines. Since they divide very fast, they can heal most wounds to them. That’s why cuts or scratches heal so fast.
2. Not dividing right now, but can divide if and when necessary: Like your liver, or the lymphocytes (type of a white blood cell). That’s why you can donate part of your liver and it grows right back.
3. Cannot divide at all: Examples are your neurons (the cells that make your brain and nerves), your heart muscle cells and the fat cells. That’s why heart attacks and head injuries have a poor prognosis.
Also, even dividing cells divide at very different rates. Skin regenerates very fast while some stem cells are pretty slow. So when they say the body replaces itself in 7 to 10 years, what they actually means that the dividing cells in your body have created enough cells to weigh as much as you. In reality what happens is, you shed off an immense quantity of cells that are damaged and cannot work.
So, when disease occurs in the parts of body which cannot divide and repair itself, or the disease occurs at a speed higher than the rate of regeneration of cells, you get ill.
Bodies don’t magically change every cell all at once… rather cells all k we die and replace all the time so that after about seven to ten years the cell that are now present are different than the ones that were there 12 years ago…
Plus every time a cell regenerates there is a chance for an error to happen causing more errors etc.
The cells do not necessarily regenerate to a “brand new” best ever model, more they replicate their current state… this is part of aging.
Work in figuring out how to control this process is one avenue of anti aging and anti disease research!
The cells don’t all magically regenerate when you hit the 10 year mark. That’s just the estimated time it would take your body to replace all of your current cells. Which happen to be replaced on a regular basis. When you get sick your body does try to speed up this process. That’s one of the reasons why you get a fever, to target the cells that are harming your current ones and to replace the ones that’ve died or are dying currently. At least that’s how I understand the process. Hope this helps!
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