what causes your body to age? Why do certain processes just stop happening?
In: Biology
There’s actually not a universally agreed upon scientific answer.
A plausible theory is that aging is primarily caused by accumulating damage to the DNA of cells. Every time a cell divides it has a risk of some damage occuring to the DNA, which can reduce how well the cell functions. Over enough cycles of DNA dividing this can result in a large number of your cells not functioning properly causing many of the processes of aging. This probably explains at least some, and maybe most of the processes of aging
I think I remember this from an episode of Beakman’s World from the 90s (a Bill Nye Science Guy type show). Make a copy of a vhs tape, then make a copy of that copy, and copy of that copy, etc. Over the course of each copy you lose a little more information. Starts looking grainy or blurry and very low quality compared to the original. That’s kinda like cells? Constantly dividing and losing a little info behind each time. (An actual scientist or Beakman himself can verify lol).
I guess a more modern example is take a photo of a photo with your phone, then have someone take a photo of the photo on your phones screen, etc etc. Wont look great after a few 100 times of doing that. Image just starts to break down to a mess.
Latest Answers