Canaii100 experts were unable to agree on whether aging is an illness, or when it begins
Xaviera Hollander’s take.
“A man is old when there aren’t any women his own age who excite him. A woman is old the first time she looks for something to make her look younger.”
Gross
TrackinDaKrakenIt begins when we’re born, strictly speaking. But, I suppose, around age 25, when we stop the development that started when we were born.
If you compressed the physical effects of aging into one year, it would certainly look and feel like a terrible illness.
Not at conception? What about aged sperm and eggs? What about epigenetics and genetics? The continuum goes back a lot further in an unbroken fashion. Defining “age” as we do is an artifical conceptual barrier that presents as many problems as it purports to solve.
A quite a few more laypeople.
fallaciousBasisBegins at conception, technically.
Strictly speaking, we claim an age that starts at birth. But that’s not “biological aging”.
People don’t usually start aging poorly until their 30s to 50s usually(depending on how well we take care of ourselves).
Some call it midlife. I like to call it peak ripeness. Usually happens around 40 if you’re in good shape. And then it’s downhill from there.
I personally wouldn’t consider aging an illness. Life is a musical thing, and ultimately the music eventually stops. The point is not to be sorry it’s over but to have danced while the music was playing.
That thing you said about the music? Beautiful :)
That’s basically Alan Watts. The South Park guys did an animation to it:
That’s the whole collection of animations. Enjoy! 😊
Alan Watts | South Park Animations | Combined Animated Shorts (HD)
ValmondNot an illness? So cancer, dementia and Alzheimers are not illnesses but I guess some beautiful song for you?
The diseases listed are age related diseases, and the person I respond to is glorifying death.
Some people just do not take 5 minutes to think before they post what’s largely a “live laugh love” post, as a response against horrible sufferings.
You can do better.
Aging doesn’t necessitate illness.
So miss me hard with your first paragraph.
They’re certainly associated(related) with age but they’re not causally related.
So do better? You’re obviously hurting. It’s okay to self care.
Well that’s what scientists argue about, is aging a disease? No one thought so 20 years ago, today more and more do.
And age related diseases are, diseases created by another disease, aging. Or so I think. So very causually related indeed. IMO!
Cure aging, cure Alzheimers, dementia and (most of) cancer.
Sorry if I came off in an un-nice manner, I’m home sick, apologies.
It’s funny how everyone tends to assume that there is a very obvious and well-known reason why we age, and people are usually shocked to find out that, like the article demonstrates, science kind of doesn’t really know. We know a lot of the mechanisms of course and I’m sure any doctors here can explain them, but it’s not like there’s one simple and universal explanation.
i_love_FFTEntropy?
fafferliciousIt’s actually quite simple, aging is likely a response to sexual maturity.
We are giant meat gundams our DNA has built up to pass on our genes. The moment we can do that, all the stem cell and regenerative pathways start turning off because we’ve achieved our purpose.
Yes, I’ve heard similar things before and that’s probably the closest thing to a true explanation. It’s a purely genetic line of reasoning which raises a lot of questions though: What’s the biological clock that controls the timing of when genes activate? Which/how many genes are responsible for aging and does everyone have all of them? Could animals be selectively bred for longevity indefinitely? Some of these questions might have partial answers already but I don’t know them.
Thanks for the paper, it’s interesting and I definitely couldn’t follow the whole thing. It says at one point that the findings are consistent with the theory that organisms age to make way for their offspring. I’ve heard of the slightly different version where it’s just random genes that don’t have any benefit but the downside isn’t bad enough for them to be selected against.
I can potentially shed some additional insight.
Hear shock proteins are known as chaperones in that they are responsible for chaperoning proteins through the folding process. This process is important because I’m biochemistry (that is the chemistry proteins can do) shape is function. If you can look at the shape of a protein (specifically any site that does chemistry or is responsible for protein protein interactions), you can confidently predict the function of the protein.
Shape is function.
So the heat shock proteins (HSPs), are responsible for chaperoning the shape that dictates function. They derived their name because they were first noticed as being more expressed when you subjected cells to elevated heat ( or a heat shock). Increased temperature can cause proteins to have the wrong shape more easily, so the cells respond by making more chaperones!
The research finds that we get fewer copies of those chaperones once the works were capable of procreating. This suggests that while the observable effects of what we call “aging” can be caused by many things. Aging more generally can be understood as a programmed winding down of our self maintenance machinery.
Of course this is just a lens of viewing it from and may not be a complete picture. But it’s a very useful and productive one.
But we totally do!
There are a handful of mechanisms that break down over time, and they are both well documented and no new one has been found in somewhat the last 45 years!
Some people like to split some of them up in two, but the base SIX reasons we age are as follows:
- Cell loss/tissue atrophy
- Cancerous cells
- Mitochondrial mutations
- Intracellular aggregates
- Extracellular aggregates
- Senescent cells
See for example the book Ending Aging by the worlds most renowned bio gerontologist or the SENS foundation.
Fun fact, active research into how to fix them is ongoing research.
Thanks very much for this response! Good information for people like me who are interested to read more.
I think the point I was trying to make is that there are multiple reasons instead of one, and none of them are simple or easy. Understanding how those six things happen is subtly different to asking why they happen, which might be why we’ve got such a range of comments here and why the scientists in the article couldn’t agree on their answer.
The downstream problems are complex and hard to understand (like being old and fragile, or having diverse shortcomings), the base problems not so much actually. Not the simplest things to fix but nothing outlandish either.
And the first mediocre treatments might give us some extra healthy years, and during that time, potentially other and better treatments will be created, adding more years to our lives, and so on. For the curious, the theory is called LEV, Longevity Escape Velocity, and it’s possible that many of us might catch it.
Aging is a symptom of a bigger illness. Life is an STI.
Aging begins when you are born IMO, or whatever point a person comes into existence.
I don’t think creatures who reproduce ought to be immortal.
Senescence, I agree with the people who put it around 25, the point where you stop growing at all physically has to be the point you start degrading, but it must happen so much slower than growing does, I felt my absolute physical best around 45 years of age (certainly NOT 25) and still feel really good at near 60. So maybe there was an adjustment period then a steady state for awhile. Or a quick slide then s slower slide?
its a rolling peak. Look at the age of olympic gymnasts vs olympic weightlifters.