A recent book title "Aging: The Paradox of Life" (2007, Springer) by Holliday, Robin takes up the aging phenomenon about which there are so many theories.
About this book, the Springer author details, "For centuries people have been puzzled by the inevitability of human aging. For most of the second half of the twentieth century aging remained a mystery, or an unsolved biological problem. At the end of the 20th century a remarkable scientific discovery emerged. It was not a single discovery in the usual sense, because it was based on a series of important interconnected insights over quite a long period of time. These insights made it possible for the very first time to understand the biological reasons for aging in animals and man. It can already be said, however, that the many observations and insights that explain aging will not be accepted as established knowledge for a long time. The field is still full of scientists, and non-scientists, who are just happy to go on speculating about the "mystery" of aging. The aim of this book is to dispel ignorance by explaining in non-technical language what are the reasons for aging and the myth of excessive prolongation of life."
The famous paradox of aging says - "The Older We Get, the Better We Feel? "
Why do we age? What are the scientifically accepted theories?
Your views are welcome..
Dear Krishnan,
you are completely right with telomer length. But this procedure is only responsible for apoptosis, not for aging. Indeed we are aging because we collect gen variations and modification which change our genome, so with increasing time the amount of variations in our genes modifies the features of our tissues.
The aging of cells is closely related to telomere length and each time a cell divides, the telomere gets shorter and eventually leads to cell death
http://www.foodtrients.com/inside/revealing-the-mystery-of-aging/
Dear Krishnan,
you are completely right with telomer length. But this procedure is only responsible for apoptosis, not for aging. Indeed we are aging because we collect gen variations and modification which change our genome, so with increasing time the amount of variations in our genes modifies the features of our tissues.
Dear @Sundar, aging is a natural process which bring us to the end of our life! "Are we programmed to live a certain number of years or do we wear out over time? These are two main theories of why we live as long as we do.In the first, the idea is that our genes determine how long we live. We have a gene or some genes that tell our body how long it will live. If you could change that particular gene, we could live longer.
The second theory is that over time, our body and our DNA get damaged until we can no longer function properly. The idea here is that how long we last is really just a consequence of small changes in our DNA. These changes add up until the total amount of damage is too much to bear and we die."
http://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news10
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/age/
Two fine articles on this issue How and why we age and Why do we age are attached!
Article How and Why We Age
Article Why do we age?
Dear Ljubomir Jacić - As we age (physically), normally our performances drop in terms of physical activities. At the same time, academically we develop a lot of knowledge, which helps us to write papers with great maturity and teach with depth of knowledge. I have attended some lectures on "brain aging" and doctors advised me to keep my mind very active. Research activities help us on this..
Even turtles get older every year....
Why shouldn't we???
My main thoughts go to the idea that there are many beneficial effects of ageing, such as a psychological gain in experience and wisdom, that easily comforts and complements the effects of physical ageing,
With the loss of certain abilities, we also gain in new trends to compensate. I'm not old, but I am certainly getting older, and I have been enjoying the renewed maturity and the new different experiences that have come my way, and the different views of the world, and the new challenges that I know that I'll have to face in the second half of my life.
Dear Maria Bettencourt Pires - In Classical Music, the great composer - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) lived only for 35 years, but his works showed a great maturity beyond his age! Beethoven's early piano concertos were modeled after Mozart's piano concertos, and Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."
Look at this page regarding the natural aging process that relates to the length of what is called telomeres and the possibility of elongating a person's age further. The shorter the initial length of telomeres in the DNA the shorter the age will be as it will run out from fewer number of cell divisions causes the cell to age out.
"Telomeres have been compared with the plastic tips on shoelaces, because they keep chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other, which would destroy or scramble an organism's genetic information"
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/telomeres/
Aging may be inevitable, but the rate of aging is not. Why and how our body age is still largely a mystery, although we are learning more and more each year. Several theories like Damage-based Theories of Aging including Orgel's Hypothesis, Protein Damage and Autophagy, Energy Metabolism and Aging, DNA Damage Theory of Aging and Free Radical Theory of Aging have been postulated to explain the phenomenon of biological ageing. Some maintain that aging is preprogrammed into our cells, while others contend that aging is primarily the result of environmental damage to our cells. Although none of the theories can fully explain the process, they do help us better understand how we age. However, scientists do maintain that chronological age has little bearing on biological age. Genes are powerful predictors of health and longevity as well as disease and death that hasten the aging process. Scientists on the Human Genome Project are continually discovering more genetic determinants of chronic and fatal diseases. Though cell death is the basis for understanding the aging process, it is not the only factor. The aging process is incredibly complicated, and it's often difficult to distinguish between changes that are the result of time marching on and those that come with common medical conditions, including high blood pressure and heart disease. Aging is the inevitable decline in the body's resiliency, which ultimately leads to dwindling powers, both mental and physical. On the other hand, a person whose father and brothers died from heart disease in their forties and fifties may very well escape the same fate by exercising regularly and keeping his blood cholesterol levels and body weight in check. On the other hand, a man with no genetic predisposition to heart disease can certainly create heart problems by eating a high fat, artery-clogging diet and leading an entirely sedentary lifestyle. Healthy living delays many of the body changes that aging brings. Following threads provide more explanation of biological aging process
http://www.senescence.info/causes_of_aging.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685272/
Once I saw a hilarious movie named "Murder by Death" (1976) with Peter Sellers, David Niven etc. One famous quote from this movie..
"Lionel Twain: How do I look so young? Quite simple. A complete vegetable diet, twelve hours sleep a night, and *lots* and *lots* of makeup. "
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