People are living longer

but, at what cost?

There are many diseases which are usually associated with age such as cataracts and macular degeneration. Many neurodegenerative diseases and of course atherosclerosis, age related diabetes, and obviously Alzheimers - and some other forms of dementia and many cancer diseases. And we're seeing more and more of these because people are living longer.

Several of these age related diseases are inter-related via synaptic plasticity processes and the mitochondrial, the energy producing organelles located outside the cell nucleus.

Interestingly, the heart itself may function just fine with age, even after pumping 60-70 years straight. We don't remanufacture heart muscle cells or neuronal cells or other muscle cells for that matter. It might be interesting to contemplate what if we did? What if we had extra back-up organs and an extra heart and perhaps an extra arm or two? Well, we wouldn't really need them if their aging is not the problem and apparently it isn't and it takes more energy to fuel the extra organs. It's the arteries that get clogged with lumin (oxidized fatty deposits, not so much the heart. The heart continued to pump just fine in most cases and does not significantly weaken with age.

It is the immune system that is less able to fight off pathogenic assault and may even attack its own body. The immune system is of particular interest as we age because it loses its ability to fight off foreign intrusion and older people develop auto-immune disease or responses more often than younger pre-reproductive individuals.

The thymus gland which is important for developing those T-cells (meaning thymus derived) starts atrophying when one reaches reproduction maturity and the thymus gland quickly diminishes; the loss resulting in an increase in auto-immune disease post reproduction.

It seems we were designed by evolution to reproduce and then to begin the downward spiral - because evolution cares about reproduction - the objective being that which survives to reproduce is the most successful at replicating itself in progeny. Any of the organisms energy used to maintain and sustain those post-reproductives would be a waste of energy. Reproductive capacity also changes dramatically with age. There is a time for everything; as if it was programmed to happen that way. And likely it is, only not by some blueprint in the sky; but, by some blueprint in our DNA and by millions of years of evolutionary successes.

"Oxidation stress, reflecting the accumulation of oxygen- containing free radicals, increases with aging and may play a key role in age-related functional deficits of the brain and other organs, such as the heart. Blueberries are one of the foods with the greatest ability to neutralize oxygen-containing free radicals. In rodent models of brain aging, dietary blueberry supplementation impeded the development of impairments in photochemistry, synaptic transmission, and behavior." (Source: James A. Joseph Ph. D et al.; Short-term blueberry-enriched diet prevents and reverses object recognition memory loss in aging rats; Nutrition 27 (2011) 338-342)

If it was a necessity to reproduce much later, we might even live longer, but it isn't and our normal longivety is the same as it always has been. Just like those Salmon which fight their way up stream to reproduce and then die, we are on a Sisyphean plight to swim upstream, have our off-spring and then fade into obscurity after fulfilling whatever evolutionary requirement we may have to help get our DNA passed on to subsequent generations and then die.

"Reproductive capacity in most species changes markedly with age. It is largely controlled by hormones produced in the pituitary gland of the brain, and the pattern of synthesis and release of these hormones changes in an age-dependent manner. In virtually every species, the degenerative changes associated with aging are substantially held back until reproductive maturity. In mammals generally, the changes in the reproductive capacity with age are more pronounced in females than in males. The sudden changes brought on in human females at menopause are a striking example of the close link between reproduction and senescence. But human males also experience a decrease in reproductive ability with age. The necessity to defer age-related physical decline in all systems until reproductive maturity is a key to understanding the basic biology of aging." (A Means to An End, The Biological Basis of Aging and Death, by William R. Clark - 1999)

So why are humans living longer? During the 20th century in the U.S. the average longevity increased from 48 years to 75 years of age. What changed? Our ability to combat infectious disease happened. Our water became cleaner and safer. Sanitation got better. Food was stored safer. Public health got a lot better.

In the wild, most animals die before they become old because of predation, whereas human life expectancy has increased during the 20th century - except for the young who die in combat. However, mutations and the incidences of cancer are frequent in all aging tissue. Recurrent DNA damage and inefficient repair over multiple rounds of cell division are common and will occur no matter how safe the water supply or sanitary and well-preserved our food supplies.

As a person ages there are changes in their cells. There is definitely chromatin lumping in the nucleus of older cells. DNA is wrapped in protein (histones are protein which provides some protection for the DNA coding). DNA is densely packed - uncoiled DNA would be subject to more assault by cosmic rays - but wrapped into a more dense package would make it less susceptible to the bombardment by cosmic rays. That is what is in the nucleus. DNA are helical (coiled up) coded genetic blueprints wrapped into dense packages (dense so it won't be as susceptible to cosmic rays). The DNA transcribed into RNA amino acids goes to ribosomes in the cytoplasm where protein synthesis takes place and it is turned back into protein.

As cells break down, a lot of the parts are used again. Those parts which can't be are junk. Our immune system may take out some of the garbage, but some of it won't be. Some of the lipids; partially digested membranes, that yellow gunk, won't be gotten rid of. Most of it will be found in skeletal muscle, in long-lived neurons, in heart muscles - those muscles which last a lifetime. There you will find a lot of (yellowish) junk). Lipofusion, the accumulation of junk will build up; there will be a lot of it. AND, that junk may kill ya....

People are living longer - but, at what cost? We can die at any age; we can extend life; but we cannot extend youth. Chances are we will feel like shit but we will live longer. AND vitamins won't do it for you either. Vitamin E won't increase your life span. There is no research that has shown it will, but if it makes you feel better because you think you feel better it probably won't hurt to take them.

"Furthermore, much of this change is related to our ability to keep debilitated people alive longer.... And even that increase may be grinding to a halt. Consider our two leading causes of death at present: cancer and heart disease. If all cancer were eliminated tomorrow, human life would be extended only by about two years. Eliminate heart disease and we would get about three to four years more. Cancer and heart disease together kill more than half of all people in industrialized societies. If we can add only six years to our lives by eliminating both these disease, we are clearly pushing the limits of life-span increase by normal medical progress. Beating diseases back one by one will have progressively less impact in the future. The only hope for a dramatic increase in human longevity is new insight into the nature of aging itself and the development of treatments to slow the overall process." (Why We Age, What Science is Discovering About the Body's Journey Through Life, by Steven N. Austad - 1997)

Things that were once fatal won't be because we're better at sustaining life, even older life - you know, those folks still waiting for their "golden years" and wondering why they passed them by.

How does all that work out for you?

Hank Roth

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