We all age and we all feel it. Why is this happening? Why does nature do this to us? Maybe our bodies wear out like an old car?
Judith Campisi believes we should think about aging in the context of evolution.
“When we evolved, there simply weren’t any old people. Because there was no Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer. Everyone died at the age of forty or forty-five. Thus, evolution has taken care of the health of young people, capable of reproducing organisms for only a few decades to come.
Many of the processes that occur during aging actually occur as a result of a decrease in the power of natural selection. Evolution didn’t try to make us old. Evolution has tried to make us young and healthy. And sometimes you have to pay for it.
As a cell ages, it shows certain characteristics. For example, it can no longer share. Now it releases many molecules that can affect nearby cells.
Sometimes this causes nearby cells to no longer function normally. This creates chronic inflammation that can lead to age-related cancer.
The drug, which is used to kill senescent cells in mice, doesn’t work in humans because humans aren’t transgenic. But now new drugs are being developed, and if they are actually developed, they will give us hope for a delay or at least a cure for some age-related diseases.
Plus, if we can understand why women’s brains age differently than men’s, we can develop treatments that will help everyone.
Dena Double says women are living longer than men, everywhere from Sierra Leone, where life expectancy is generally lower, to Japan and Sweden, where life expectancy is higher. And if we look at different historical periods in different countries, it becomes obvious that during famines and epidemics, girls lived longer than boys, and women longer than men.
This suggests that the biological basis for female longevity exists, as even under very high stress in a very high mortality environment, girls live longer than boys and women outlive men.
What in the structure of the human body can explain these differences?
Double believes there is a distinct difference in the genetics of men and women. First, men have a Y chromosome. It is believed (although this cannot yet be proven experimentally) that the presence of a Y chromosome can have harmful consequences.
Why do living beings age? Why don’t we live forever? What causes aging in the first place?
This is a very simple but important question. Aging is something that is reflected in the structure of cells over time. There is a change in their biological functions, leading to vulnerabilities and disease. One of the main reasons for this is genetic instability. In other words, over time our genetic code becomes more unstable.
One of the possible biological reasons for female longevity, according to Double, is the so-called mother’s curse. In the process of cell division and zygote creation, mothers pass on their mitochondria, which can only evolve in a female body.
So far, the oldest person on earth has lived to be one hundred and twenty-two years old. But now it is more important not to lengthen our life, but to learn to stay healthy as long as possible so that even in old age we do not suffer from cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cognitive decline and much more. more that happens with age.
The reason we are so interested in lifespan is because the things that help us live longer tend to help us live better.
There are also some indications that low testosterone levels prolong life. The Joseon Dynasty of Korea had eunuchs. They were respected members of the dynasty and the imperial court. And they have all lived very long lives, much longer (fifteen years on average) than people of the same socioeconomic status.
Similar experiments were conducted on animals and led to the same results: castrated rams (valukh) lived longer than uncastrated ones.
