Some Scientists Argue Aging is a Disease That Can Be Treated

[Yimpa]

Sweet 

[Tyler Robinson]

Aging is a natural process not a disease. And nobody can stop aging. Neither are we ever going to be immortal. 

 

[vishnusavestheday]

@Tyler Robinson

I'm thinking that the common physical symptoms of aging-- wrinkles, muscle atrophy, dementia, diabetes, being at-risk for disease...

 

All of those things are mainly treatable and preventable with healthy habits and beneficial lifestyle choices anyhoo.

 

It's not impossible that life could be prolonged, but it's more possible that we'd all be catching cancer after we'd live 100 years. Every year, just one irregular cell is necessary for cancer to begin spreading.

[Yimpa]

 

[Basman]

Aging is the process of DNA running out of telomeres, the part of the DNA that is required for succesfull cell devision. Since telomeres are a finite resource, eventually our cells run out and they start to age and lose their function. 

Theoretically, if you could somehow "add" more telemores to one's DNA, you could post-pone aging. You could theoretically do that indefinietely if you had the technology for it.

Aging is as natural to animals as the biomechanical reliance on a finite enzyme for maintaining the body. Lobster are biologically immortal, as they have an infite supply of telomeres. So it's not the case that aging is natural in principle. It's just so happens that most of us are built in such a way where do age as a byproduct of the biomechanical processees that keep us living.

It's not quiet understood why newborns have a fresh supplies of telomeres when they in theory should have the same amout as their parents, as most animals usually aren't capable of creating new telomeres for themselves. Telomeres aren't fully understood yet.

Edited January 22, 2023 by Basman

[LastThursday]

Aging is entropy in action. The body constantly fights destruction from entropy using energy from the environment (food). Entropy is destructive because it is easier to break things than to fix them. The environment doesn't care about your body, it is constantly under attack (viruses, bacteria, temperature, cuts, bones breaking etc). In order for the body to keep fixing itself it needs an abstract notion of a template (self-identity) to work from. If the template (self-identity) was perfect, then it could indefinitely undo the damage from increasing entropy (it always increases). But it is not perfect, so entropy and descruction wins in the end.

Interestingly, some animals can win at this game of entropy: some types of jellyfish. They are effectively immortal. But even they probably couldn't survive being cut up into small pieces (another form of increasing entropy).

To reverse aging would require us to have a better knowledge of the body's systems than it does. And even then we would have to find a way of making those repairs happen. That's a very tall order.