We all get older 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 that we should think about aging in the context of evolution.
“When we evolved, there were simply no old people. As there was no Parkinson’s disease, no Alzheimer’s disease, no cancer. Everyone died by the age of forty or forty-five. Therefore, evolution took care of the health of young, capable of reproducing organisms only for 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 tried to make us young and healthy. And sometimes you have to pay for it.
When a cell ages, it shows some features. For example, she can no longer share. Now she releases many molecules that can affect neighboring cells.
Sometimes this leads to neighboring cells no longer functioning normally. This creates chronic inflammation that can lead to age-related cancer.
The drug, which is used to kill senescent cells in mice, does not work in humans because humans are not transgenic. But new drugs are being developed now, and if they are actually developed, it will give us hope for a delay or at least a cure for some age-related diseases.
In addition, 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 live 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 does exist, as even under very high stress in an environment with very high mortality, girls live longer than boys and women outlive men.
What in the structure of the human body can explain these differences?
Double believes that there is a very clear difference in the genetics of men and women. First, men have a Y chromosome. It is believed (although this cannot yet be experimentally proven) that the presence of a Y chromosome can have harmful consequences.
Why do living beings age at all? 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 over time is reflected in the structure of cells. There is a change in their biological functions, which leads to vulnerabilities and diseases. 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 the creation of a zygote, 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’s more important not to increase our lifespan, but to learn how to stay in good health for as long as possible so that even in old age we don’t suffer from cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cognitive decline and much more that happens. with age.
The reason we’re 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 lower testosterone levels prolong life. The Joseon Dynasty of Korea had eunuchs. They were respected members of the dynasty and the imperial court. And they all lived very long lives—much longer (fifteen years on average) than people of the same socioeconomic status.
Similar experiments were carried out on animals and led to the same results: castrated rams (valukhs) lived longer than uncastrated ones.