Skip to main content

Why do we age?

 


In 1997, a French mistress named Jeanne Calment went to doom after spending 122 years on planet earth. She is the oldest person in history. Dmitry Kaminskiy, a millionaire, promised to give one million dollars to anyone who could break Jeanne's record. Living to this age is merely impossible, maybe only a few likely to accomplish it. The human body isn't forced to adapt to extreme aging, simply isn't built for extreme aging. Why are we aging? How does aging counteract the body's effect to stay alive? We know what it means to age. But finding a proper definition of aging is still a challenge. The internal processes and interactions with the surroundings like toxins in the air, water, and our diet result in changing structure and function of body cells. Continuously, the failure of the whole organism might occur. 



Recently, researchers have sorted nine physiological traits ranging from genetic modifications to the cell's regenerative ability. The cell's regenerative ability plays a central role. As the years pass, Our body is prone to genetic damage in the form of DNA lesions. DNA lesions occur naturally when the body's DNA replicates. Cell organelles such as mitochondria are prone to this damage. Mitochondria produce ATP(Adenosine triphosphate), the central energy unit for all cellular actions. In addition to the production of ATP, mitochondria play a crucial role in programmed cell death. If mitochondria fail to perform, then the whole organs deteriorate. Other changes might occur in the expressional pattern of genes known as epigenetic alterations. Genes in new-borns are silenced at a low level which grows prominent in older people, which accelerates aging. Even when we avoid all those gene modifications, your cell will betray you. The process of cellular regeneration declines as we age. The genetic material that is DNA is packed within chromosomes. Chromosomes generally have a protective region at the extremities called telomeres. Telomeres shorten after every time our cell replicates. When telomeres become too short our cells stop replicating and die. With age cells become senescent, a process that hinders the cell cycle in time of necessity. 


As we grow old the cell growth gets halted and reduces the ability of cells to replicate. Stem cells have the property of without limit replenishing other cells. As we grow older, stem cells decrease in number and lose their regenerative potential affecting tissue renewal and organs' original functions. Some changes revolve around the cell's ability to function. As we age, Cells can't able to check the quality of proteins, causing the accumulation of toxic nutrients in the body. Those toxic accumulations lead to an excessive metabolic action that could be fatal. 


Still, why do we age is an unanswerable question. Ultimately, longevity depends on the diet we follow, physical activity(exercise). Can future scientific inventions such as cell-repairing nanobots or gene therapy increase our life expectancy? Do we want to live longer than we are living now? 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

french colonies present day

France borders eight countries. But actually, it borders more than eight countries. And in fact, its longest border isn't even the one with Belgium or the one with Spain. It is the one with Brazil. What is going on here? We know only one version of France that is the l'hexagon. It is also called the La France Metropole. It is the mainland of France. It is the France you probably think of when you think of France in Europe. But there is another France, it is called France d'outre-mer, or the Overseas France. Overseas French accounts for almost 20% of all French land. And a whopping 97% of its ocean territory, nearly 3 million French citizens live here. The Overseas France is peculiar. France d’outre-mer includes far-flung tropical islands, remote archipelagos with penguins, and weird-looking, uninhabited atolls around the world. There is lobster fishing, scientific research, nuclear weapons testing, and military exercises. And the mind-blowing fact is that Overseas France is...
4 comments
Read more

BUTTERFLY EFFECT- HOW SMALL CHANGES DRIVES US TO AN IMMENSE CHANGE?

Have you heard of a term called the butterfly effect? Whenever you solve a math problem, a minor change in substitution might result in a greater error. The same happens in the big picture. It is believed that when a butterfly flutters its wing in Australia, It might create a hurricane in Texas. This beautiful term "Butterfly Effect" was coined by Edward Lorenz. But what if I say that if there isn't the occurrence of WW1, India still would under the British Raj. Which means we might not even be born. Likewise, relate each story which I am going to demonstrate below. From world war 1, to the creation of anime, every single change in our lives in some way is the other related to our huge success.  MISINTERPRETATION OF ROUTE LED TO WW1  The great leader from Austria(Archduke Ferdinand carl Ludwig joseph maria) was transiting in a car with his wife, in front of which there were four cars, furious Hungarians came to attack those cars. But they didn't know Ferdinand is in o...
4 comments
Read more

Never dare to open these 7 doors!!!

Sheri Hooley on Unsplash Doors are meant to be opened. Well! not these doors. They are thought to contain anything from treasures to mummified remains and ancient curses. Some of the most visited places in the world have secret rooms and chambers sealed off by mysterious doorways. People won't talk about what is inside them. And once sealed they have remained closed but what exactly they are protecting us from. In Kerala, India, there is a grand structure known as Padmanabhaswamy temple. It was created in the 6th century and built upon until the 16 century by the kings of the Travancore royal family. The most valuable part of this ornate building is its 6 sealed underground vaults. But one of them remains unknown to this day. The vault sits behind ornately designed solid doors. Five of these doors were able to be pried open and inside they found 22 billion dollars worth of treasure including jewellery and solid gold idols. Vault B also called Bharata Conchal era is the only vault ...
3 comments
Read more