Why Do Our Bodies Age?

The world's oldest known person, a Frenchwoman named Jeanne Calment, died in 1997 after 122 years and 164 days on our planet, making her the oldest person ever recorded.

A millionaire offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could beat her age record, which was eventually broken by someone else. Living to this age or beyond is, in actuality, an accomplishment that only a select few, if any, humans are likely to be able to accomplish.

Human bodies are just not designed to withstand prolonged periods of inactivity. Our capacity is estimated to be approximately 90 years. But what does aging truly imply, and how does it interfere with the body's efforts to maintain its life expectancy?

We have an instinctive understanding of what it means to grow older. For some, it represents the process of growing up, while for others, it represents the process of growing old. Finding a precise scientific definition of aging, on the other hand, is a difficult task.

The best we can say is that aging happens when intrinsic processes and interactions with the environment, such as sunlight and toxins in the air, water, and our foods, cause changes in the structure and function of the body's molecules and cells. This is known as cellular aging.

These alterations, in turn, lead their decline and, ultimately, the failure of the entire organism to function properly. The exact mechanisms of aging are still mostly unknown to science. The discovery of nine physiological features, ranging from genetic modifications to abnormalities in the cell's regeneration ability, that play a vital role in cancer has just recently been made by scientists.

First and foremost, as time goes on, our bodies amass genetic damage in the form of DNA lesions, which can lead to cancer. These arise naturally as the body's DNA duplicates, but they can also occur in cells that are not dividing.

Organelles known as mitochondria are particularly susceptible to this type of damage. In addition to producing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which serves as the primary energy source for all cellular operations, mitochondria also regulate a wide range of cell activities and play a crucial part in the process of programmed cell death.

If mitochondrial function begins to degenerate, cells and, eventually, entire organs will begin to deteriorate as well. The body's tissues and cells can be affected by other changes in the way genes are expressed, which are referred to as epigenetic modifications. These abnormalities are referred to as epigenetic alterations.

In older adults, genes that were silenced or expressed only at low levels in infants become more prominent, resulting in the development of degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, which accelerate the aging process. Even if we were able to prevent all of these damaging genetic modifications, we would not be able to save ourselves from our own cells.

The fact is that as we grow older, our ability to regenerate cells, which is the basic stuff of life, diminishes. The DNA in our cells is wrapped within chromosomes, each of which includes two protective areas at the extremities known as telomeres, which are located at the ends of each of our chromosomes.

With each cell replication, the length of them grows shorter. The reduction in the length of telomeres causes cells to cease replicating and perish, limiting the body's ability to regenerate itself. Cells become progressively senescent as they grow older, a process that prevents the cell cycle from continuing in times of danger, such as when cancer cells are growing.

However, as we grow older, the response becomes more intense, slowing cell growth and limiting their ability to reproduce themselves.

Aging also involves the involvement of stem cells, which can be found in many organs and have the ability to divide indefinitely in order to restore other cells.

With age, stem cells decrease in quantity and tend to lose their regenerative potential, which has an impact on tissue regeneration and maintenance. of our organs' original roles as a result of the aging process

Other modifications concern the ability of cells to perform their functions appropriately. The inability to perform quality control on proteins as they grow older results in an accumulation of damaged and potentially poisonous nutrients, which leads to an increase in metabolic activity that might be fatal to them if they do not act quickly.

Intercellular communication is also slowed, which eventually has a negative impact on the body's ability to function. There is still a lot we don't understand about the process of aging.

Is it ultimately a matter of nutrition, exercise, medicine, or something else that contributes to a longer life as we know it? Can we artificially lengthen our lives through the use of future technology such as cell-repairing nanobots or gene therapy? In addition, do we wish to live even longer lives than we currently do?

Starting with 122 years of inspiration as a source of inspiration, we have no idea where our curiosity will take us.