Why do we get old and die?
 

I'm reading a book about this: "Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality".

There are many contributing factors as to why we get old and die. But, basically, I believe it happens very gradually on a cellular level. As we get older, our cells become less and less able to clean and rebuild themselves. Garbage builds up and doesn't get cleaned out. Dead cells sit there and don't get replaced. Crosslinking stiffens us and makes us creaky. Our arteries and brains get clogged with gunk.

Many scientists are now working on solving some of these problems - how to clean out the debris. It may turn out to be a microorganism that's needed to eat the gunk but it won't be easy because it needs to be specific and not eat everything in sight. :)

At any rate, it's an interesting read and I may add more to this thread as time goes on.

Feel free to add any thoughts you may have on this subject.

As far as the "gunk theory", I think finding ways to make the cells live longer and function more efficiently should be the goal. Prevent the gunk rather than try to deal with it after it happens.

Be careful what you wish for.
 

Trying to achieve "immortality" or significantly longer lives through science is an interesting subject.

However, living to an extremely old age has its down side, which was a subtle subtext to the movie The Green Mile, in which various characters were murdered, and legally executed.

The principal character, a jail guard, was shown to live to an age where all of his contemporary friends and acquaintances died, and generations of his new friends had died as well. These losses were painful to him. He appeared to long for death himself rather than experience more of these painful losses.

This causes one to reflect on how long a life is desirable. I have already outlived almost all of the roughly seventy-five deputy sheriffs who I worked with in the 1960s.

If science could achieve universal doubling of life expectancy, famine and starvation would eventually nullify that accomplishment.

We get old and die because if we didn't there would be way too many people on earth.

I believe it is God's plan. Grow old, body breaks down and we yearn to go to our forever home....and that's NOT in The Villages, which is our forever home for too short of a time!

Amen

Here's the reason.............
 

Genesis Chapter 3

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground,since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

THAT'S why we die. No amount of science is going to change that.


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And still doing good on earth. Bless you now and I will see you in glory.

Ps I did mental health in youth camp when green mile came out. Love films with redemption.

Why do we get old and die? Nobody is getting out alive. I just read an interesting article about a Hollywood icon....Clint Eastwood.....who has directed thirteen films since hitting the age of 70 in 2000. His latest film (American Sniper based on Chris Kyle's novel) will be coming out next year. When asked about his longevity, his quote was 'I never let the old man in.' Words to live by.

I agree. God created man to be immortal. Man was not happy and chose to rebel.

While I appreciate the biblical references for why we get old and die, science has a different explanation. At the end of our DNA we have telomere chains. As we age, the length of telomere chains becomes shorter. Eventually the telomeres become so short that cell replication produces lethal errors or missing pieces in the DNA sequence, ending the cell's ability to replace itself. This point, when the cell has lost vital DNA code and cannot reproduce, is called the Hayflick limit. It's the measure of how many times a cell can copy itself before it dies.

Some cells in our body have a very high hayflick limit. Cells that line the inside of your mouth and intestines, for example, are constantly being worn away and replaced. Indeed these cells appear to have the ability to regrow telomeres. Other cells do not do such a good job of replacing themselves. These have a low hay flick limit.

On short look, I do not see a lot of research to back this up. One article said that cancer cells do not get shorter on reproduction due to telomeres while normal cells do get shorter and thus lack infinite quality. Makes no sense...what am I missing?

You are missing info about an important enzyme called teleromase. It controls the production of telomeres on the ends of our DNA. As we age, we produce less and less of this enzyme. Usually, when a cell replicates incorrectly, the error will prevent the cell copying itself again. But with cancer, cells with errors can "turn on" the production of telomerase and make the mutant cell immortal. Now, aberrant cells can reproduce unchecked and outlive normal cells. This is the process that creates tumors. Of course, as we do more and more research our understanding of this may grow or even change. That's the beauty of science. It's always challenging and testing it's own assumptions.

Amen and thank-you.

According to the author, the gunk starts building up from the earliest stage of life, although it may not be too noticeable in the beginning. It was said that the process of aging is set down from the very beginning.

Perhaps a way has been found to make cells live longer but, so far, I haven't come across any mention of it in this book. You might try searching: Dr. Dean Ornish, telomers and telomerase. According to Dr. Ornish, healthy lifestyle changes can increase telomerase and telomers so that cells can continue to replace themselves. Further studies will likely be needed to confirm this. However, in the mean time, I see no harm in practicing his recommended lifestyle.

That's a good point. I have read about people who outlived all their children. It does happen. But suppose scientists come up with solutions to keep people living longer. That means everyone will live longer, including your friends. But for those who have already lost their friends, there's no turning back the clock.

Actually, this has already happened. There was a time when people only lived to about age 20. Then, much later, it was age 40. Now it's about 79?
Why should we now think that we have reached the upper limit?

There has always been "famine and starvation", even thousands of years ago when the population was a lot less. But as a population grows and gets older, people seem to reproduce less.

Look at what's happening in Japan and other countries. As the average age of the population increases, they complain that there are not enough births. It seems that, somehow, nature might have a hand in this. Just as when there are wars, more males than females are born. It's automatic.

during peace sons bury their fathers; during war fathers bury their sons.

The author talked about different theories of why we get old and die, and it was decided that overpopulation is not the reason.

The reason: From the begining natural selection could not select for longevity. What was selected for? Those who were fit to live long enough to reproduce.
Then, once you reproduced, you were disposable.

If the created could tell the creator how they should made, we could call the shots on immortality.
Just saying, the creator offers eternal life in a plan intended to confound those who think they are wise. It's a good and timely question.

BarryRX: You are quoting Dr.Andrew Weil. I like the Adam and Eve story better more sex shorter telomeres, less sex longer telomeres....end of story

Did she really talk to a snake???? I know people talk to their pet dogs and cats, but a wild snake? Thats funny.

Actually I was trying to paraphrase a study done about 5 years ago by molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn. There is also a more recent study about Telomere length in some long lived sea birds, but I don't recall the conclusions. I like the Adam and Eve story too...it's a fine story!

Jesus and the prophets often pointed out that "man's knowledge before God is foolishness".

The author, mentioned in my opening post, is a science writer and describes how some, like Aubrey de Gray are thinking of aging as a curable disease. And Aubrey has a list of seven deadly things that need to be worked on.
Here is his list:

1) molecules grow tangled and stiff, they are called cross-links

2) mitochondria in the cells fail with age

3) junk collects inside cells

4) junk collects between cells

5) some cells get old and dysfunctional but don't get replaced

6) some cells die and poison other nearby cells

7) cell mutations (in genes) bring forth new cells that build tumors

God gave gerontologists the brains to study the problems of aging and to seek solutions for those problems. God bless biologists, gerontologists and others who try to make life better and, at the same time, more interesting.

Do hear an "amen"? Amen! :eclipsee_gold_cup:

Elizabeth Blackburn and Dean Ornish, MD, worked on a study together. It was based on lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise and stress reduction. The result was: Study participants showed a 29% rise in telomerase. And there was something about DNA repair or telomere lengthening.

Search: Lifestyle Changes May Lengthen Telomeres, A Measure of Cell Aging

BarryRX Dr. Weil was, in his early years, ahead of his time a new age hippie really knew his chemicals and I mean that in every sense.

His, and others research do make sense and cancer cells if they could be re-engineered so as to have a constructive vis a vis destructive growth would advance these study 10 fold.

I do believe that scientist will be able to extend a man's life ( I am not sure about women :D) but it will come at a cost simply because living is a series of trade offs. As for population explosions well man has always adjusted i.e necessity is the mother of invention/technology

My doctor says 88 for women and 83 for men. That doesn't make me very happy. I surely do not want to outlive my very best friend on this earth.

Don't worry be happy
 

　
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Short list for longevity
 

Here is an explanation from Blade Runner:

http://m.youtube.com/results?q=i%20w...%20father&sm=1

Try this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNprUC1ncko.

Mortality, morbidity, popularity, anti-aging formulas and every lasting peace all have two things in common they are huge money makers, until they are not then pulled off the market for a time to be recycled for the next generation. Barnum was right.

This is correct

I had not caught that subtle subtext in the movie The Green Mile or do not remember it having seen too many vampire movies that cover the same idea. I did read the Stephen King books as they came out much of that time spent near Palo Alto house-sitting and mixing with Stanford students, driving cross country from SF to Tampa, and settling in FL in Palm Harbor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Mile_(novel)

It could be that we have been working on immortality for a long time and it was just called something else. When antibiotics were first developed I'm sure they didn't say that it put us one step closer to immortality. Every medical discovery that came along was just praised as something to improve life. No one gave it a thought that, at some point in the future, all these discoveries combined might add up to immortality.

Almost every known disease is being worked on by scientists who are trying to find a cure. Did anyone ever stop to think what would happen if, one by one, they were all successful? What if they find a cure for Alzheimer's? I suppose everyone would be very happy about it, as long as they were sure that we would only live a little longer and then die from some other disease, like cancer.

When I was age 44 my first husband age 49 died suddenly from a massive heart attack. Even if my husband died at age 89 instead of 49 I would have still said I wish we had more time together :(

As I kept reading the book, I eventually found a whole chapter on what the drawbacks might be to living a long life (like 1,000 years). Basically, it was mostly one thing: Boredom!!! Stop and think what you would do if you could live 1,000 years. You can only be interested in something for so long. You would run out of hobbies that interest you. How long could you be interested in one marriage partner? You might remarry a dozen times or more. Your looooooooong term investments would give you a net worth of 500 billion and you would have bought everything that you ever wanted, and you would be bored with that too. You would have read all the classics until there were no more to read. Despite all those warnings, Aubrey de Gray says he would never get bored with life.

One thing I wonder about: The author devoted a whole chapter to how life on earth would get boring but never mentioned any such thing about eternal life in heaven. There's no such thing as immortality because one would eventually die in an accident or die from salmonella poisoning, or some such thing. But eternity in heaven is,.... well, ....eternity, and that's a heck of a long time. What will we do when we get there? How will we keep things interesting for a never ending period of time?

Men have dreamed of a Utopia since the beginning of time. To wit the Garden of Eden. This story first, repeated orally from one generation to the next until it could be recorded for posterity. Did it rationalize, for early man, why he died? and where he went?

In modern times Shang ri la. To me this is a good thing because it lay the foundation for hope and it carried with it a vision, a goal, a mission for mankind. and despite all the craziness that continues in this world of ours we always come back to this hope this vision this promise to ourselves of a long lasting, happier and better life for our children and our children's children