It HAPPENS to everyone who lives long enough, gradually at first and then suddenly. By the time we reach age 50, most of us have at least one age-related health condition. At 85, almost all of us do it, and usually several at a time. Cancer, diabetes, cataracts, osteoarthritis, dementia. The list could go on and on.
None of which is surprising, at least to those of us old enough to have experience with aging. However, you may not be aware that we now have a comprehensive understanding of aging at the molecular and cellular level. Even more surprising is the growing consensus that aging can be delayed or even reversed.
“The belief that aging is treatable is still there, there are optimists everywhere,” he says. cute partridge, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Aging in Cologne, Germany. “The idea is that it can be prevented.”
Why we age has been debated for many years. There are two schools of thought. One is that it is the accidental but inexorable accumulation of damage to cells and biomolecules. The other is that aging is biologically programmed, the evil twin of our development from embryo to adulthood.
Both hypotheses have evolution at their heart in the form of “reproductive fitness”: the ability to pass our genes on to our children. The accumulation of damage hypothesis argues that when we are young, it is worth investing in cellular repair processes to maximize that fitness. But after a certain age, that investment is no longer worth its cost, at which point repair processes fail and damage accumulates. …
