What cellular changes are associated with aging?
At the cellular level we have many things happening. What the biggest is that every day our cells are bombarded by free radicals. What are free radicals? These are highly reactive bio chemicals that are made when we take in air - when we breath in oxygen and when we eat our foods to make energy and the bad products are billions, millions, trillions, quadrillions of free radicals and they attack your inside membrane, your inside proteins, your inside DNA and cause damage. Now our body has antioxidant protection; we have normal antioxidants inside that are then evoked to help detoxify ourselves but the process may not be hundred percent successful and free radical damage can accumulate and in fact be one of the things contributing to ageing. A second factor is cross linking and that is your proteins contain amino acids that can cross link to each other and cause these proteins to become stiff. The best example of cross linking is the colour gene in your skin when you're young your skin is very, very flexible and pliable as you get aged it gets much less pliable and that is because of the colour gene cross linking in your skin, the same thing happens in your eyes the colour gene and cross linking in your eye can result in cataracts. So cross linking and free radicals are two very important processes that go with ageing environmentally.
