The Seven Deadly Causes Of Aging
What are the 'seven deadly causes of human aging'?
Since aging is the accumulation of damage, the ongoing accumulation of side effects, of metabolism, we can go a bit further and say, well, what are those side effects? And we can classify them. And I've discovered that it's possible to classify them into just seven major categories in a rather useful way. Because within each of these categories, the sort of thing that we need to do to actually repair the damage, to actually reverse the problem, is actually more or less the same thing within all of the examples within the category. So what are the categories? Well, the first one is loss of cells. When a cell dies and it is not naturally replaced by the division of another cell. In most of our tissues, it is naturally replaced by cell division, but it some tissues it isn't. So that's one type of problem. As cells progressively die, then the organ may get less functional. Parkinson's disease, for example, is caused by the loss of a particular type of cell in a particular area of the brain. The second one is really the opposite of the first one. It is the accumulation of cells. I'm not talking about cancer here. I'll come to cancer in a moment. I'm talking about cells that are not necessarily dividing, but they're also not dying when they should, and they're getting in the way, and for various reasons they may be toxic. So we need to get rid of those cells. Number three is mutations in our chromosomes. And of course, this is cancer I'm talking about. Cancer is definitely a consequence of that. And there is good reason to believe that cancer is actually the only consequence of mutations that we really need to worry about. But cancer is a big problem, so we need to fix that. Number four is also mutations, but this time not in our chromosomes. Mutations in a special part of the cell called the mitochondria, which has its own DNA. It's the only part of the cell that has its own DNA apart from the nucleus. And mitochondrial mutations accumulate during aging, just like mutations in our chromosomes. And we are actually still at this point not entirely clear what the bad consequences of mitochondrial mutations are, but there are lots of circumstantial reasons to believe that there are such consequences. So we'd like to fix that. And in this case actually, and also in the case of chromosomal mutations, we are not really talking about repairing the mutations, but rather about making them harmless, obviating them by essentially disrupting the mechanisms whereby they can be harmful. OK, so that's four. Number five is the accumulation of garbage. The accumulation of indigestible molecules of one sort or another inside the cell. And this is a really important one for a number of the most important age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's and atherosclerosis, and macular degeneration. Essentially, stuff accumulates in the cell because we don't have the enzymes to get rid of it, and it just gets in the way eventually, just like not taking out your garbage for a month. Number six is very similar to number five, but here we're talking about garbage outside the cell, in the spaces between cells. And again, that can cause a bunch of problems. It can disrupt the communication between cells. Things like that. So we need to get rid of that garbage. And finally, number seven is again outside the cell in extracellular structures, but this time it's not garbage. It's not stuff that we just want to eliminate. It's loss of elasticity. Stiffening of tissues that are made of proteins and that need to be elastic in order to do their job. Like, for example, the walls of our major arteries or the lens of our eyes. These things get stiffer with age, and we know why that is. It's because of additional, spontaneous chemical bonds forming between the proteins that are making up these tissues, and we need to get rid of those spontaneous chemical bonds. So those are the seven things.
How are baby-boomers redefining old age?
I think that especially in the United States there's very much more of a "can do" mentality about aging, about not just giving in, and accepting that aging is natural and that we just have to live with it and go quietly away. I think just as with so many other aspects of the American society but also many other societies this is something that people are willing to actually think about fighting. At this point of course there is still a certain amount of caution and pessimism with regard to whether such a fight will be successful in time to do anything for people who are already alive, but that's one thing I am going to change. First of all of course with coming up with the scientific answers to how we might go about this. Then also getting those answers more widely appreciated.
What do you consider an ideal lifespan?
I don't really think in terms of what lifespan is good, what lifespan is bad. Because I think that, that at this point is a function of what we're used to. I think that we've seen already in society that lifespan has been increasing, just a little bit, let's say over the last fifty years…that attitudes to what's an acceptable lifespan have shifted accordingly. So for example, a hundred years ago, it was considered perfectly fine to die at the age of 60. People thought, well he had a pretty good inning. Now we think that's not good enough at all. And I think that will continue to be true as we succeed in pushing back the boundaries. So for me, what matters most is not to actually extend life, but to eliminate the suffering associated with going downhill during aging. And that will have, as a side benefit, the fact that we'll live a lot longer. But really, I think about the suffering first.
What factors contribute to the average lifespan of humans?
At the moment, in the industrialized world, about 90% of deaths are due to age-related problems, due to causes that young people, more or less, never die of. So, in other words, the seven types of damage that occur and accumulate during life, and that eventually cause age-related diseases, pathology, frailty, and so on--those are the major reasons why we die at the age we do.
How does eating well and exercising increase my longevity?
There are various ways to shorten one's lifespan and one of them is to put on too much weight. If one doesn't get enough exercise to keep a constant weight then lots of other things go wrong as a result of carrying around too much fat which causes hormonal changes in the blood which has effects on all of our various types of metabolic processes and generally destabilizes them and accelerates age-related problems, especially diabetes and or heart disease. And therefore getting enough exercises will stop that happening and it will not accelerate one's aging, but we can't take that too far unfortunately because there is a basal rate of accumulation of these various types of molecular and cellular damage which happens even if we're keeping a constant weight and if we're avoiding the other things that we all know we ought to avoid like smoking or not getting enough micronutrients or whatever.
Can I extend my lifespan organically?
At the moment, whether one takes pharmacological agents to extend one's life, or whether one doesn't, makes very little difference to what one can do. At the moment, we can do very little, indeed, other than avoiding life-shortening activities such as obesity and smoking, and the stuff that we can do once we are healthy, in terms of eating the right diet, and so on, is, basically, all there is for most people; people who are not unusually susceptible to some thing or another. That doesn't change if we extend our range of things we can do at the moment to drugs of any sort that we have at the moment. In the future, when we develop therapy that can significantly extend life by repairing the various molecular and cellular changes, some of those therapies will be pharmacological, and some of them will be more high tech, like gene therapy, and stem cell therapy, and so on.
How could my education increase my longevity?
The main effect of education on longevity is simply that the more educated you are, the more wealthier you are likely to be and the more likely you are to be able to look after your own health by getting good medical care. Another very important effect of education on longevity is that the better educated you are, the more you will be able to absorb good advice that you may get, from me for example, about how to deal with life. And also, the more interested you may be in actually taking that advice because you may be enjoying your life more if you are getting what life can offer, like education and others.
Can red wine increase my longevity?
I've heard a lot of talk about the possibility that red wine might increase one's longevity. And this started from the realization that the French, especially, tend to live rather a long time compared to most people, maybe a year or two longer than a lot of other industrialized nations, despite the fact that they seem to do a lot of things wrong. They seem to smoke a lot, and they seem to eat quite high fat food. Therefore, there is something we do actually that has become known as the French paradox, which is why is this true, and there's good evidence that red wine has something to do with it. However, we don't know the molecular basis for this and it may be that there are other aspects of French life, such as people getting enough exercise, because the French don't get particularly obese, despite their high fat diet. So it's all still quite a mystery whether red wine really is good for you.
