It's funny how everyone tends to assume that there is a very obvious and well-known reason why we age, and people are usually shocked to find out that, like the article demonstrates, ~~science kind of doesn't really know~~. We know a lot of the mechanisms of course and I'm sure any doctors here can explain them, but it's not like there's one simple and universal explanation.

Edit: some commenters have pointed out that aging is very well studied so I'm crossing out the part that could be misleading and will add only: it's complicated

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

But we totally do!

There are a handful of mechanisms that break down over time, and they are both well documented and no new one has been found in somewhat the last 45 years!

Some people like to split some of them up in two, but the base SIX reasons we age are as follows:

Cell loss/tissue atrophy
Cancerous cells
Mitochondrial mutations
Intracellular aggregates
Extracellular aggregates
Senescent cells

See for example the book Ending Aging by the worlds most renowned bio gerontologist or the SENS foundation.

Fun fact, active research into how to fix them is ongoing research and seems to advance quite well towards simple and cheap treatments. Not fast enough of course but we might be on the cusp of neglible senescence as they call it...

[–] yoissy@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

I think you means negligible senescence. Unless you're trying to say we are close to growing old irresponsibly

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 13 hours ago

Ha ha fixed

[–] ns1@feddit.uk 0 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks very much for this response! Good information for people like me who are interested to read more.

I think the point I was trying to make is that there are multiple reasons instead of one, and none of them are simple or easy. Understanding how those six things happen is subtly different to asking why they happen, which might be why we've got such a range of comments here and why the scientists in the article couldn't agree on their answer.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 12 hours ago

The downstream problems are complex and hard to understand (like being old and fragile, or having diverse shortcomings), the base problems not so much actually. Not the simplest things to fix but nothing outlandish either.

And the first mediocre treatments might give us some extra healthy years, and during that time, potentially other and better treatments will be created, adding more years to our lives, and so on. For the curious, the theory is called LEV, Longevity Escape Velocity, and it's possible that many of us might catch it.

[–] fafferlicious@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It's actually quite simple, aging is likely a response to sexual maturity.

We are giant meat gundams our DNA has built up to pass on our genes. The moment we can do that, all the stem cell and regenerative pathways start turning off because we've achieved our purpose.

[–] ns1@feddit.uk 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, I've heard similar things before and that's probably the closest thing to a true explanation. It's a purely genetic line of reasoning which raises a lot of questions though: What's the biological clock that controls the timing of when genes activate? Which/how many genes are responsible for aging and does everyone have all of them? Could animals be selectively bred for longevity indefinitely? Some of these questions might have partial answers already but I don't know them.

Thanks for the paper, it's interesting and I definitely couldn't follow the whole thing. It says at one point that the findings are consistent with the theory that organisms age to make way for their offspring. I've heard of the slightly different version where it's just random genes that don't have any benefit but the downside isn't bad enough for them to be selected against.

[–] fafferlicious@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

I can potentially shed some additional insight.

Hear shock proteins are known as chaperones in that they are responsible for chaperoning proteins through the folding process. This process is important because I'm biochemistry (that is the chemistry proteins can do) shape is function. If you can look at the shape of a protein (specifically any site that does chemistry or is responsible for protein protein interactions), you can confidently predict the function of the protein.

Shape is function.

So the heat shock proteins (HSPs), are responsible for chaperoning the shape that dictates function. They derived their name because they were first noticed as being more expressed when you subjected cells to elevated heat ( or a heat shock). Increased temperature can cause proteins to have the wrong shape more easily, so the cells respond by making more chaperones!

The research finds that we get fewer copies of those chaperones once the works were capable of procreating. This suggests that while the observable effects of what we call "aging" can be caused by many things. Aging more generally can be understood as a programmed winding down of our self maintenance machinery.

Of course this is just a lens of viewing it from and may not be a complete picture. But it's a very useful and productive one.

[–] i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Entropy?

[–] ns1@feddit.uk 2 points 18 hours ago

In the informal sense that everything breaks eventually then yes. If you're talking strictly in terms of physics, humans increase entropy just by existing, by eating calories and generating body heat, and that would still be true if we didn't age.