{"id":328,"date":"2015-01-05T08:46:54","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T08:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshmitteldorf.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=328"},"modified":"2015-01-05T08:46:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T08:46:54","slug":"what-is-aging-most-scientists-still-get-it-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2015\/01\/05\/what-is-aging-most-scientists-still-get-it-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get it Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most people misunderstand what aging is. \u00a0It\u2019s not just the public who have been deceived &#8212; Most scientists and medical researchers who study aging are on the wrong track.<\/p>\n<p>The culprit is the \u201cnatural medicine\u201d movement that has dominated thinking about our bodies for the last 50 years. \u00a0\u201cRespect the body\u2019s wisdom. \u00a0Work with the body to fix what has gone wrong.\u201d \u00a0This approach has worked so well with injuries and many diseases that it is understandable that people want to extend it to aging as well.<\/p>\n<p>Diseases of aging have been treated as if they were something that goes wrong, something we have to help the body to fix. \u00a0But in fact, the evidence accumulating in recent decades is that aging is not something that goes wrong, and the body is not trying to fix it. \u00a0Aging is natural. \u00a0It is the body shutting itself down, putting itself out of the way after it has done its job, finished reproduction.<\/p>\n<p>How do we know that aging is an <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/01\/07\/is-aging-an-active-process-of-self-destruction\/\">active process of self-destruction<\/a>, and not just the body \u201cwearing out\u201d? \u00a0There are a number of indications, becoming clearer all the time.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For one thing, if the body were trying its best to keep in good shape, but can\u2019t help wearing out over time, we would expect that damage to the body makes aging happen faster. \u00a0On the contrary, <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2014\/12\/09\/what-doesnt-kill-me-makes-me-stronger\/\">most kinds of external damage actually make us live longer<\/a>. \u00a0The best example is exercise, which generates free radicals like crazy, tears muscles and puts little cracks in our bones. \u00a0And yet, people who exercise tend to be healther and live longer than others who don\u2019t. \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2014\/12\/22\/caloric-restriction-hormesis-and-what-they-teach-us-about-evolution\/\">Starvation is also a way to live longer<\/a>. \u00a0Animals in the lab that are kept on very low calorie diets live much longer than those that have enough to eat. \u00a0This is a clear indication that the bodies that get plenty to eat aren\u2019t really trying to live a long time.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>If the body were doing its best to forestall aging, but succumbing eventually to wear-and-tear, we would expect that as we get older the repair functions would be going full-tilt. \u00a0But in fact, all our repair and protection systems <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/10\/29\/signal-molecules-in-the-blood-what-do-we-lose-with-age\/\">gradually shut down as we age<\/a>. \u00a0Stem cells, which produce new body tissues, gradually stop working. \u00a0And the anti-oxidants that protect us from chemical damage are dialed down in old age, so we don\u2019t have enough of such enzymes as CoQ10, SOD and glutathione.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Clearest of all: there are actually self-destruction mechanisms that we can see in action. \u00a0One of them is <a href=\"http:\/\/biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org\/content\/69\/Suppl_1\/S4\">inflammation<\/a>. \u00a0When we are young, inflammation protects us from invading microbes, and kills diseased cells; but when we get old, inflammation is dialed up much too high; it kills healthy cells, inflames our arties, leading to heart disease, and inflammation causes cancer as well. \u00a0Another mechanism we can see in action is called <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/01\/14\/how-can-we-stop-killing-ourselves\/\">apoptosis<\/a>, or cell suicide. \u00a0When we are young, only cells that are diseased or defective remove themselves via apoptosis; but when we are old, healthy muscle and nerve cells simply fall on their swords and die, leading to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0531556506002774\">weakness of muscle<\/a>, weakness of mind and Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This explains why &#8220;natural medicine&#8221; has been so helpful for infectious diseases, immune function and response to trauma, but in stark contrast natural medicine has failed to make headway against cancer and Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and has made only marginal progress against heart disease and stroke.<\/p>\n<p>For these diseases of old age, we need to abandon the natural approach, and instead simply trick the body into thinking that it is younger. \u00a0Then it won&#8217;t try to shut itself down.<\/p>\n<p>In fact there are some intriguing indications that this might work. \u00a0There are researchers working with this approach and they have produced some dramatic successes just in the last few years:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Every chromosome in every cell contains a time-keeper, tacked onto the tail end of the DNA. \u00a0This is the \u201ctelomere\u201d. \u00a0Simply by resetting the telomere clock, scientists have produced dramatic results in lab animals, reversing aging and making animals younger.<\/li>\n<li>When the telomere clock signals a critical age, the cell becomes \u201csenescent\u201d. \u00a0It goes and strike and refuses to do its job. \u00a0Worse yet, it sends signals to nearby cells that cause the other cells to become inflamed and cancerous. \u00a0\u00a0Recently, scientists have had remarkable success making mice live longer simply by removing the small number of senescent cells.<\/li>\n<li>As we get older, the hormones circulating in our blood gradually change. \u00a0This is the principal way that the body knows how old it is. \u00a0There are youth hormones that promote rebuilding and high-efficiency energy output; and there are old-age hormones that turn up inflammation and cell suicide and signal the body to gradually destroy itself. \u00a0Scientists have begun to have success by increasing the former and decreasing the latter, resetting the hormone profile of an old animal to match that of a young animal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These approaches have not yet made front page news, but scientists in the field already recognize their dramatic promise. \u00a0If all goes well, we should expect breakthrough treatments that extend life and prevent the debilitating diseases of old age, coming on-line in the next few years.<\/p>\n<p><b>Disclaimer<\/b>: This is my own perspective, shared by a handful of world-class aging scientists, but it is not yet mainstream. \u00a0In addition to the two views described here&#8211;programmed aging and wear-and-tear theories&#8211;there is another class of theories favored by mainstream evolutionary scientists, based on compromises that evolution has been forced to make. \u00a0These compromises have been made up <i>ad hoc<\/i> to avoid the inference that aging evolved to benefit the community, not the individual.<\/p>\n<p>There are a great deal of genetic phenomena, as well as <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2014\/12\/09\/what-doesnt-kill-me-makes-me-stronger\/\"><i>hormesis<\/i><\/a>, that can only be explained by programmed theories<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most people misunderstand what aging is. \u00a0It\u2019s not just the public who have been deceived &#8212; Most scientists and medical researchers who study aging are on the wrong track. The culprit is the \u201cnatural medicine\u201d movement that has dominated thinking about our bodies for the last 50 years. \u00a0\u201cRespect the body\u2019s wisdom. \u00a0Work with the &#8230; <a title=\"What is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get it Wrong\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2015\/01\/05\/what-is-aging-most-scientists-still-get-it-wrong\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about What is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get it Wrong\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get it Wrong - Josh Mitteldorf<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2015\/01\/05\/what-is-aging-most-scientists-still-get-it-wrong\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get it Wrong\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most people misunderstand what aging is. \u00a0It\u2019s not just the public who have been deceived &#8212; Most scientists and medical researchers who study aging are on the wrong track. The culprit is the \u201cnatural medicine\u201d movement that has dominated thinking about our bodies for the last 50 years. \u00a0\u201cRespect the body\u2019s wisdom. \u00a0Work with the ... 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. This makes the mechanism challenging to understand and to model. more at http:\\\/\\\/mathforum.org\\\/~josh\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/AgingAdvice.org\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/scienceblog.com\\\/joshmitteldorf\\\/author\\\/joshmitteldorf\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What is Aging? 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. This makes the mechanism challenging to understand and to model. more at http:\/\/mathforum.org\/~josh","sameAs":["http:\/\/AgingAdvice.org"],"url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/author\/joshmitteldorf\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgtN8h-5i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}