[ExI] Human Aging

[Adrian Tymes]

I forwarded your questions to an acquaintance who's a researcher in the
field.  Here's what she said:

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Tell Natasha that I've been working on aging and seniors for about 20 years
now, so my information is an amalgam of information gleaned largely from
clinical and academic sources, but it's come from so many sources I
couldn't possibly list them.

>Does anyone have updated science facts on the human body/brain as a whole
that looks at:
>
> 1.       When does the body starts aging (conflicting views suggest
directly after puberty, others say 20-ish);

The aging process starts with chromosome chains, each of which is capped by
a telomere (kind of like the aglet on the ends if shoelaces).  Each
telomere is preprogrammed from birth to indicate (among other things) how
often this particular chromosome chain can reliably multiply before aging
and losing some of the contents. There's no specific age to each telomere,
but generally they start affecting the chromosomes around one's early 20's.
The good news is that most of the telomeres continue their healthy
reproduction of chromosomes until very late in life.

 > 2.       When does the body start preparing for death (conflicting
views, and some suggest after menopause and andropause);

Depends on what's meant by "preparing for death."  One could say that it
starts when the first chromosome chain misbehaves and who knows when that
is.  Different parts of the body age at different rates, and disease or
malfunction can affect that.  In many cases, people know when their body is
getting ready to die.  My mother knew that she was dying more than a month
before she actually did.

> 3.       If the body regenerates itself every seven years, how does this
affect the aging process (most views reference limited ability to create
daughter cells is the point of preparation for death) and if neurons in the
cerebral cortex are never replaced, why is there a broad statement that the
body regenerates itself every seven years?

To say that the body regenerates itself every seven years is too broad a
statement.  Some parts do, some don't. Each time there is cell division,
there is a possibility that some new gene combination will occur that
subtly changes how the body works.  Science doesn't yet know how that
works, but have observed the changes in the lab.  The ability to generate
new body parts (e.g., an ear) from skin stem cells illustrates the
phenomenon.

Please tell your friend that the phrases "fight aging" and "anti-aging" are
markers for variations on snake oil.  Most of the things sold or advocated
with those phrases in the descriptions are untested, unapproved, and
generally unbelievable.  There's a whole industry that's grown up around
those and similar phrases to take in the gullible with money to spend.

As to where to look for credible information, look for clinical research
papers or courses on aging by degreed professors.  AARP's research section
is a good place to start.
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In addition to that "untested, unapproved, and generally unbelievable", I
would add, "and most of those that have been tested have been shown not to
work, but are sold as life extenders anyway".  Until there's wide scale
enforcement on truth in advertising here, the market is unfortunately
almost 100% fraud.

Of course, we care about that "almost".  But we can't ignore the facts on
the ground, if we wish to be effective.
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