Summary: Understanding The Odd Science Of Aging

Aging is a part of life not everyone wants to accept. There are many theories on aging and I would like to focus on the Stochastic Theory. The Stochastic Theory is “based on random events that cause cellular damage that accumulates as the organism ages” (Grossman, S. & Lange, J., 2018, p. 55). Within this theory there are four categories but I am only going to focus on two: Wear and tear theory along with Connective tissue/cross-link theory.

Humans undergo several stages during their lifetime including growth, development, reproduction and senescence. Senescence is defined as the deteriorative biological changes that organisms experience as they age eventually leading to death. These changes include low metabolism, a weak immune system, memory loss, poor vision and loss of hearing. Senescence begins in humans during their post-reproductive years. However, gerontology research has shown that individuals who reproduce late have longer life spans compared to individuals who reproduce early. Nonetheless, it does not indicate that senescence is inevitable. All organisms experience senescence,

Theories of aging include the Wear-and-Tear Theory of Aging and the Cross-Linking Theory of Aging. The Wear-and-Tear Theory of Aging proposed that the effect of the aging cause by the damage of the body and cell over time (Yoost & Crawford, 2016, p.258). While the Wear-and-Tear Theory of Theory suggests the idea that the human body wear out from hard use, the Cross-Linking Theory of Aging view are more focused on the bond and linkage of protein fibers which belief to cause a health issue.

Scientist have seen that telomerase expressing clones have no difference in karyotype but have a long lifespan by 20 doublings. With this research, cells have been seen to have a very youthful looking state for much longer. A last area of study is the hypothalamus of the brain. This part of the brain controls reproduction, growth, metabolism, and aging. This is where many of the age related diseases occur. The study of this area can lead to many advancements in age related diseases that can help people live longer. Though this area of study does not have many advancements it holds promising results. Though there have been numerous advancements, many people ask the question whether people need to live longer because of an already over populated Earth.

2. The MSNBC webcast recounts different stories of the aging population in America. One of the cases mentioned in the web cast is Arden peters and his wife Maxine. The aging theory of wear and tear can be applied to the case of Arden peters who has lost his wife Maxine due to dementia and Parkinson’s. He himself became too weak to care for himself due to the process of aging (MSNBC, n.d). He reached a point where he required someone to care for him. His friend Warren DeWitt is taking care of him and previously helped him take care of his wife until she passed away (MSNBC, n.d). The theory of wear and tear is based on the notion that aging is caused by damages done at the cellular level over time (Hawkley, Berntson, Engeland, Marucha, 2005). The processes that could damage the cells could be sickness, radiation, and accumulation of toxic materials over time

In an order to gain a better understanding how the process of aging affects older adults, I interviewed my neighbor, a sixty-seven year old man. For the purposes of this paper, I will refer to him as Pat. Pat lives with his wife of forty-three years. They currently live in a home in Mounds View, which they have owned for twenty-four years. They receive no home services. He views aging as inevitable. He added that, although there are plenty of negative things that are associated with aging, there are definitely perks that come along with it. He believes that maintaining a healthy lifestyle, carrying a positive attitude, and accepting changes as they come, has helped him adjust to growing old. Pat has been retired for nearly three years. Pat appreciates retirement because he gets to watch his two year old grandson during the week. On the weekends, he gets together with family and friends. He enjoys fishing, hunting, reading, and cheering on his favorite sports teams. Pat has a primary doctor that he has seen for several years. He had a myocardial infarction in 2001, and has since been on two prescribed medications for his heart. In addition, he has arthritis, and has been living with chronic pain for nearly a year. The majority of the pain is in his lower back. He stated that the pain will come and go, but it hurts the most in the morning when he gets out of bed, and when he stands or sits for long periods of time. At the time of the interview, I asked on a scale of 0 through

The way God created us as humans is a life cycle where eventually late adulthood comes with the biology of aging. Santrock (2013) describes five different theories of why humans age (p. 541). The evolutionary theory explains that aging is more of a natural selection process, and diseases occur in the elderly because they “would have been eliminated” if they were in younger people (Santrock, 2013, p.541). Cellular clock theory describes how cells get tired of dividing after they have been reproducing for so long (Santrock, 2013, p.541). Free-radical theory explains when “cells metabolize energy the by-products include unstable oxygen molecules known as free radicals” (Santrock, 2013, p.541). The unstable oxygen molecules can damage DNA and other structures inside the cell (Santrock, 2013, p.541). Mitochondrial theory describes how aging occurs because of the mitochondria essentially wearing out and becoming less efficient (Santrock, 2013, p.542). Mitochondria are the cell’s “power house,” and they convert energy inside the cell (Bailey, 2008). The last theory, hormonal stress theory, illustrates the effects of stress, especially long term stress, on aging (Santrock, 2013, p.542). Stress released hormones which depress the immune system making people more susceptible to disease (Santrock, 2013, p.542). There are many theories about why human’s age, and all of them may be true, but regardless aging is inevitable and so are its effects.

However, cancer cells use an enzyme called telomerase that adds more telomeres to cells so that the cancerous cells can multiply for a much longer amount of time. The Hayflick limit shortens our life spans but we have it so that we can live for a few decades or so more than we could without it. Dr. Moalem says that this programmed aging benefits humans by allowing us to evolve more quickly and making sure that any infected humans don’t infect the next generation. This reading modified my view on diseases and inheritance because I never thought that aging could be something that you evolve into. Death has a way of making itself feel prominent everywhere you go, so imagining a world where organisms were just evolving into this modern reality is difficult. I found it interesting that aging is an advantage even though it feels like a disadvantage to many. Dr. Moalem mentioned, “...the same researchers who first linked progeria-relating aging to normal aging also demonstrated that it is possible to reverse the cellular damage caused by progeria.” If more people spent time researching this and worked together, they could possibly reverse aging in people as

Anthropologists that are most fit to study the process of aging and senescence are those that have biocultural and evolutionary prospectives. The author found that there is more of a focus on growth and development of individuals and not as much on aging of individuals, this is why he has tried to put his focus more on the aging of humans. The life expectancy of hominid evolution has increased greatly and at least doubled from 53 years for most Australopithicines to 122 years in modern day humans. It is believed to have increased 500% and this increase happened recently just within the last two centuries. The United States and many other developed countries life expectancy has increased dramatically from about 46 years in 1900 to 77 in 1997. Not all countries have such high number in life expectancy some have lower numbers such as 35 in Botswana and others have higher like 83 year old in Andorra. The authors does question if life expectancy will continue to keep growing throughout the years and there is no clear answer to it there is more of a debate to whether or not it may or may not keep

Aging is the process of becoming older, as we age, multiple mutations occur that concern all the processes of aging well as it compromising a number of different genes. There are many theories of biological aging, such as the Cellular Aging Theory, Immunological Theory, and the Wear and Tear Theory. The Cellular Aging theory describes the process of aging in which cells slow their number of replication, thus giving each species a “biological clock that determines its maximum life span” and how quickly one 's health will deteriorate(Hooyman, 42). After a certain number of years, each cell which follows an apparent biological clock starts to replicate itself less, thus the specific individual or species slowly deteriorates. This theory gives

In order to better understand aging-associated diseases, it is first necessary to define what aging is. Aging is a complex, multifactorial process of harmful mutations in cells and tissues that are accumulated over time and result in an increased risk of disease and, eventually, death (Tosato, Zamboni, Ferrini, & Cesari, 2007, p. 401). Contrary to the belief that aging can be cured through medical advances, it is scientifically accepted that, while human life expectancy has increased, the human life span has remained largely unchanged for the past 100,000 years (Tosato et al., p. 401). Therefore, future developments in aging research ought to focus on addressing treatment and prevention of major aging-associated diseases that will

The purpose of this news is to notify us that scientists now understand better why aging occurs, researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz, Germany found out that the genes which cause aging belong to a process called autophagy which boosts health and fitness in youth but drive the process of ageing later in life. It also demonstrates that ageing is something humans can not avoid. To do this research the researchers shut down autophagy in old worms and they saw there was a strong improvement in neuronal and subsequent whole body health. In the article of The tech museum of architecture they state that there are two theories of why we age, one is that our genes decide how long we live, and the other one says that as we live our DNA gets damaged until we can no longer function as we are supposed to do. They also talk about the experiment with the worms and how by mutating certain genes they can expand their lifespan up to 4-fold, which for humans would be the same as 300 years. There is another article were their research is about trying to prove that ageing is universal and is the same for all living things, however they found that is has many variables depending on the animal.

Aging is a process through which organism’s functionality decline systematically. The decrease in human organism is due to genetic cellular and molecular modifications. The level of changes on the longevity of the plant can affect it in several ways in a gradual process as the age progresses with time. According to Finch, the process of aging can also have a definition that it is the accumulation of underlying molecular errors (Finch,2007). These errors with time eventually corrupt the adult stem cells. The effect of the accumulating errors is due to some epigenetic and genetic interactions (Finch, 2007). Lerner found out that the genetic interactions rely on the heredity, stochastic and environmental factors (Lerner et al, 2013). The

There are some biological theories of aging that are important to look at especially when dealing with dementia. One of them is the cellular aging theory,

Causes of aging are very uncertain. Besides, there are several factors which predispose an individual to premature aging. Current theories suggest that this process occurs to due to cellular damage such as DNA oxidation by free radicals causing