Why do we die? Can we stop it?

Have you ever thought to yourself why do I die? Me too. Since the beginning of time the cycle of life happens with any mammal, it starts with birth and then growing old and eventually death. But why is it that we die? Why can't we live for 200 years? Can we reverse the effects of ageing?

For thousands of years, scientists have been trying to find out why we die. In the past 100 years, we have made astounding breakthroughs. In this article, I will explain all this and more.

This article will be split up into 3 parts.

Part 1: The cell

Do you know why ageing happens, nor did I before I started researching it. It turns out it’s really easy to understand. Inside the body, there are human cells>. Inside the cells, there are what’s called a nucleus>. Inside that nucleus there are chromosomes. For an organism to grow and function properly, cells must constantly divide to produce new cells to replace old, worn-out cells.

Chromosomes have the job to constantly duplicate. Every time a chromosome duplicates it loses a small amount of itself. That small amount that is coming of is vital DNA that is tightly coiled around the chromosome. This is why we have telomeres at the end of our chromosomes to protect them.

The telomeres lose part of itself every time the cell duplicates but we are ok because the telomere is extra non-vital DNA. A good example is a shoelace, the shoelace is like the chromosome and the plastic part at the end is like the telomere. We can afford to lose parts of the plastic but when you lose all of the plastic, the laces don't work anymore. Some people are born with large telomeres and short telomeres like how some people are born short and tall.

Part 2: Senescent cells

What are senescent cells? after your cells have duplicated 40–60 times the Hayflick limit comes into effect. What is the Hayflick limit you may ask, the Hayflick limit is the number of times a cell can duplicate before turning in to a senescent cell.

Senescent cells are basically zombies. After the cell hits the Hayflick limit it becomes a zombie does nothing but take your resources and waste it. Senescent cells bother people of old age rather than young. If you were to look at an 8-year-old you would observe that they have none or close to no senescent cells, compared to an 80-year-old man where you would find these cells everywhere.

A study done in mice showed the true effects of senescent cells. Jan van Deursen and his colleagues at Mayo Clinic had an idea: could killing off these ‘zombie’ cells in the mice delay their premature descent into old age? The answer was yes. In a 2011 study, the team found that eliminating these ‘senescent’ cells forestalled many of the ravages of age and that eliminating them can alleviate, or even prevent, certain illnesses (‘Becoming undead’). They found that clearing the cells in mice has been shown to restore fitness, fur density and kidney function. In 2016 his team did a study showing that they could make mice live 30% longer and in those years there healthspan was drastically improved.

Imagine if we could implement this technology in humans. The average human lifespan is 79 years, using this technology we could expand our lives by 23.7 years. This would mean that the average human lifespan would be 102.7. The oldest person to ever was 122 years old with this tech she could have lived 36.6 years longer or 158 years old.

Part 3: Ethics

Now you may be asking yourselves why are we talking about ethics? Shouldn’t we just make people live forever? The answer to that is no. You see scientists are not trying to make some cool drug that makes you live till 200. Poverty levels would skyrocket because we couldn't build enough houses and there wouldn't be enough food for everyone and quite simply we don't have enough space on earth. This would mean we would have 259 people per square kilometres compare to today where we have 14.7 people per square kilometre.

What people are discussing is expanding life by around 20 years but most importantly expanding the quality of life. Now, what does that mean you may ask? They are trying to make a human be just as fit in there 70s as there 20s. To do this they have to remove the senescent cells witch will end up making the average life longer put will expand the healthy stage or golden years in your life.

Q & A

1. How many chromosomes do we have?: Humans have 46 chromosomes. Each parent gives their child 23 chromosomes. These chromosomes are what makes each person unique. Your gender is also determined by the chromosomes your parents give you.
2. Why can't we just make our telomeres bigger so essentially we could live longer?: Lengthening your telomeres does almost nothing. You can buy The Swanson Telomere Advantage Cellular Longevity Formula, this formula claims to lengthen your telomeres but science show that lengthening your telomeres give you a bit more than a 50% chance of living longer. Having long telomeres isn't always a good thing, study show that they’re linked to a greater risk of melanoma, lung cancer, some types of leukemia and brain tumors.
3. Why can our chromosomes only duplicate 40–60 times?: The hayflick limit makes this impossible. In the image below you can see that after the cell duplicates 40–60 times the telomeres run out. In the final stage of the image you can see that there is no telomere left therefore the cell becomes senescent.

Aging is a mystery of life. It happens for a dozen reasons but in this article I talked about the main ones. I hope this inspired you to think a little bit about what we can do to stop ageing. I think we need to have a lot more money invested in this wonder of life. If we had more money in this I think we could expand life quality and make death happen way past the 100s. Any human and most animals have suffered from the deadly effects of aging where the mortality rate is 100%. In the US alone the science sector gets 1 percent. If we could invest just 1 percent of the US federal budget then we could get a massive boost in this field.