Thursday, November 16, 2017

Anti-Aging: The Scientist's View

Anti-Aging: The Scientist's View- Scientists who study the biology of aging view it as a process of accumulated damage to the building blocks of life (e.g., proteins,  fats, carbohydrates, DNA) that begins early in life, eventually leading to the malfunction and/or dysregulation of the components of cells and the tissues and organs they form, and ultimately leading  to the death of the whole animal. From this perspective, aging makes  humans and other animals more susceptible to disease, but aging  itself is not a disease. Indeed, the diseases and disorders that  appear  throughout life are thought of by scientists as byproducts of aging but not as aging itself. To the scientist who studies aging, referring to aging as a disease  is akin to claiming that a fever resulting from an infection is a  disease. Treating a fever may make a patient feel better, but its  underlying cause remains both present and unchanged. Therefore, reductions in the risk of death from fatal and nonfatal age-related  conditions, improvements in muscle mass and bone density, and other  measurable improvements in the human body (now possible through  behavior modification and medical intervention) do not represent modifications of the underlying aging processes that give rise to these diseases and disorders.


Subjective statements that a patient feels better following an  anti-aging intervention are insufficient proof that aging has been  altered. The battery of tests portrayed as biomarkers of aging may be reliable measures of change in specific physiological attributes  of an individual, but there is no scientific support for the claim  that aging itself is being measured. In fact, efforts to measure  these time-dependent changes in a way that enables one to assess biological age or the effect of an intervention reliably have  failed. Improving biomarkers in an individual, such as increased glucose tolerance and reductions in cholesterol. may reduce the risk  of certain diseases, but this is insufficient proof that aging has  been altered.
You make also : Anti-Aging: The Practitioner's View
Postponing heart disease and cancer through careful monitoring may reduce the risk of death and extend life, but even  this is insufficient proof that aging has been altered. Science  requires empirical evidence that aging can be measured and modified,  and this can occur only if the biological process of aging itself is operationally defined and subject to measurement. Currently, neither has been accomplished.

From a scientific perspective, a genuine anti-aging intervention  would need to reduce the rate and/or amount of accumulated damage  that contributes to aging and to extend life. To date, no  intervention has been scientifically demonstrated to have both of  these properties. This is the case not because it has not  necessarily been accomplished but rather because it is not currently  possible to measure aging so that scientists know with certainty  that experimentally induced life extension is occurring because of  changes in disease pathology or because of a modification to aging  itself. Distinguishing between the biological factors that  contribute to aging and those that contribute to pathology and  disease is critical to understanding why some proponents of anti-aging medicine mistake preventive medicine for delayed aging.

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