Longevidade. Extensão de vida. Prolongando a vida humana.
Parece ficção científica, não é?
Mas isso não. É real.
No entanto, aqui está a coisa. Estamos na infância da ciência da longevidade.
É como o oeste selvagem lá fora.
Todos e o cavalo em que montaram têm uma estratégia para derrotar alguns aspectos do envelhecimento.
Não existe um caminho único para a longevidade, existe um monte de caminhos.
O que significa que quem quer estender sua própria vida saudável vai ter que entender o que é longevidade,
como funciona e o que eles podem fazer a respeito. E isso vai exigir conhecimento.
Este vídeo é onde começa o caminho para esse conhecimento, respondendo à pergunta: “O que é envelhecer?”
Se você é novo no conceito de longevidade e extensão de vida, então esta série de vídeos é para você.
Então fique ligado.
The science of longevity, of extending the human lifespan, is in its infancy.
At this point in time, no-one can check into a rejuvenation clinic, undergo some form of regeneration, and check out a new man or woman.
And the reality is that we can’t yet turn back the clock. All we can do is slow the clock down.
Now, there are some areas where we can actually reverse aging, where we can rejuvenate organs or systems.
But there are so many other aspects of aging that the net effect is still to merely slow down the clock.
So, if people can’t go somewhere to get a complete rejuvenation done to them, what can they do?
Unfortunately, we’re still at a point where anyone who wants to promote longevity in themselves
has to come up with their own plan and then implement that plan…on their own.
These people are known as biohackers and they’re experimenting on their own bodies.
What all of this means is that if you’re thinking about taking action to extend your own lifespan,
you better know what you’re doing. You have to educate yourself.
You have to know what longevity is and how it works.
You have to learn what strategies are available.
You have to be in tune with your own body, so that you know which of those strategies you should employ.
If you’re going to make the attempt to biohack your own longevity, in this day and age, you’re going to need knowledge.
And the very first step to acquire that knowledge is come to an understanding of what aging is.
What is aging? Why do we grow old? Do we really have to? Can anything be done about it?
These are age-old questions that we have collectively been asking ourselves since the dawn of time.
Ideas like extreme old age, immortality, the “Fountain of Youth,”
and being able to rejuvenate oneself back to a state of youth, are cultural concepts that have been with us
ever since we first started writing down our thoughts on who we are and why we’re here
…and what’s possible.
If we take a look at the concept of “aging”, it’s pretty simple and it has two aspects.
One is the notion that we’re just wearing out, like an old engine that has outlived it’s usefulness.
Just like a lifetime of wear and tear on the engine can cause it parts to become worn out,
a lifetime of wear and tear on our bodies can cause them to decline in function.
The skin starts losing elasticity and plumpness, and eventually starts to sag and becomes more and more wrinkled.
Joint aren’t as well lubricated and lose their range-of-motion.
We lose muscle mass, strength and endurance.
Our immune systems become less able to cope.
We lose bone mass, become more frail and our hair turn grey…or just falls out.
We lose the ability to do things that we once we able to do without even thinking about it.
But there’s another aspect of aging. We become much more susceptible to chronic disease.
Now this isn’t really a function of our immune system, although that’s definitely in decline.
Chronic diseases aren’t something that’s contagious, that we catch from someone else.
Chronic disease are conditions that arise on their own, seemingly from nowhere.
Things like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s.
Stroke. Metabolic disease. Even erectile dysfunction.
Our current idea of an elderly person is someone who is weak and frail and decrepit,
and has more chronic disease the older they get.
Most people, if asked, claim that they’re really not all that interested in living a long time if it means frailty,
weakness, the loss of independence.
If it means that they’ll wind up in an old folks home, perhaps in a wheel chair, dependent upon caretakers for their very existence.
And therein lies a dichotomy. Everyone want to live a long time, but no one want to become aged.
No one want to live to be frail and decrepit. But what if it didn’t need to be that way.
What if you could live a long time, say 90, or a 100, a 110 or even 120,
yet still retain the appearance and abilities of when you were 60, or 50, or even 40?
Can you even imagine being 120 years old, but being mistaken for a person who's in their 40's,
in both appearance and activity level?
And if you’re 120 years old, but are living the life of a 40-year-old,
do you think that might extend your lifespan past 122? Think you might be able to live until 130?
That’s longer than anyone’s ever lived. 150? What about 200? Or 300?
Is that even achievable?
Maybe.
Longevity science, which is the science of understanding why we grow old and what we can do about it,
has made tremendous strides in the last decade or so.
And the rate of progress is just accelerating.
Every year, discoveries are made that can move the needle just a little.
OK, is this real? Or is it just science fiction? Wishful thinking?
To really be able to answer that, we need to take a look at a few theories on aging.
First, there’s the theory that aging is a disease…a disease that can be cured.
While this theory doesn’t really get into the fundamental reason for aging,
it does represent an entirely different way of thinking about aging.
And this new way of thinking can have a dramatic impact on research into longevity.
If we think of aging as a disease that can be cured, and we can get various regulatory agencies to declare it as such,
it radically changes the landscape of research.
Because it’s these agencies that determine where the funding will go and how the discoveries,
therapies and patents that stem from that research get regulated.
This classification by regulatory agencies will open up funding for research
and allow that research to be considered an authentic quest for answers,
instead of a “pie-in-the-sky” hunt for crackpot theories that are still considered science fiction by many.
But this first category doesn’t really explain what aging is or what can be done about it.
The next theory begins to answer those questions,
and it could lead to interventions that can have a big impact on how we age.
And that’s the theory that aging is an accumulation of damage.
This theory addresses the symptoms of aging, even though it doesn’t really address the underlying cause.
In 2013 a paper published by Carlos Lopez-Otin theorized that there are 9 “Hallmarks of Aging,”
and that these hallmark represent the causes of aging.
Since then other causes have been suggested, but these 9 hallmarks are widely accepted in the longevity circles...for now.
And most of these hallmarks are the result of an accumulation of damage.
As we’ve evolved, the human body has taken into consideration that damage will occur
and has developed repair processes to fix this damage.
But as we grow older, some of these repair processes occasionally break down,
and repairs are either performed incorrectly, or not at all. And this results in damage.
Now, our bodies can withstand a certain amount of damage, but over time, this damage accumulates.
At some point it crosses a threshold where the body is not longer able to cope with this damage
and we start to show visible signs of aging.
So the real question is: what causes this dysfunction in our repair processes.
What causes a break down in these great systems that our bodies have developed to cope with damage?
This leads us to our final theory: the loss of information.
The information that I’m talking about here is permanently encapsulated in our DNA,
our genome, the blueprints for our entire bodies.
Not only for every different type of tissue and cell in our body,
but the instructions for every biological process that occurs in it.
In the genome, this information is carved in stone…it never changes.
But it does change in something called the epigenome.
The epigenome sits on top of our genome.
While our DNA is divided into sections called “genes”, and each gene can produce for a separate protein,
not all genes are expressed, or turned on. That because of the epigenome.
It’s the epigenome that causes some genes to be expressed and not others.
While the DNA in every cell is identical, it’s the epigenome that tells a muscle cell to be a muscle cell,
as opposed to a liver cell, or a brain cell.
Think of it like this. Our genome is written in a digital code, made up of A, T, C & G.
And digital code has the ability to be copied and duplicated countless times with no degradation in the information.
Like a CD, like a movie stored in digital format.
But the information in the epigenome is analog.
And here’s the thing about analog: while it has unlimited variations and nuances that can’t be replicated by digital code,
it’s much more difficult to copy.
With every copy, a little “noise” is introduced and some information is lost.
Eventually, changes to the epigenome environment cause more and more noise to build up,
and the information from the DNA becomes more and more difficult to read. And mistakes are made.
These mistakes build up over time, eventually crossing a threshold, and we begin to demonstrate symptoms of aging.
And it happens across every type of cell in our bodies.
Muscle cells, skin cells, liver cells, heart cells…all cells, really.
As the cells become more and more dysfunctional, this damage begins to accumulate, and the tissue begins to age.
And that, in a nutshell, is aging.
It’s why our bodies breakdown as we get older. But there’s still a lot of questions.
If we now understand what aging is, how does this loss of information happen? What causes it?
What is the cause of aging?
And how does this fundamental cause get expressed as it moves through the multitude of processes within our bodies?
And what the hell can we do about it?
Stay tuned to this channel, because I’ll be addressing those questions in the follow-on videos in this series.
If you enjoyed this video, and you’d like to see the rest of the videos in this series,
click on this playlist to continue your education.
That’s it for me, catch ya next time.