The findings could explain the seemingly random and unfair way that death is sometimes dealt out, and raise the intriguing future possibility of being able to extend the natural human lifespan.
“You get people who are vegan, sleep 10 hours a day, have a low-stress job, and still end up dying young,” said Steve Horvath, a biostatistician who led the research at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’ve shown some people have a faster innate ageing rate.”
A higher biological age, regardless of actual age, was consistently linked to an earlier death, the study found. For the 5% of the population who age fastest, this translated to a roughly 50% greater than average risk of death at any age.
Intriguingly, the biological changes linked to ageing are potentially reversible, raising the prospect of future treatments that could arrest the ageing process and extend the human lifespan.
“The great hope is that we find anti-ageing interventions that would slow your innate ageing rate,” said Horvath. “This is an important milestone to realising this dream.”
Via the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/28/internal-clock-makes-some-people-age-quicker-and-die-younger-regardless-of-lifestyle
4 comments:
Potentially reversible my patootie.
No, I think it can be counteracted to some degree, although reversal might be in the realm of climate change.
There's a protein called elastin that keeps the body firm and young (this is especially important to women). Keep the body producing it longer and a lot of people will stay younger longer.
Right now, the number of people living to 100 and well beyond is growing greater, but we start aging at the same time our parents and even grandparents did. The key is going to be how to attenuate youth, to the point 60 really is the new 30 and 40 really is the new 60.
And maybe 100 is the new 60.
Longer lives means later retirement. Somebody has to supply the goods and services to all those newly young old people.
The only internal clock is from Telomeres. Once those go, you go with them. If they can resuscitate telomeres, then you might have a shot at living much longer.
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