A long life – is it only a dream?

Current century is the golden age for the various companies, who sell youth for the human – every day we hear commercials that talk about new wonderful products stopping the aging: various anti-wrinkle creams, hair dyes, which can paint even gray hair. The desire to stay young and the special offers of such products makes people to take up even drastic measures – they become regular customers of surgeons. So, people spend more time trying to prevent aging, rather than trying to understand this process. Maybe people could live healthy for longer if they had a deeper understanding of aging and its consequences.

Since ancient times, they were looking for ways to extend the life span. Hygiene compliance helped to prevent infections; antibiotics, vaccines creation made a lot of benefits in the medical field, but it only increased the survival and prolonged life span, but did not stop aging.

Aging involves a lot of harmful biological processes that accumulate and speed up the different tissues, cell aging, weakening the whole condition of the body and the performed functions. It should be noted that there is not only a calendar age, but also biological and the same old people can be of one calendar age, but a completely different biological. For the biological age, scientists have developed a set of biological aging markers. These physiological parameters indicate the individual functional level. It was found that some biomarkers, for example, insulin is correlated with mortality.

It is said that evolution is a biological engine and one of the most important phenomenon in the evolution is an adaptation. The natural selection is carried out in order to keep certain genes to future generations. However, in the natural environment is found a high mortality of organisms due to accidents, diseases, which make it difficult to draw conclusions about the gene, leading to a longer life.

Of course, a person lives much longer than animals. But why we cannot be immortal, or at least to live longer? Supposedly, it depends on energy. Each body distributes its energy to the reproduction, regeneration, growth and maintenance of steady state. So, one theory says that the body is aging not due to genetic reasons, but because of poor energy distribution for cell renewal.

It is believed that the regulation of the calories might also increase the longevity, but is still under investigation. Scientists claim that calorie restriction influences the hormones in different tissues and changes in biomarkers. Caloric restriction maintains optimal functioning of tissues and thus increases the resistance to stress levels, maintain optimal metabolism. Maybe people could live healthy longer due to the mechanisms associated with the hormone insulin system.

Without oxygen, we could not make enough energy and would quickly die. It is believed that increasing the amount of protective mechanisms in the fight against the lack of oxygen, we can improve the health status and add a few more years.

Currently, researchers are concentrating on aging and pharmaceutical companies developing various products to slow down the aging process. If someone will create a material, which reveals itself as a calories regulation or strong genes manifestation that determine resistance to stress, it could prolong the lives about 25 years. Imagine that we could enjoy healthy and fulfilling life even up to 80 years. It sounds great! However, this idea not avoids critic’s eyes. According to them it may affect adversely the financial point, as well as increased despair. But researchers believe that the increased life expectancy and health will not cost a lot and people will be able to enjoy more productive, longer and healthier life. Thus, durability can turn into reality.

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