From series: Big Questions Medicine: “Only limitation of our life makes it exciting” we age. Every minute, every hour. Unstoppable. How can this process be halted? And do we want this? A biologist and three doctors discussed. by Sybille Klormann October 20, 2017, 19:31 Uhr26 comments Is eternal life really desirable? © Mads Perch/Getty Images, installation time online content
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What does a person wish, who is 100 years old? An even longer, maybe even an eternal life? How did he manage to get so old? and is re anything in world that doesn’t end sometime? These questions were discussed by biologist Anna Trasher and doctors Natalie Grams, Marlene Hecker and Karin Schumacher in our Liveblog. The main question of last episode of our series The great questions of science was, “could we ever be immortal?”
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People in developed countries are living longer, but no one has yet found formula for eternal life. According to current state of research, we only know of one exception: “Eyelash animals are immortal!” said medical doctor Schumacher. Thus, eyelash critters could “multiply ungendered by simply doubling”, says Schumacher.
Cancer cells are also called Immortal, said medical student Marlene Hecker. If se cells had enough food and space, y could divide mselves infinitely and refore live infinitely long. In ory, re could be immortality, said Hecker, pointing to appropriate simulations of researchers who had researched evolutionary process. The crux of matter, however, is that models are not applicable to higher organisms such as humans.
Every minute, every hour, a person ages. He becomes weaker, loses strength, becomes ill. The fact that it comes so far depends on aging of cells toger. “In our cells, a life-long damage is accumulated in genome, so-called DNA damage,” said biologist Anna bin. These damage caused cells to not be able to share at some point. “Then you are seneszent,” said Trasher. This leads to fact that broken cells could not continue to live around m but tissues are repaired. “Through se processes, y provide an inflammation that weakens tissues over time and makes us grow old and sick.”
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Natalie Grams referred to idea of using seneszente cells for cancer research. For medicine it would be “of course great if you could bring nasty cancer cells into senescence and make or cells fit again,” said doctor. However, it has been shown that seneszente cells would appeal particularly poorly to chemorapy. So far, it is by no means clear how cancer and ageing can be halted.
And yet: There are people who already live much longer than ors today. As an example, Karin Schumacher cited so-called blue zones – colonies in which especially many hundred-year-olds are to be found. For example, in Okinawa, Japan, in Greece on island of Ikaria as well as in Sardinia. The Sardinians “feed mainly on plants and foodstuffs that y can take with m out onto fields – unleavened bread, cheese from ir grazing animals and thus rich in omega-3 fatty acids and a wine that is particularly rich in polyphenols,” said Schumacher . But real secret is construction of ir society and how y treated old people.
In Japan, it should be observed that people only eat in moderation. “Caloric restriction is really a way to stop aging,” said Anna Garbager. STERNL confirmed that a strict diet could prolong life for both animals and humans.
