Journal of Aging Science

Growing Old May Seem as Normal as Growing Up

M. Bala Subramanyam^* Department of Disease-Biology and Molecular Medicine, SRM University, Chengalpattu, India
^*Correspondence: M. Bala Subramanyam, Department of Disease-Biology and Molecular Medicine, SRM University, Chengalpattu, India, Email:

Received: 02-Aug-2021 Published: 23-Aug-2021, DOI: 10.35248/2329-8847.21.9.e233

Editorial Note

Aging is an interdisciplinary field that studies the relationship between aging and age related diseases. This collaboration has built a bridge between the interests of biologists exploring the essential mechanisms that drive aging and geriatricians trying to enhance elderly patients quality of life. This new reality made possible way by learning from centenarians. The changes associate with aging are lost mobility, lost intellect, lost excitement, lost energy. We do understand that why this circle of life includes death but aging is different. Why would an organism evolve to deteriorate because it grows older? How does it benefit us as a species to possess eyesight dwindle. Mobility decline, stamina evaporate, bones wither and increased belly fat etc. when people get asked how they want to live, they usually say between seventy nine and 100 years and in one study the median number of years was ninety but those responses are influenced by the consequences of adulthood that folks have witnessed and therefore the past doesn't dictate the longer term. When people lived beyond one hundred by maintaining their faculties and enjoying good health we might feel short changed if we only make it to 95.

Growing old could seem as normal as growing up, but once we look closer, we see that it’s a point and sometimes painful mystery. And it’s a Magic that we must solve because aging poses a dramatic increase in our risk of having every chronic diseases. The major risk for all kinds of cancer is aging then is that the major risk for diabetes and Alzheimer’s. We have a hundred to thousand fold greater chance of dying from aging than of dying from other risks like obesity or high cholesterol. Everyone talks about cholesterol contributing to CVS but it’s only a three-fold risk, whereas aging is a thousand fold risk for dying from CVS disease. After age fifty, we start to lose the ability to control and biological systems slows down. Some evidence shows that a series of changes or mutations makes an organism likelier to die from loss of cells. Other evidence suggests that oxidative damage causes aging and still other results suggest that aging occurs when our bodies lose the ability to activate the stem cells that keep our cells healthy. All these theories have merit, but none of them alone is enough. To the degree that they are true they all drive aging.

Most chronic diseases are united by one primary cause the biology of aging itself. While there are genetic and environmental bases for several age related diseases aging increases our chances of contracting them quite the other factor alone. Aging is the main reason for the global epidemic of chronic diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that these age related diseases are responsible for about 70% of the global death rate. So logically we don’t need to accelerate our ability to increase heath span. Making matters worse theses age related diseases tend to accumulate and lead to functional decline.