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New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

lafollette.wisc.edu

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Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#81

Post by lossolo »

kingstnap wrote: post #79
lossolo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP is not entirely incorrect. Reproductive cells undergo processes like epigenetic reprogramming, which basically strips away many of the chemical marks (like DNA methylation patterns) that accumulate with age. That’s one of the reasons babies don’t start with the cellular age of their parents. Researchers can take adult cells, reprogram them back to an embryonic like state using Yamanaka factors (a set of fo…

DNA damage inevitably accumulates. The big reason children are younger than their parents DNA wise is because the parents' DNA undergo random recombination to create something that is the mixture of the two. This doesn't help overall. Mixing two roughly equally broken things just yields the mean of the two. But the trick is that roughly 60 to 70% of conceptions will not survive to birth. This rejection sampling is ul…

You are right that DNA damage inevitably accumulates and that selection (including miscarriages) weeds out embryos with severe defects but that doesn’t fully explain why a newborn’s biological age is near zero.

What scientists usually mean by "cellular age" isn’t mutation load, it’s the epigenetic and functional state of cells. During gametogenesis and early embryonic development DNA undergoes extensive repair, telomere maintenance and global epigenetic reprogramming that wipes and rewrites methylation patterns. This resets the cellular "clock" even though some mutations are passed on.

So while mutation load drifts slightly each generation, the reason babies start biologically young is this large scale reprogramming. That’s also why researchers are trying to mimic this process in adult cells (Yamanaka factors etc) to reverse aspects of aging.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#82

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

echelon wrote: post #32
bigmattystyles wrote: post #11

I wonder if as a species we can ever get more comfortable with death. We’re built not to be I realize, and we should never be for those that are young but I feel like we should be ok with living 80ish or more years and then clocking out. That being said, I’m not cool with the idea of dying when good, but when I’m in a major depressive episode, the idea of immortality is terrifying.

You're not dreaming big enough. "Accept death, it's beautiful" is cope. It's not beautiful. It's suboptimal horror. I find it offensive that so many "universe experiencing itself" entities willingly accept a return to dust. Our sun dies, and with it everything on this planet will become metal inclusions in a decaying solar body. You know what doesn't matter in light of that? All other perspectives. Every other concep…

>Something from earth should conquer the vastness of spacetime and physics.

I hear this claim often, but I never hear any particular reason for why it's so important compared to e.g. letting Alpha Centauri colonize where the lightcones overlap.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#83

Post by fcatalan »

Swizec wrote: post #2

What about quality of life adjusted life years? I don’t want to live to 100 and be miserable for the last 30 But if you can get me 90 years where I feel like a spring chicken until 89, then that’s just fine.

My grandfather lived to 102 and only the last few months were bad, nothing dramatic, just fading away at home, no hospital.

I'd sign up for the same

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#84

Post by keiferski »

tempodox wrote: post #67
keiferski wrote: post #17

It is ironic that many of the people obsessed with life extension are also those deeply involved in creating systems that deliberately waste the time we already do have, via addictive algorithms, clickbait content, unnecessary consumerism, etc. “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achie…

That makes perfect sense, since you’re meant to spend any additional time with the profit-generating pastimes you mentioned.

Hah, you’re right. I didn’t think about that- of course the extra time gained will be spent the same way it’s spent now.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#85

Post by markus_zhang »

latexr wrote: post #75
markus_zhang wrote: post #42

I think it’s fine. When I get older I’m more intrigued whether there is an afterlife, whatever it is.

> I’m more intrigued whether there is an afterlife That’s only intriguing if the answer is “yes”. Otherwise it doesn’t matter.

Yeah the if is where the intriguing is.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#86

Post by hallole »

lossolo wrote: post #71
VincentEvans wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t quite come to grips with mortality, I think.

I think OP is not entirely incorrect. Reproductive cells undergo processes like epigenetic reprogramming, which basically strips away many of the chemical marks (like DNA methylation patterns) that accumulate with age. That’s one of the reasons babies don’t start with the cellular age of their parents. Researchers can take adult cells, reprogram them back to an embryonic like state using Yamanaka factors (a set of fo…

Fully agree! I don't think life is much more than a sort of chemical engineering, "designed" with the "purpose" of self-replication. Our engineer, natural selection, didn't have "healthspan" in mind; insofar as we are human-making machines, we're pretty well built. I fail to see any reason that necessarily precludes a retooling of our internal machinery to accomplish our desires, not nature's.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#87

Post by andrewflnr »

chpatrick wrote: post #31
andrewflnr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the argument would go "there's no fundamental reason we can't fix telomeres".

Isn't the reason cancer? Eventually the DNA copying errors add up.

There are a handful of animals, mammals even, that essentially don't get cancer (some/all large whales and naked mole rats IIRC). So that might be solvable other ways.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#88

Post by c22 »

croes wrote: post #68
c22 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the universe definitely going to die?

If the if is certain the when doesn’t matter.

How certain could anyone possibly be on this subject? I can agree it likely doesn't matter to us either way.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#89

Post by anigbrowl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62
VincentEvans wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t quite come to grips with mortality, I think.

> You haven’t quite come to grips with mortality This is unfair, and akin to branding anyone who takes medicine as being unhinged. There is evidence we can extend our health spans. By how much and how are open questions. And if we can actually stop aging, versus slow it down, has not been demonstrated. Some people engage with this unhealthily, just as many terminally-ill cancer patients unhealthily engage with long-s…

It's the 'indefinite' part that I react negatively to. I don't have a good impression of people who are obsessed with abolishing death, as opposed to your example of maximizing quality of life (or minimizing illness) without getting too hung up on overall age.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#90

Post by adastra22 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #70
adastra22 wrote: post #4

There is no physical/chemical/biological reason you can’t live indefinitely with the health and vitality of a 25-35 year old. Aging isn’t a law of nature.

> no physical/chemical/biological reason you can’t live indefinitely with the health and vitality of a 25-35 year old We don’t know this. We know of no creatures as biologically complex as humans that demonstrate biological immortality. That might be because nature never bothered. It might be because it can’t. But you are generally correct: we have strong evidence healthspan-increasing interventions are not only poss…

Two points:

(1) Yes we do have an example: us. Why is a baby’s cells young and healthy, and not the age of the parents? Dormant eggs are not the answer as you’d still get accumulating damage over time. Turns out there are mechanisms for cellular reprogramming which rejuvenates cells. There are mechanisms for making ages cells indistinguishable from young cells. We just haven’t fully harnessed this capability on therapeutics yet.

(2) The deeper point is one of logical necessity. No bird flies faster than the speed of sound, yet that doesn’t work as an argument for the impossibility of the SR-71 or Concorde. No physical law prevents restoring tissue to healthy young state. We just haven’t developed the tools to do so (yet).

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