Skip to main content

Quest For ETERNAL YOUTH

Image
By
As more people in developed countries are living longer and the elderly comprising a significant proportion of the population, the best brains and laboratories are researching why we grow old. Divisions are sometimes made between the young old (65–74), the middle old (75–84) and the oldest old (85+). However, chronological age does not correlate well with functional age, i.e. two people may be of the same age, but differ in their mental and physical capacities, and  some at 85 may  play golf and be mentally alert, while another at 65 may be bedridden with diabetes, stroke and dementia.
The term "ageing" is somewhat ambiguous, but refers to a multidimensional process of physical, psychological, and social change. Some dimensions of ageing grow and expand over time, while others decline. Reaction time, for example, may slow with age, while knowledge of world events and wisdom may expand, explaining why the proportion of elderly among politicians tends to be high. Research shows that even late in life potential exists for physical, mental, and social growth and development.
What causes the body, with all its organs and tissues, to grow old? Why does the skin wrinkle, hair gray,  list of diseases like diabetes, blood pressure, cataract, and heart problems grow long, why do we start slowing down, and also why do we become prone to a variety of cancers?  The process seems to start with cells of our body showing signs of ageing, called senescence, that occurs due to the progressive shortening of one of its parts called telomere, each time the cell divides; when the telomere becomes too short, the cell dies. The length of telomeres is therefore the "molecular clock". And what maintains the telomere length is an enzyme called telomerase.
Why then does the telomere shorten quickly in some, and how can we keep our telomerase enzyme levels high? In 2007 researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, identified a critical gene that specifically links eating fewer calories with living longer and showed that the gene pha-4 regulates the longevity response to calorie restriction. Semi-starved rats live much longer than their well-fed ones, and slim beauty pageants may actually live longer than their wholesome counterparts!
Apart from the role of longevity determining genes (LDG), cumulative tissue stress arising from liberation of oxygen radicals during cell metabolism has been another suspect. Aging tissues are deficient in anti-oxidants such as tocopherol, ascorbic acid and retinol that are normally found in fresh fruits and vegetables; hence the recommendation of 5 helpings of these every day. Whether the synthetic anti-oxidants sold as capsules do any good to keep our tissues young is yet to be proven.
Researchers have now identified compounds that can actually increase telomerase levels, and therby stop the process of ageing. Resveratrol, Rapamycin, acetyl-L-carnitine and alpha-lipoic acid are some of them currently undergoing research. As the quest for the etrnal youth continues, the 2 ancient “Parijaat” trees standing majestically in Barabanki and Sultanpur, and fabled to have provided agelessness to our gods and godesses, could hold the secret!
As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 11 april , 2010.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How do you like your Tea?

By
The way we drink our tea may not only reflect our taste and style, but our health as well. Tea drinking is around 4700 years old and had its origin in China. Leaves of the shrub Camellia sinensis (tea plant) were in use at that time as a remedy for wounds and diseases. With the legendary emperor Shenong brewing and drinking its extracts, tea drinking became a popular habit in this part of the world. The British, impressed with the brew and the customs that go with drinking it in China and Japan, tried to emulate and evolve a tea-drinking custom of their own, and soon “tea-time”became a familiar term across the globe. Every home or cafe seems to have its own flavour. The north Indian variety of “chay” is a glass of hot creamy milk (more cream as it gets more “special”) with lots of sugar and a lacing of  “tea liquor” of strong tea that grows on lower heights (Assam, Nilgiri, Sri Lanka etc). In contrast, the Chinese and Japanese prefer light green or jasmine tea without a drop of mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Teacher's Stress: Building Resilience to Survive Challenging Times

By
At times such as this after 5 months into the pandemic when  Covid  infection numbers are still climbing up, life is anything but “normal”, and uncertainty is looming like thick clouds over our heads, many are getting the feeling that they are reaching the snapping point!   It was in this context that 260  teachers of  one of the reputed school chains , Lucknow Public School,  gathered  Sunday  for an online interactive session by HOPE Initiative to discuss and explore strategies of coping and resilience.   Of the many segments of society that are facing  the present brunt , school teachers  are a particularly hard-hit lot. Apart from the  universal  fear of infection, they find themselves being pushed into crazy degrees of multi-tasking: looking after   children’s studies, cooking, chores  at home  in addition to the teaching. To make matters worse, they are being pushed from their comfort zone of conventio...
Post a Comment
Read more