Epigenetics

I confess that I’ve yet to find time to continue through each of several age-related diseases. In partial recompense, let me offer the following, which is adapted from the quarterly newsletter that I put out for Telocyte. While it focuses on Alzheimer’s disease, the import is generic, applying to all age-related diseases. How Alzheimer’s works […]

Aging causes disease. To many people, the relationship is even closer: aging is a disease. The latter view is controversial. Most biologists and physicians would view aging as a “natural process” and contend that “normal aging” is independent of disease. Aging, in this view is not a disease, although it certainly causes disease. They often […]

The human body represents a “system” in the engineering sense: all parts (cells, tissues, organs) are interdependent. To understand how the body functions (and how it ages), we may appropriately study individual cells, but we must also study the interactions between cells. We may start by looking at small communities of cells (local, homogenous tissues), […]

The human body contains perhaps a bit short of 40 trillion cells, which is an impressive number, yet a large part of our body – a quarter to a third, depending how you measure it – isn’t intracellular, but extracellular. This includes not only the fluids within the blood and lymphatic spaces, but the space […]

Why are we more likely to get cancer as we age? Not only does the incidence of cancer go up with age, but it goes up exponentially. Why? Moreover, the exponential rise is seen in most species, regardless of their lifespan. It’s not the years, it’s the aging process, regardless of time. Why? The key […]

Changes in gene expression underlie aging and age-related diseases. There is all-but-universal (and equally unwarranted) assumption that both aging and age-related diseases are genetic. We see articles on “aging genes” and “genes that cause Alzheimer’s disease” (or genes that cause heart disease, osteoarthritis, etc.). The reality is that both aging and age-related diseases are not […]

Everyone seems to “know” that telomeres have something to do with aging. The internet even has pop-up ads about foods that lengthen your telomeres, with the unstated assumption that will make your younger, or at least healthier. Inquiry shows, however, that not only do most people have no understanding of the role of telomeres in […]

Most of us – when we think of cells at all – seldom appreciate that the idea of a “cell” is a modern idea, not quite two centuries old. One of the tenets of cell theory is that cells are the “basic unit of life”. This makes some sense but note that while the components […]

Misconceptions regarding the current model of aging are rampant and they tend to fall into one of several categories. These include Straw man arguments, unfamiliarity with how age-related human pathology occurs, simplistic views cell senescence, genes, and expression, or misguided approaches to measuring telomeres (usually in the wrong cells). The Earth can’t possibly be round, […]

How does aging work? So far, in the prologue (section 0) and the section 1 posts, we have discussed a perspective, what aging isn’t (and is), and what we need to explain in any accurate model of aging. In this post, I provide an overview of how the aging process occurs, from cell division to […]

Our understanding is limited by our vision. If we look locally, our understanding is merely local; if we look globally, our understanding becomes more global; and if we look at our entire universe, then our understanding will be universal. When we attempt to understand our world, we often start with what we know best: our […]

Aging is poorly understood, While the process seems obvious, the reality is far more complex than we realize. In this series of blogs I will explain how aging works and how aging results in disease. In passing, I will touch upon why aging occurs and will culminate in an explanation of the most effect single […]

Aging and Disease 0.1 – A Prologue Over the past 20 years, I have published numerous articles, chapters, and books explaining how aging and age-related disease work, as well as the potential for intervention in both aging and age-related disease. The first of these publications was Reversing Human Aging (1996), followed by my articles in […]

Many of you have written to me, expressing surprise about the lack of public reaction (such as media interest) regarding the potential for telomerase therapy to treat age-related diseases. Some of you wonder why people (and particularly the media) “don’t get it”. I’ve had the same thought for a bit more than two decades now, […]

About a century ago, in a small American town, the first automobile chugged to a stop in front of the general store, where a local man stared at the apparition in disbelief, then asked “where’s your horse?” A long explanation followed, involving internal combustion, pistons, gasoline, and driveshafts. The local listened politely but with growing […]