H3 Book Index:: Chapters 1-29
The signs of old age are no more profuse than the theories attempting to explain its cause or causes. This is hardly surprising, for no common denominator has been found as yet. There is not even agreement as to
how many years constitute man's natural life span. Each plant or animal has a maximum life expectancy,
which cannot be exceeded even if the organism remains healthy. The fact that almost no one dies of old age per se would indicate that most of us never reach our full potential. But what is our potential life span? Biologists measure it against the time maturity is achieved or bones stop growing in length, and their resulting figures are that man should live for 120 to 150 years! But no generally accepted criteria exist: man's natural life span is still a matter of speculation.
Aging, according to one school, is due to an exhaustion of life energy; another holds that it is due to a slowing down of the metabolism (although it may be questioned whether this is not the consequence rather than the cause). A third group maintains that the flooding of the organism with toxins is responsible for aging; Metchnikoff, one of the first scientists to occupy
himself with this problem, was convinced that autointoxication caused old age, and that death followed the accumulation of fatal toxins in the large intestine. A more mechanical hypothesis, which was developed many years before the first atomic explosion, deals with the possible effects of cosmic radiation on the life span. The involution of individual organs (i.e., sex glands, ovaries, thyroid or other endocrine glands) was blamed for aging by a school which believed that renewed vigor could be conferred on old people through a genuine reactivation of these glands. Also, the degeneration of the nerve cells, in particular a creeping paralysis of the central nervous system is considered by some as the primary cause of aging.
One of the more widely accepted theories of aging is that of Dr. Hans Selye of Montreal. The originator of
the concept of stress diseases, he defines stress as the "rate of wear and tear in the body." This wear and tear is a continuous process and has a cumulative effect. According to Selye, each human being (or animal, for that matter) has only a certain amount of "adaptation energy" with which to replenish his vital reserves. Theoretically, this reserve shrinks a little after each stress, and the deficit in adaptation energy, occurring from day to day, "adds up to what we call aging."
Among the first signs that the body is failing to adapt itself to stressful situations are the many allergic diseases, such as hay fever, certain rashes, and asthma. And the diseases of old. age are for the most part caused not by invasion of the body by germs or viruses, but by failure of one or another part of the body to adapt to the stress of life.
To quote Dr. Selye: "Among all my autopsies (and I have performed quite a few) I have never seen a man who died of old age. In fact, I do not think anyone has ever died of old age yet. To permit this would be the ideal accomplishment of medical research (if we disregard the unlikely event of someone discovering how to regenerate adaptation energy). To die of old age would mean that all the organs of the body would be worn out proportionately, merely by having been used too long. This is never the case. We invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body. Life, the biologic chain that holds our parts together, is only as strong as its weakest vital link. When this breaks, no matter which vital link it may be-our parts can no longer be held together as a single living being."*
Since living cells in a water solution can be kept healthy for an infinite period of time by cleaning them and returning them to a fresh solution, Selye advanced the idea that the weaknesses of old age may be due partly to an accumulation of waste products which interfere with the nourishment of the cells.
If this is the mechanism of aging, Dr. Selye points out, there should be at least two ways of avoiding it. The rate of waste production might be slowed down,
or the system might be helped to destroy its waste and get rid of it. Research on this and other approaches to the causes of aging has been conducted by Dr. Selye and his staff at the Institute of Experimental Medicine" and Surgery in Montreal, which he founded in 1949 and has directed ever since.
The Stress of Life New York McGraw-RiU.
Dr. Selye believes that medicine has now assembled a fund of knowledge that will serve as a point of departure for studying the causes of old age. Several times he has restated his belief that aging may be regarded as a disease and. . . "like any other disease, it is probably preventable or curable. . . The truth is that death by disease is largely avoidable."
Another explanation of aging simply has to do with the fact that the reproductive capacity of the cells, the basic building blocks of the body, begins to deteriorate. Cells, as we have learned, have different life spans: an epithelial cell in the intestines, forming with
other cells the tissue that lines our alimentary canal, lives for only 36 hours. Red blood cells reach an age of 120 days, white blood cells of only 13, but nerve cells last forever.
As the human body grows older, the cells are no longer able to reproduce and to grow as quickly as in younger people. That's for instance why in advanced years your body no longer can heal a wound as fast as when you were 30 or 40 years younger. Also that part of the cells which manufacture proteins no longer functions with the same efficiency as in the young person. Dr. Nathan Shock, once head of the Gerontology Branch of the National Institutes of Health, developed a theory that the failure of individual cells to replace and renew themselves throughout the organism causes its slowing down, i.e. aging of body functions. If there
. are too many dying cells in the body and if too many of the irreplaceable cells cease to function, the entire organism will collapse and eventually die.
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H3 Book Index:: Chapters 1-29
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