Youthfulness is the dream of all people, only the untimely arrival of aging makes all people helpless. So is there any way to fight aging?

As a former researcher in the field of aging, I think it is still difficult to give the best anti-aging solution within the current knowledge, but I firmly believe that with further research, a breakthrough in this difficult problem of aging is just around the corner. Today, I would like to share with you about the manifestations of aging, the mechanisms that affect it, and how to deal with it.

01、Two major manifestations of aging

For most people, the phenotype of aging can be said to be visible to the naked eye, which we summarise into two main types of manifestations:

One type is the appearance of aging, for example, with the increase in age, often the earliest appearance of aging is our skin, not only the skin elasticity, luster and other obvious changes, wrinkles also appeared, so that many people are worried. And as an attachment to the skin, hair also begins to show the corresponding aging, began to intermittently appear white hair, and even some people also accompanied by hair loss this annoying situation. Of course our bones are also clearly showing signs of aging.

And the other category is intrinsic aging. I believe you must have felt, as we age, our immunity has obviously declined, from the once invulnerable to the wind and grass need to be protected, otherwise even if there is a change in the weather, may also trigger a cold, and a variety of diseases tend to increase, which in fact, behind the immune system is the decline. As for the lack of energy is more obvious. In the past, stay up late and work overtime the next day full of energy, and now a little delay the next day on the mental state is not good.

It can be said that these are we can all feel the aging, but from a scientific point of view, aging often has a deeper mechanism – scientific research has found that, whether it is the appearance of aging or internal aging, the root cause is the cellular level of aging. Here’s more on that for you.

02、What factors contribute to aging?

This review of aging, “The hallmarks of aging,” from Cell, the top international journal of biology, is representative of the general current knowledge.

In fact, a single figure can represent the full article, as shown below.

These are the nine major factors currently believed to contribute to aging, namely genomic instability, telomere wear and tear, stem cell failure, epigenetic changes, loss of protein steady state, dysregulated nutrient sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired clearance of senescent cells, and altered inter-cellular communication.

03、Introduction to the Nine Factors

1、Genomic instability (genomic instability)

The genome, as we all know, is the core composition of our cells, and everything that follows in our body starts from the genome. From the moment of fertilisation of the egg, the genome is transcribed into various RNAs and translated into proteins, which then form our organelles, nuclei and cells. And, of course, DNA replication itself is a copy of the genome.

However, genomes are not Iron Man, and they are subject to all kinds of damage within the cell, both exogenous stimuli such as oxygen radical damage, and endogenous such as random genome copying errors, and as we age, these damages increase, and as a result, the genome becomes unstable, and when the source is faulty, then naturally, the follow-on is not good enough.

2、Telomere attrition

I believe this is a lot of people learned in secondary school. The top of the chromosome will exist a kind of structure like a hat, called telomere. Telomeres can be said to be the cell’s timer, every cell division, telomeres will be shortened once, when the telomeres shortened to can no longer be short, the cell can not continue to divide, initiated a process called programmed cell death, so the cell died, it is currently believed that the average cell life is also able to divide a more than 50 times, that is, the Haeflick limit.

3、Stem cell exhaustion (stem cell exhaustion)

Stem cells are cells with a high potential for self-differentiation and renewal. Our body’s constant cell replacement comes from stem cells (hair, skin, blood, etc.). However, the problem is that stem cells age as we age, and when these stem cells age, they are unable to continue to make up for the depletion of the body’s cells in large numbers, and ultimately, the individual dies of old age.

4、Epigenetic alterations

Epigenetic may be unfamiliar to many people, this is a kind of genome modification without affecting the DNA sequence, this kind of change can not only affect the development of individuals, but also can be inherited.

Currently we do not have a thorough study of epigenetic inheritance, but there is at least enough evidence to suggest that our daily behaviours can also have an epigenetic impact, leading to genomic changes that accumulate to trigger aging.

5、Loss of proteostasis (loss of protein stability)

The homeostasis of an organism is not only the DNA, but also the proteins in the cell that perform the main activities of life, whether it is the various catalysing enzymes, or the various immune substances in our organism, mainly proteins.

As the most basic performers of biological functions in an organism, protein homeostasis is necessary for the basic activities of the cell. When protein homeostasis is out of control, it likewise triggers aging.

6、Deregulated nutrient sensing

Nutrients are essential for our survival and are sensed and fluctuatingly fed back to us by our cells. However, a lack of nutrient sensing in cells can lead to uncontrolled cell growth.

Nutrient sensing signals, such as carbohydrates and amino acids, closely regulate cell proliferation, but can also “lead cells astray”, for example, in obesity or malignant tumours.

7、Mitochondrial dysfunction (mitochondrial dysfunction)

Mitochondria are the energy factories of our body and are the site of oxidative metabolism in eukaryotes. The nutrients we consume are eventually oxidised in the mitochondria to release energy.

However, the process of generating energy in the mitochondria itself also escapes a large number of free radicals, which can cause significant damage to the mitochondria, leading to problems in the body’s energy system as well.

8、Clearance disorder of senescent cells (cellular senescence)

Cells are a fundamental part of the organism, and if the cells themselves are in trouble, it’s a problem. Cellular senescence (cell aging) is a very special case, that is, normal cells will go through several stages of undifferentiated, differentiated, growth, maturation and apoptosis.

But some cells will enter a special situation, that is, senescence, the senescent cells will occupy there, and not be replaced by new cells, and finally let the whole body cells gradually aging.

9、Altered intercellular communication

As a multi-cellular individual, the communication and collaboration between cells is crucial, the information exchange between cells includes direct transmission and indirect transmission. For example, body fluid transmission, contact transmission. Once the intercellular communication is altered, then the cellular function will be damaged and finally the organism will be affected.

04、How to deal with the nine factors?

Of course, some people have done to expand and interpretation, such as a cell biology scholar Greg Macpherson published a book “HARNESSING THE NINE HALLMARKS OF AGING” (Chinese name: “scientific anti-aging, the cell’s nine repair code”), the book is a detailed interpretation of the nine factors and measures to deal with it, and the The “nine-dimensional cell theory” is summarised into three levels, as shown below:

Specifically, each of these three levels has its own characteristics:

DNA Damage – The major source of this damage is the energy-supporting oxidative phosphorylation process that our bodies undergo at all times, releasing oxygen free radicals that attack DNA uncontrollably, which leads to alterations in everything from the genome, to telomeres, to epigenetic inheritance.

Reduced cellular energy depletion and repair – this is centred on changes to our energy factories, the mitochondria, as well as changes in intercellular communication, such as is typified by the important intracellular branching of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide NAD+, the molecule commonly referred to as coenzyme I, which is the key to linking the tricarboxylic acid cycle to the respiratory chain, and is also the body’s coenzyme for many dehydrogenases, which becomes less and less available with age, and, of course, stem cell failure, among other things.

Decrease in cellular autophagy and accumulation of senescent cells – important factors leading to the accumulation of senescent cells in our body, knowing that senescent cells, which are almost non-apoptotic, will remain in that position, resulting in the inability to replace, and moreover, there will be the release of some senescence-related factors, which will affect the neighbouring healthy cells leading to the further aggravation of senescence The release of some senescence-related factors that affect neighbouring healthy cells can lead to further aging.

Now that these mechanisms of aging have been deciphered, the response to aging is often directed at these factors as well.

For example, to enhance cellular repair mechanisms, repair DNA, repair proteins, etc. So now there are also many strategies to enhance these repair mechanisms, hoping to improve the repair process of the cell, so that the cell can return to normal.

There is also an alternative idea, since the human body has unlimited proliferation of stem cells, so can we activate the stem cells? This is actually the current research on artificially induced pluripotent stem cells, which is a very good idea indeed, and I have high hopes for it.

However, there is a current difficulty in this field, which is that artificially induced pluripotent stem cells need to take viruses and oncogenic factors, which leave potential risks of infection and cancer, so in recent years, a better way to achieve stem cells is a research favourite, and although there are some advances, they still don’t solve these problems completely.

Of course, for the medical health field, it often doesn’t necessarily involve such specific pathway mechanisms as the above, but rather a search for potentially effective drug ingredients, such as those like 2-Hoba, NMN, and fexofenone currently on the market, and there have been some experiments arguing for these results

05、How do you deal with aging in your daily life?

However, for everyday, it may be that maintaining good habits is also very effective

1、Reasonable sleep

The human body is regulated by the circadian rhythm, which is also the winner of the Nobel Prize in 2017, and now many people have the habit of staying up late, some stay up late to work overtime, some stay up late to brush the drama, and some are simply used to staying up late, but as a member of the living creature, we can’t fight against the power of evolution, so maintaining reasonable sleep and reducing staying up late is a must. In fact, when we sleep, the brain not only gets rest, but also increases the removal of metabolic wastes from the brain, and if we disturb it, then the same will affect the removal of metabolic wastes from the brain.

2、Healthy meals

A balanced diet is always advocated by national health institutions, which is also supported by a large number of population data, we must do meat and vegetables, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, as well as fibre should have intake. As a matter of fact, very often, the nutrients we need come mainly from food. Vitamin C, for example, is actually a well-known antioxidant ingredient that is effective in scavenging free radicals from our organism. For example, a number of scholars involved in a study in the journal Nature Medicine found that fisetin, a naturally occurring substance found in many fruits and vegetables, is able to fight free radicals and has a significant positive impact on improving health and increasing life expectancy. It is believed that there are many more ingredients in food that are effective for aging.

3、Exercise

There is in fact a scientific rationale behind the philosophical statement that life is all about exercise, and that exercise is very effective in building a healthy body and fighting off aging. Many times from the overall cause of people difficult to live a long life is one of the important reasons for disease, and exercise for many diseases, especially metabolic diseases have a very obvious effect, such as triggering diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke of the important factors of lipids, you can get a certain degree of reduction through exercise.

Overall, the current research on aging is still in its infancy, although some light is seen, but the future in the end how, still need more evidence.