Aging

You don’t wear out, you flame out.

I don’t think that aging happens -- aging is just medically mismanaged chronic inflammation. The major observations are that older people have more degenerative/autoimmune diseases and they suffer from fewer infectious diseases. It would appear that the bodies of older people have figured out infections with an experienced immune system and that mechanical damage takes its toll over time -- joints wear out. I think that there may be a minor amount of truth in this cultural perspective, but there is something more profound at work, sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia (muscle loss) is the gradual loss of muscle and replacement by fat. Thus, by age fifty most people are physically less active and even if they appear to have the same weight and shape as in their active youth, the muscle of their abdomens and limbs has been partially replaced with fat surrounding their organs. This fat, as in those who are obese, releases inflammatory cytokines into the circulation and the body reacts as if it had a low grade infection.

Senior citizens are constantly expending energy and taxing their immune system by chronic inflammation. As a result they get fewer infections, but the chronic inflammation provides the foundation for cancer and autoimmune diseases. Their bodies aren’t mechanically wearing out, but they are wearing out by over use of the immune system.

Those seniors who are physically active and eat an anti-inflammatory diet, do not appear to age as fast as those who are sedentary, obese and display the typical symptoms of chronic inflammation, the metabolic syndrome. Most of the characteristics associated with advancing years are merely symptoms of poorly managed chronic inflammation that can be reversed by an anti-inflammatory diet and exercise.