Why Our Ages are SO Short?

Early aging may not be a built-in mechanism when we consider that our very grand father Adam lived for 930 years, Methuselah 969 years, and Noah for over 950 years as is written in the holy books (all). What causes cut human life-span that big to become around 100 years at maximum?

Scientific Hypothesis dealing with aging causes present to us 2 theories:





1- Programmed Aging ( Unchanged Genes Theory ):

It deals with the organism's control mechanism and how its genes program its body differently in different life stages, as occuring in cell differentiation during embryological development ( at a time, all embryological cells are alike, then they differentiate forming different tissues and organs), or that is occuring at puberty of sexual charecteristics. It postulates that aging is a similar process through certain gene programming. the postulations of this hyposis comes from the observations in animal kingdom, like the different life spans of different species( rodents 3 years, horse 35 years, humans 80..etc.), and the aging process itself in different species.





2- Wear&Tear Theory ( Environment Impact Theory ):

It postulates that the innate genes programming is not the only cause of aging, but the cause of aging is the sum effect of many kinds of environmental assaults, damage caused by radiation, chemical toxins, metal ions, free radicals, hydrolysis, glycation, disulfide bonds cross-linking are examples.

The cause of this damage is the spontaneous chemical reaction induced by one or more environmental factors ( normally, all our biochemical reactions proceed in known defined tracks under very specific conditions, thanks to enzymes ). In other words, environmental influence turns our bodies from a biochemical discipline into an organic chemistry lab in which versified uncontrolled but known chemical reactions take place. These unprogrammed reactions cause change of inherent genes, enzymes, proteins, blood vessels...etc.



The second theory of wear&tear may be supported by the most recent scientific finding that chronic diseaes ( and cancer) is not a genetic mutation, or damaged DNA, but it is a reaction of a scarce genetic resource caused by the latent presence of a foreign DNA (or a virus), e.g. BRCA1 gene( brest cancer gene) responsible for cell cycle suppression is found to be low in breast cancer tissues, yet no gene mutation is found.







If we are to discuss the factors speculated to be the causes of aging or shortened human life-span away from why he dies, we may consider some notions based on scientific facts.



When Adam came onto this earth, it was virgin, so he lived- a biochemically near to ideal- life style, so did his early successors untill some major geological or man-made events happened.



Geological events among those causes of changed ecology included:

Rain fall, volcanos, vents, fumes, presence of poisonous plants and the similar.

Man- made events that changed environment include:

Making fire and using it in grill, heating rocks, pots, glass. Discovering electricity and magnetism and applying them in the daily life utilities, and fermenting food, reaching to ozone hole and global heat all participated in creating all the versifie environmental assaults.



Non-enzymatic organic chemical reactions that may be involved in aging include:

1- Protein damage.

2- DNA damage.

3- Glycation.

4- Fat peroxidation.

5- Free Radical Reactions.