Is Aging a Disease? If So, Can It Ever Be Cured?

RefusdClassification on 15/05/2024 - 16:41

I'm not sure whether the Health section is appropriate for this post. If it isn't, could a moderator move it into the "Everything Else" section?

I don't think anyone actually dies of "old age" but rather the consequences of old age, one of many possible degenerative diseases. As we get older, the probability of getting many illnesses (some of them fatal) dramatically increases. The higher our age, the more likely we are to develop a degenerative pathology in that particular year. These include, but aren't limited to: dementias (especially Alzheimer's), heart attacks, hypertension, stroke, endogenous depression, osteoarthritis, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, most of the carcinomas, osteoporosis leading to fractures, hearing loss, presbyopia, and cataracts. Our arteries narrow and harden, our lungs and skin lose their elasticity, we tire much more easily than a 20 year old. If a superbug caused all of those conditions, we would term it a disease.

In 19th century England, 75% of children died of infectious diseases (caused by "bugs") before reaching 10 years old. Now, even in "third world" countries, deaths from degenerative disease now outnumber deaths from infectious diseases.

Some old people are taking 10 different medications a day. The medications are postponing death and reducing the discomfort caused by the symptoms (eg opiates and pain diseases), but they don't cure degenerative diseases. If you stop taking a statin, your cholesterol levels soar into the abnormal range, for instance. Big pharma has a massive financial incentive to focus on symptom relief and suppression rather than curing you permanently. Compare this to syphilis, which was prevalent in 19th century Europe: "A single injection of long-acting Benzathine penicillin G can cure the early stages of syphilis."

OzBargain, what are your thoughs? Feel free to answer if you know nothing about biology, or have just high school biology, or are a medical professional. Death is a topic relevant to all of us. If I have made any mistakes above, calmly correct me.

Poll Options expired

  • 17
    Yes, aging is a disease, but humans will never beat it. The best we can do is to postpone death.
  • 51
    Yes, aging is a disease, but science will one do find a way to give us immortal youth.
  • 291
    No, aging isn't a disease, it is just part of a natural cycle. Humans must accept it.
  • 3
    Undecided / need more information
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Comments

  • Montyjpm on 16/05/2024 - 12:08

    OP, are you Qin Shi Huang?

  • JimB on 16/05/2024 - 12:09
    +2

    The only thing I know about living forever is from the Twilight saga.

    Imagine being 300 years old and then forced to attend the local high school and making friends with teenagers.

    I'd rather off myself or feed myself to the wolf pack.

    • idonotknowwhy on 16/05/2024 - 13:06

      lol, glad I've never heard of that franchise until now

      • JimB on 16/05/2024 - 15:12
        +1

        I do not know why I know so much about the Twilight franchise.

        Haha, watched it with GF at the time… I would say it was a pretty big deal in the late 00's.

        Fun fact. The actor who played main character Edward Cullen, his character died in Harry Potter and also played Bruce Wayne / Batman. He isn't a bad actor after all.

  • mattyman on 16/05/2024 - 13:01

    Interesting article on this subject.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471741/

  • pjd24 on 16/05/2024 - 13:15
    +4

    Plot twist - ageing is actually the "cure", invented by the immortals roaming the Earth million of years ago, trying to escape the eternal boredom of immortality! 🤪

  • Sensiekatie on 16/05/2024 - 14:19
    +2

    You need to add in cultural expectations of ageing. When i was doing clinical nursing and research with older people, they told me they often ignored aches and pain or forgetfulness and many other things because they were just part of getting older. I still hear it in conversations in social settings today. If this is true, how do you explain the people in their 80's, 90's and even 100's that do not have any of these ailments. The most remarkable person i cared for was 103 and still walking, making her bed, walking to the dining room etc. She lived until 107. Then there are those who are in their 50's and consider themselves old and have a multitude of ailments.

    I recall having a conversation with a Tibetan Buddhist Monk who was from an Aussie Christian background and had converted. They went to Tibet and were shocked to find no older ailing people. People of all ages were just going about life. Other cultures are the same.

    I read some research recently suggesting that osteoarthritis in say knee or hips is not caused by overuse of the joint, which has been the explanation - even from medical professionals - for more than my lifetime. You can get osteoarthritis in young children, so it doesn't fit with the former reasoning. Dementia: again I have cared for people with various dementias in their 30's and 40's. So yes many are ageing but many are not.

    I think we have a long way to go to understand health issues at all stages of life. However our expectations definitely contribute to our outcomes. I learned this in my first ward. A 15 year old with Intellectual disability: At that time parents could request a hysterectomy (full incision in the abdomen) for an under 18 year old female and her parents had chosen this path so as to avoid a pregnancy. She really had no idea of what to expect but did understand she was having an operation. Within a couple of hours of returning to the ward after surgery she was sitting cross legged on her bed as though nothing had happened and continued to do whatever she wanted until discharge. I have never witnessed another hysterectomy patient like this and I worked in a speciality gynae ward for a few years where we had cases every day. Even the lesser vaginal hysterectomy patients could not manage that activity level during the whole post-op period in hospital.

    Placebo effect works in drug trials - people get better because they think they are on the drug. I believe it works in other ways roo and in reverse.

  • foursaken on 16/05/2024 - 14:52

    Yeah you lost me at "big pharma". That's called "an agenda".

    • JimB on 16/05/2024 - 15:15
      +1

      Big Pharma is slightly different from Small Pharma aka local (non-Chemist Warehouse) pharmacy and Shady Pharma aka corner illicit drug dealer.

      • BuyoTheCat on 17/05/2024 - 16:57

        hmmmm…..parma……with lots of cheese……drool….

        • JimB on 20/05/2024 - 09:15

          unless you're from from interstate where they incorrectly call it Parmi.

  • Dollar General on 16/05/2024 - 15:44

    I just hope for my sake they can cure Zachary Disease

    • Cat woman on 17/05/2024 - 13:12

      They have. You're not ugly, you're just poor.

  • Oofy Doofy on 16/05/2024 - 17:29

    I refuse to become old and rot before the good lord takes me. I'll be taking illegal drugs to maintain a youthful and strong body for as long as possible. It's always better to burn out than fade away.

    I'll be donating my organs, donating my brain for study purposes, and donating my skeleton for teaching purposes. Not really interested in becoming a cadaver for medical education purposes.

    And there's literally shit-all for reasons as to why I should be buried somewhere. A waste of everybody's time and energy.

    • try2bhelpful on 16/05/2024 - 20:37
      +1

      Read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

    • FezMonkey on 17/05/2024 - 08:32

      Don't think I'd want your meth/heroin/cocaine-riddled organs…

      • Oofy Doofy on 17/05/2024 - 14:01

        Lol, why would that be assumed from what I stated?

        Even so, if you were desp, beggars can't be choosers anyway. They don't give you a selection of organs, you literally get what's on offer.

        • FezMonkey on 17/05/2024 - 14:22

          You said you'll take illegal drugs and then donate your organs. You didn't specify which so I just named the obvious ones

          • Oofy Doofy on 17/05/2024 - 15:27

            @FezMonkey: … "I'll be taking illegal drugs to maintain a youthful and strong body…"

            Which of those would have anything to do with the ones you mentioned?

  • BertieBrown on 16/05/2024 - 21:17

    At the moment, no it’s not possible. In the future, yes I’m very confident that humans will find a solution to prevent physical damage from ageing. Humans will still age, however they will have solutions that will allow them to continue to live infinitely.

    How long that will take? Who knows. There are currently some break through cancer vaccines, treatment programs that would have been unheard of even 20 years ago.

    So in a hundred years? In fifty years? Yeah I think we’ll start knocking a lot of things on the head with the advent of AI doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the near future. I think AI is genuinely progressing at an astounding rate and is only going to become extremely advanced because of silicon neural networks that just effectively think much faster than humans can.

    • Cat woman on 17/05/2024 - 00:25
      +1

      Are you familiar with philosopher Nick Bostrom's simulation argument? He posits that our reality could be an artificial simulation, such as a computer simulation created by a more advanced civilisation.
      His theory rests on several key points:

      1. It assumes that technological progress will eventually allow civilisations to create highly realistic simulations of conscious beings and their environments.

      2. Given sufficient computational resources, these advanced civilisations could run numerous simulations that are indistinguishable from reality for the inhabitants within them.

      3. If such civilisations exist and run many simulations, the number of simulated realities would far exceed the number of original, base-level realities. Therefore, the likelihood of any given conscious being existing in a simulated reality rather than the base reality is high.

      These points combine to form a compelling argument that, if advanced civilisations are possible and interested in creating simulations, it is statistically probable that we are currently living in one of these simulated realities.

      • FezMonkey on 17/05/2024 - 08:35

        It's hardly "probable".
        Anyway it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis so not really worth taking seriously at this point

        • Cat woman on 17/05/2024 - 13:29

          The mathematical reasoning behind his (3rd) proposition hinges on probabilities and large numbers:
          - Suppose an advanced civilisation can create a large number of high-fidelity simulations. For every one base reality, there could be thousands or millions of simulated ones. This creates a ratio where the number of simulated individuals far exceeds the number of real ones.
          - If you were to randomly choose an individual from all the individuals who exist across all these realities, the probability of selecting one from a simulated reality would be much higher simply due to the sheer number of simulations compared to the single base reality.

          I find this mathematical framework compelling, despite it being speculative and subject to criticisms. At the very least, it makes for a fun thought experiment. And I did make a point of calling him a "philosopher".

          • FezMonkey on 17/05/2024 - 14:38

            @Cat woman: As you say it's a fun thought experiment (or depressing, really) but still just speculation, not statistical

  • nikey2k27 on 16/05/2024 - 21:44
    +1

    death is part of life what make life most meanful

  • drfuzzy on 16/05/2024 - 22:50

    Best thing you can do for aging is to stay lean and regularly fast.

    If you are fat and eat crap you'll be aging maximally.

  • justwii on 16/05/2024 - 23:39

    Nah, death is part of the life ecosystem, to maintain population and drive evolution, its essential in natural selection so stronger genes can be produced.

  • super9 on 17/05/2024 - 04:49

    This is an interesting topic. This is actually a Fusion Party policy: https://www.fusionparty.org.au/aging_as_a_disease

    Very interesting read. It is visionary and focused on the long term future and being proactive withour health, not just giving out bandaids once the illness and injury once they already occur.

    To me, it is less about if it actually is a disease or not but rather treating it as if it were, especially as far as what health improvement is could we have be fixing our quality of life healthwise by being proactive about our health, rather than being focused on prolonging life and only taking it seriously when we are near the end and living day to day is a struggle.

    I asked a religious person their thoughts about humans suffering as they get old and what could medical science do to prevent that and he said "it is God's will"

    To that I say that it's God's will for humanity to gain modern medical science and take responsibility for the gift of life which God had given us then to waste it on unnecessary illnesses which could be cured

    • super9 on 17/05/2024 - 04:54

      And to be clear the concept is not about ending all death and living forever, if is more about having a longer more fulfilling life with the time that we have

    • mrdean on 17/05/2024 - 06:14
      -1

      ""Classifying ageing as a disease" is the critical regulatory step that will let doctors proactively prescribe medications to people (if they want them) to "treat" ageing, and prevent those conditions which cause age-related suffering from arising or advancing."

      Gawd no. Pharmaceutical medications are inherently toxic, there are no "side effects" of these drugs. "Side effects" is a clever marketing/psychological trick. They should be called DIRECT harms, just like the alleged benefit of the drug is a DIRECT benefit.

      Anyway, Fusion, like most other organisations, don't address at all the main driver. Toxicity, poisons.

      I do agree with being proactive about ones heath though.

  • FezMonkey on 17/05/2024 - 08:36

    I remember hearing somewhere that it's speculated that the first person to live to 150 has probably already been born.

    • Cat woman on 17/05/2024 - 13:45

      That "somewhere" would be gerontologist, Aubrey de Grey. Many scientists believe that his timelines for achieving significant life extension are overly optimistic, lack sufficient empirical backing and/ are speculative in nature. Most of his work have not been rigorously peer-reviewed.

      It is believed that the complexity of aging is underestimated and that breakthroughs are unlikely to occur as quickly as de Grey suggests.

      As a sidenote, de Grey's been looking and acting very cult-leader-ish lately . Not sure what that's about.

      • FezMonkey on 17/05/2024 - 14:21

        I've never heard of that man, it was just a soundbite on the radio that stuck in my head.

        Yes that would be a big jump in progress but 100+ years from now, who knows.

      • Odin on 17/05/2024 - 15:16

        his timelines for achieving significant life extension are overly optimistic

        Progress tends to be made by optimists instead of pessimists

    • drfuzzy on 18/05/2024 - 13:00

      It is one of those claims that will not be proven wrong in our lifetime but attracts media attention and sells books.

  • stedmaster on 17/05/2024 - 08:37

    Michio Kaku did a documentary with BBC a while ago on Time, episode 2, Lifetime which might fascinate you. You can watch it via an old YouTube compilation here Although if you want a better quality you will have to find it.

    Goes over cellular regeneration and the biology of aging, from things like trees that are 5000 years old and living compared to other various organisms inc humans etc.

    He is a learned man, an intellectual with multiple PHDs and highly respected in the science community, I find it more fascinating in one of his episodes that he gave an account of seeing someone who does some form of hypnosis on him, He said he went back in time so to speak in his memories like he was there.

    Living longer is more of a sense of your body not dying, I think who you really are is like a piece of software or a spirit, your body is just a host. I think the development of neural interfaces, tertiary consciousness or being able to augment your spirit so to speak somewhere else is more interesting in essence, if you want to get religious about it, that side of things has been touched on for a long time, but as technology progresses it gets uncannier.

  • Alley Cat on 17/05/2024 - 08:57

    Ageing is reversible. No one believes my age when they meet me irl. Your experience and existence is shaped by your beliefs, which is hugely subconscious. If you could round up all the people voting in different groups and sample their indicators of ageing, you might find some convergence in the data in relation to their chronological age. Some might be significantly older, some might be about the same, but none would be younger because the options don’t allow for that possibility.

    Anyhow, life is how you make it. 🙏

  • filmer on 17/05/2024 - 09:31

    By definition aging is a disease - in the same way obesity is a disease.

  • FlyingMiffy on 17/05/2024 - 09:39

    Anything about 60 is a good innings in my opinion. Why would you need to live forever?

    • Camelface on 17/05/2024 - 11:26

      Depending on how you lived that 60…

    • Odin on 17/05/2024 - 15:15
      +1

      Why die if you don't have to?

  • sirstiv on 17/05/2024 - 09:47

    Once they find out how to transplant live brain data to a new cloned body of yourself then you can keep living forever

  • mavis30551 on 17/05/2024 - 12:15

    Imagine the strain on the environment if everyone lived forever. Every 30 years the population of the planet would double. Everyone having kids, and then their kids having kids.

    Imagine the outcry when the government tries to put a cap on giving birth to stop us cannibalising ourselves and a whole generation feels like their missing out on having their own crotch goblins.

    • drfuzzy on 18/05/2024 - 13:01

      Unlikely. If everyone lived forever then children would be highly regulated, licensed, and sold at a huge price as a luxury good.

      The rest would be euthanised.

  • cunningdrew on 17/05/2024 - 12:40

    Whether we age or not will be at the hands of your bank account and position in society within 20-40 years. Simple as that.

  • ozbargainsam on 17/05/2024 - 14:24

    We need to 'ship of Theseus' our bodies.

  • Odin on 17/05/2024 - 15:14

    Eventually one of two things will happen:

    1. Biological immortality will be achieved.
    2. Technological immortality will be achieved.

    And it won't be long. I'd say in under 100 years we get one of them or close enough to be practical we get one of them.

    I'd wager the reason the overwhelming majority voted for "just accept it" is because it's how people rationalise life.
    Dying sucks. And for probably all of us answering here we have zero hope of not dying. So you get the attitude of "shut up and accept it". But some very smart people will 'beat' aging. It's inevitable.

    • Camelface on 18/05/2024 - 13:10

      Why do you think dying suck? Imagine this: You're given a chance to move to a new place where you have everything you want like women (or men), toys, cars, gaming, luxury housing, food - you name it, and you don't have to work. The only condition is that you can't take anything, not even your memories.

      Will you accept it?

      • Odin on 18/05/2024 - 20:03
        1. No I don't want that.
        2. Fantasy isn't appealing to me.
        • Camelface on 18/05/2024 - 20:12

          @Odin understood. If someone asked me that question, I would've answered the same.

          But it's not fantasy.

  • BendBridge on 17/05/2024 - 15:42

    Don't think it's a disease. I think it's just like a biological engine, everything grows old over time. Some parts regenerate/regrow, the rest don't. So some organs will cease to function eventually and… we'll die.

  • furyou on 17/05/2024 - 16:43

    Aging is self limiting. Nobody has suffered aging for more than 100yrs.

    • BluebirdV on 17/05/2024 - 17:31

      About 120 years.

  • Imnuts7 on 17/05/2024 - 20:56

    I like to call ageing/senescence a "mother of diseases". Whether this is a disease is up to your interpretation. Interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity

  • OzHan on 17/05/2024 - 23:41

    Define disease.

  • nobro25 on 18/05/2024 - 09:21
    +1

    Telomere length shortens with age. Progressive shortening of telomeres leads to senescence, apoptosis, or oncogenic transformation of somatic cells, affecting the health and lifespan of an individual. Shorter telomeres have been associated with increased incidence of diseases and poor survival.

    In a nutshell:
    Old age = Shorter Telemeres = Higher susceptibility to diseases, infections etc; As your body's defence system is poorer than before.
    Everyone has different DNA and their Telemeres are also unique. Some have longer ones and others have shorter ones.

    Conc: It's not a disease per se… It's something you ought to maintain as you age. It's an accumulation of your lifestyle habits and your DNA deterioration rate.

  • diss on 18/05/2024 - 11:38
    +1

    Going by this definition:

    a particular quality or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people

    I think yes, you could call aging a disease. Doesn’t really matter if it’s a natural process. Pretty pointless semantical debate though. I think it’s inevitable that we will one day figure out how to halt or maybe even reverse the process… just a question of when.

  • ozdog64 on 18/05/2024 - 15:27
    +1

    This post reminds me of the good ol' days of the internet. The time when message boards had wide-eyed teens asking random theoretical and often times philosophical questions on just about anything. If you would like to know the meaning of life, all you have to do is ask… Anyway I will indulge you.

    Aging and disease are two separate things. Disease can be side effect of aging. Aging is the result of irreversible cellular and DNA damage over time which happens as a natural course for >99.9% of species. Simply put, most species lack the biological capacity to live forever. And why would humans have evolved any different when there is no evolutionary advantage to immortality?

    In the far future, Aging will be curable. As for now, be prepared to wither and fade away like the rest of us!

  • Yorkshire-Man on 18/05/2024 - 15:42

    I hope not, the planet would wither & die with that amount of population growth.

    I was born mid '70's and the global population was 4bn people. It's doubled since then.

    If someone cured aging we would have to agree to either a) no more babies b) an age we kill people at. No thanks.

    • ozdog64 on 19/05/2024 - 18:46

      Completely curing aging requires fancy, futuristic technology. Surely more fancy, futuristic technology can solve overpopulation?

  • bigsov on 18/05/2024 - 23:57

    The key part of life is not our body, everything in our body can be replaced. The key part is our mind and concience. I am sure science will find a way to keep our concience forever and we will be able to replace all biological parts of our body with artifically grown biological parts. Key part of this will be to deal with the brain, it is probably tricky to extract concience from the brain, I would start from the goal of making exact copy of the brain that should be biologically exactly the same as the original including DNA(likely this will not be required when science gets even more advanced). Then there should be a "sync" process - ie connect old brain into the new one and transfter all the "neural network weights" into the new brain. Yes, it looks like it is close to impossible now, but imagine that we will understand brain enough to know it inside out, and will understand the mechanism how each memory is stored. We are already starting to understand it. Sure it is long way to go, but we can already have some rough ideas, eg see this video: How are memories stored in neural networks?

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