September 10, 1999
And now for a few cheery tips to ward off aging.
The first is an absolute must: Don't breathe.
A couple of others are a little less for sure. A: Don't eat too much. B: Get those dividing cells in your body to STOP DIVIDING.
See? A real snap.
There are dozens of scientific theories about aging and challenges to all of them. That's why there's a big conference on the biology of aging happening in Kansas City Sept 26 to 29. Tom Squier, associate professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Kansas, and several of his KU colleagues will be there.
Do those at KU share a common belief about what makes us old?
Squier says, "The damage from breathing air."
The story goes like this. Our cells have little engines inside them called mitochondria. Oxygen fuels the engines. As oxygen is broken down, poisonous free radicals accumulate in the cell.
Through the days of our lives, free radicals slowly attack the mitochondrial machinery. Free radicals also mess with the cell's DNA and proteins. As a result, the cells lose their ability to control the movement of calcium within their own walls, leading to poor muscle function in old age. The cells also can't keep potassium out anymore. Water rushes in along with the potassium and dilutes what's inside the cell.
In a sense, says KU scientist Fred Samson, old cells drown.
Proper diet slows the damage of aging. Foods like broccoli and strawberries contain stuff that reduces the destructiveness of free radicals.
The trick is to not eat too many calories. Now that's not the same as eating less, or starving yourself, which is how the message is sometimes received. In a recent book titled "A Means to an End," writer William Clark says research shows that "excess caloric intake shortens maximal life span, not that caloric restriction extends it."
Now about that matter of stopping your cells from dividing. The idea is that cells get to divide only so many times - about 50 in all - before they poop out. Common sense suggests that as they expire, so do we. The dream is that all we have to do is doctor their little chromosomes some way, and maybe we can live to be 150.
Sorry, but there are hitches there too. First, many of our cells seem to stop dividing when we're still children. Second, the cells that take the trophy for relentless division are those associated with cancer.
Samson says, "Fostering cancer cells is not the answer to a long life."
So you say to yourself, "But what about that big science project where they're figuring out all the genes and the diseases they cause? Those guys'll come up with something."
Nice try but no cigar. Gene therapy hasn't yet worked even with illnesses linked to just one gene mutation. Diseases like cancer no doubt stem from several mutations, plus the impact of environment.
Squier sums it up: "Our ability today to explain aging is approximately where our ability to explain cancer was 30 years ago. We have a lot of disjointed ideas that don't all fit together."
To which I have only one response: Hold your breath.
Column by Roger Martin. His KU research webzine can be found at www.research.ukans.edu/explore/.