Aging is common to all living things as far as we know. Every organism at some point in its life face this inevitable gradual deterioration of functionality and ultimately death. Is it a disease? or is it something really inevitable that we are programmed for it? For the past few centuries, scientists have been studying various aspects of aging to better understand it hoping that someday, we might be able to intercept this process. But, How does aging truly happens is yet to be confirmed..
Death and aging has always associated life. So in the hope of clues on why this may be, it is better to have an insight of the origin of life and its evolution. Today, we accept that life took place by chance and luck has ruled most of its courses throughout evolution. It is quite possible that the roots of the issue of aging lie a long way down this tree of evolution. While Charles Darwin's' Natural Selection explains how the course of life was shaped, it just might hold a clue why life as we see it is mortal.
Successful forms of life are perpetual and can survive in environment for longer periods of time before being extinct. Changes in environment forces the natural selection of the best adapted organisms. So, for life to persist, it has to have variations and a large number of individuals. The longevity of an organism does not necessarily matter in this context. If any species (with short or long life span) is capable of producing large numbers of offspring with variation, it is THE necessity for the survival of that species. So, evolution does not hold a requirement for immortality which is not THE issue when it comes to survival.
To counteract aging process, the cells and the organism itself must have certain mechanisms which handle and revert the unfavourable changes that bring about loss of functionality. It is possible for certain living beings to have acquired this by chance. For example, certain microscopic animals, jellyfish, and Hydra are observed to exhibit immortality(Biological Immortality). Still, these are relatively simpler in structure than most multicellular organisms. More the complexity, processes to handle aging might become a little too much burden to the organism.
Not just animals, plants too undergo aging. By studying the aspects of plants we can get a good idea how aging might affect ourselves too. Plants grow in girth by producing new vasculature because with time, existing tissues decline in functional capacity. These Older structures are accumulated with certain compounds and preserved within the tree. This is why trees have to keep growing to stay alive.
A similar case applies to humans and all other animals as well and we do have programs somewhat like those of plants. But obviously, animals can't afford accumulating more and more older tissues; they have to move around feeding and reproducing.
We are not programmed to all aspects of aging and bodily accumulations. This is observable in the global trends of non-communicable diseases with increasing age. This might mean that we are not built to last much long. Although this is not really a problem from the point of view of natural selection, as humans we do share some concern. Who knows? with time, we just might be able to live longer healthier lives and delay aging.
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