“Eating well, sleeping well, and exercising are more effective than any anti-aging medicine on the market”: Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize in Chemistry
In this blog post, we will explore the relationship between genetics and aging, through an interview with Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Venki Ramakrishnan.
Growing old and dying happens to all of us, and (almost) all of us are afraid of it.
But why do we age and die? Is it possible to delay aging or even achieve immortality?
These questions have occupied a large part of the career of molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan (Chidambaram, India, 1952).
In 2009, along with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath, Ramakrishnan received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on ribosomes, the cell structure responsible for producing proteins, which are the molecules that make life is possible of all organizations.
What is aging, and what does this process consist of in humans?
One of the main causes of aging is the accumulation of damage to the genes in our DNA.
The most valuable information carried by genes is how to produce proteins.
At the cellular level, proteins carry out thousands of chemical reactions that make life possible. They give shape and strength to our bodies, but they also enable communication between cells.
Thanks to them we have our senses and our nervous system depends on them to transmit signals and store our memory.
Our antibodies are proteins, and they are what allow the cell to manufacture the molecules it needs, including fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, hormones, and its own genes.
So, aging has a lot to do with the loss of our body's ability to regulate the production and destruction of proteins in cells.
We can see it as an accumulation of chemical damage in our molecules, in our cells, in our tissues and, ultimately, in our entire body.
It's a gradual process, from the moment we're born. Even before that, we're already aging, but at a young age we don't feel it because we're growing, we're developing.
Then, as the years go by, the symptoms become more obvious and when critical systems begin to fail, the body can no longer function as a unified whole…And that is what leads to death.
The interesting thing about death is that when we die, most of our cells are still alive - that's why our organs can be donated - but they are no longer able to function as a whole; that is death.
Why do we age and die?
Because evolution doesn't care about us as individuals.
Evolution is basically about the ability to pass on genes. And those genes don't exist in a vacuum; they reside within an individual.
So as long as you are able to grow, procreate, and ensure that your offspring reach their own reproductive age, evolution doesn't care what happens to you afterward, because you have already passed on your genes.
It is true that our bodies could invest more effort in preventing aging, or in having better mechanisms to repair themselves, but from an evolutionary point of view it is more efficient to ensure that we grow faster and can reproduce to pass on our genes.
It is a balance that varies in each species.
For example, in a species that lives at high risk of being eaten by a predator, it makes no sense for its organism to evolve to live for many years, because it is very likely that it will be eaten at any moment.
In mammals, larger species tend to have a longer life cycle than smaller ones.
However, there is a curious exception to this: mice and bats weigh almost the same, but bats have a much longer life cycle than mice.
Why? Because they can fly; therefore, they are less vulnerable to predators.
In the last 150 years, human life expectancy has doubled.
One of the major debates among scientists is whether life expectancy can continue to increase or whether we have already reached the limit of what our bodies can live. What is your position in this debate?
Today we live longer because our health and medical care have improved.
With current knowledge, 120 years is the maximum we could reasonably live; it is unlikely that we will live beyond that age.
The curious thing is that, for example, Tom Perls, a scientist who studies longevity in Boston, USA, has observed that although the number of people reaching 100 is increasing, the number of those reaching 110 is not growing.
His feeling is that beyond 110 years, we face natural biological limits.
Yes, there are people who, thanks to a combination of genetic factors and their lifestyle, live more than 110 years, but that number of people is not increasing.
So yes, it would seem that there is a natural limit.
Calculations have also been made showing that even if we were able to eliminate diseases like cancer, we would only increase the average life expectancy by a few years.
Now, if we somehow manage to address the causes of aging, perhaps we can overcome that limit, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to do so, or even if it's desirable. It's something we need to think about, because there could be enormous social consequences.
Some optimists say that the first person to live to 150 has already been born, but I think they are overly optimistic, because aging is highly multifactorial, and it is not clear if there will be a couple of definitive solutions that will stop it and keep us healthy.
Another major debate is whether old age is a disease…
Cancer, dementia, inflammation, osteoarthritis, heart conditions are all related to age, so there are those who claim that age is the underlying cause of these diseases, and therefore aging is a disease.
Others point out that aging is something that happens to everyone. So how can something that is inevitable and universal be called a disease?
The WHO recently stated its position that it is not a disease.
What there is, however, is a lot of pressure to have aging considered a disease, because a lot of money is invested in research related to it.
To conduct clinical trials and obtain approval from the authorities, you need a disease to exist.
In what areas do you think we will see the greatest advances in anti-aging treatments in the coming years?
As the joke attributed to baseball player Yogi Berra goes: "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future.".
I'm not really sure how advanced they are, but there are several approaches that try to slow down aging.
For example, researchers have found that restricting calories often helps slow aging, with the caveat that doing so at younger ages can cause problems.
So they are seeing if they can create a drug that has a similar effect to calorie restriction.
I jokingly say it's like being able to eat a cake with ice cream without worrying about the calories, because you just take a pill and that's it. It's what a lot of people wish for.
There is a lot of interest in a drug called rapamycin, which has that approach, but in high doses it can be immunosuppressive and cause serious damage.
Another interesting field is parabiosis, in which you transfuse blood from a young animal to an older one.
What happens there is that the animal receiving the blood is rejuvenated in several aspects, which means that there are factors in the blood that are responsible for aging, and there are studies to identify them.
There is also an approach related to senescence, which is the state in which cells stop functioning normally and stop dividing.
As we age, we accumulate more senescent cells, and the inflammation they produce as a signal that something is wrong is an additional cause of aging.
So, researchers are asking: is it possible to selectively destroy senescent cells? There is evidence that if this is achieved, some of the effects of aging can be reversed.
And there is the very interesting area of cell reprogramming, which consists of bringing a cell back to its initial state, reversing the changes that have occurred in it.
Of course, that process is risky because it can often cause cancerous growths.
We are far from it being applicable to humans, but experiments have been carried out on animals that show promising results.
In addition to these advances, you have also drawn attention to other approaches that seem more like science fiction and which receive a lot of publicity…
Yes, these are things that are completely science fiction at this point.
There are people who believe in cryonics, which consists of freezing someone's body in liquid nitrogen when they die, hoping that, somehow, the technology to revive them will exist in the future.
I think that's all for now. hype; It's a way of capitalizing on people's fear of dying.
Furthermore, I think it's a first-world problem. Those who invest in cryonics are people with a lot of money, who can buy everything except youth.
I grew up in India and I know many people from Africa, and nobody there is thinking about cryonics.
The fear of aging is widespread; that's why we use Botox, dye our gray hair, that kind of thing… Do you think that efforts to slow down aging contribute to that fear of old age continuing to grow?
There's so much pressure not to age, and that pressure falls especially on women. It's terrible.
But I don't think that research to slow down aging fuels the fear of old age; on the contrary, I think it's a result of that fear.
It is a fear that we have had for much of our history because we do not have enough medical knowledge.
There's a lot of effort and money being invested in science and technology aimed at slowing down aging, but in your book you make it clear that there are other ways to stay healthy that are much more within our reach…
Eating well, sleeping well, and exercising are currently more effective than any anti-aging medicine on the market.
They cost nothing, have no side effects, and have a solid biological basis against aging.
Humans did not evolve to eat abundantly, nor desserts and such things.
Our species began as hunters and gatherers. We ate sporadically, fasted naturally, and had the caloric restriction I mentioned earlier.
But now we eat even if we are not hungry, and in the West we are seeing a huge increase in obesity.
Let's talk about exercise. Today we live a sedentary life compared to our ancestors, who were farmers, hunters, and manual laborers.
And regarding sleep, we often underestimate its importance, but it is extremely valuable for our body's repair mechanisms.
Putting these old tips into practice helps us maintain muscle mass, regulate mitochondrial function, blood pressure, stress, and reduce the risk of dementia.
The problem is that it's not always easy to follow them. People sometimes prefer to just take a pill and live their lives as they wish. That's the part we have to overcome.
Fountain: https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cldry666rweo.amp
