• Question: why do humans only live to roughly 80 years and not all

    Asked by 826genp44 to Remsha, Oliver, Lisa, Kieran, Fiana, David on 7 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Fiana

      Fiana answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      How long we live depends on how likely we are to develop certain diseases and how well we take care of ourselves, along with so many other factors! Humans are gradually living longer and longer as the years go on so who knows how long your generation will be alive 🙂

    • Photo: Oliver

      Oliver answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      Another factor at the genetic level are the role of telomeres. When our cells divide, the cell’s DNA divides. At each end of the Chromosome, there are protective ‘caps’ of DNA which are called telomeres which protect the important DNA that the cell needs to function – it protects this DNA from damage. Each division, these get shorter and shorter until they are too short to protect the rest of the cell’s DNA and then the cell dies. The more we age, the more our cell’s divide and hence age related problems and ultimately mortality!

      But as Fiana notes, we are gradually living longer and longer due to better environmental factors such as better food, vaccines, sanitation. See here to see the average life expectancy in US between 1900 and 1998: http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html [pretty shocking!].

      Finally, there is research into life-extension technology and there is already the suggestion that there could be people born now that could life to a 1,000 years (all going very, very well) – Aubrey de Grey argues this and he is not a mad scientist! See here: https://futurism.com/aging-expert-person-1000-born

    • Photo: Remsha Afzal

      Remsha Afzal answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      Its because over time, our DNA (especially the DNA present in the mitochondria ) get damaged until we can no longer function properly. Our DNA mutates a fair bit throughout our life time. Once it reaches the point of no return (too much damage) we die. Its still very complicated to try and understand ageing because genes and lifestyle both play a role. We are definitely living way longer now than before due to better awareness of how our body works so we keep cleaner, eat better food, have better medications. In the near future, I’m sure our life span will go up to 100!

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