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Aging should be classified as a disease because there has to be a set of biological levers that we can manipulate with drugs or other forms of medicine which wi

Aging should be classified as a disease because there has to be a set of biological levers that we can manipulate with drugs or other forms of medicine which will have an effect on the aging process across the entire. Like using RNA to reprogram the cells in the body to do things outside of what’s encoded in our base DNA. I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible, I’ve heard some people say it’s an impossible task because they equate aging with the fact that time can only move forward and therefore aging must inherit the same property. But aging is just damage that accumulates over time, but damage can be repaired with the right tools. I should say I am not a biologist, I just try to use my imagination to solve problems and this what it’s telling me about aging.

omeid2 3y ago
> I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible Aging is loss of information, you can't reverse that. You can prevent it though.
- Fbnkigffb66tfbj 3y ago
  The human body has trillions of cells. Surely there are enough copies of our DNA to recover its original form even if individual copies have extensive damage.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Yah, I don't think it's the loss of information, but a related concept: it's a decline in order. We have a whole lot of redundancy and mechanisms to restore/repair redundancy. But even so, there's a march of entropy upwards; oxidation, genetic damage, cell death, tissue damage, neuron loss, etc. We don't have repair mechanisms for everything the body knows how to build, and the repair mechanisms that we do have become less effective to use (and often less safe) as the body ages.
    - omeid2 3y ago
      > it's a decline in order. That is another way of saying loss of information and increase of entropy.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        While the thermodynamic and the information theoretic concepts of entropy are related, it's not really applicable here. All the "real" information in the system is highly redundant (except perhaps neurological)-- we have billions of copies of the "information". The system's ability to restore itself to the order specified in the plan is lacking.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  Why can’t you reverse loss of information? It’s not like the information is particularly unique, we all have the same blueprints. Copy some DNA from someone younger and fill in the gaps Jurassic Park style.
  - omeid2 3y ago
    Substitution isn't reversal.
    - verelo 3y ago
      So take a copy when you’re 21 and store it, re-load it every 10 years?
      - speedylight 3y ago
        That’s the basic idea, the problem is how do you reload it? You would need a mechanism that changes the DNA for every one of the trillions of cells in the body.
        ImHereToVote 3y ago
        Via a viral vector or liposomal bubble.
        verelo 3y ago
        Yeah, thats a good question but i mean, feels like just a matter of time until someone figures that part out. If we can make GTA V load in under 2mins, we can solve human aging...
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Aging is loss of information, you can't reverse that. You can prevent it though We don't understand aging well enough to say this with any confidence.
  - omeid2 3y ago
    This is not true. We understand aging enough to confidently say that loss of epigenetic information is correlated to aging. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36638792/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36638792/
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > loss of epigenetic information is correlated to aging Very different from saying “aging is loss of information.”
- speedylight 3y ago
  I assume by information you’re referring to DNA? If so we can already sequence human DNA from all sorts of samples (so for example we store a copy of it from a young age, like 20), the hard part would be replacing the damaged DNA with the undamaged copy, in every cell of the body—sort of like reinstalling an operating system. It’s interesting to think about the implications of such a technology, if we can swap DNA with another, fresher copy, we should also be able to modify it and make the body do things it wasn’t previously capable of doing. One idea that comes to mind is expanding the range of our senses, or giving our body a better system to repair and regenerate itself beyond what we naturally evolved to able to do so we can have longer life spans with a quality of life that makes it worth it. It sounds like a bad idea to play god like this, and it probably is, but we’ll never know until we give it a serious try. I remember a while ago a scientist in China modified the DNA of human embryos by using Crispr, the goal was to make them resistant to HIV infection and he was jailed and ridiculed for it. The search space for new and improved capabilities is endless once we learn how to program DNA like a computer. We are probably at least a century away from this level of control, and probably another century before it becomes socially acceptable to do it at scale.
- grishka 3y ago
  If aging is loss of information, then why does reproduction work? How does a non-zero-aged organism, in which some of the information was supposedly lost, give birth to zero-aged offspring with all the same information intact?
Log_out_ 3y ago
Aging is mamal universal. It's a adaption to predation and I think the key would be to find a mammal that was not predated by dinosaurs. Something like whales. But even they have the predation damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale
grishka 3y ago
> But aging is just damage that accumulates over time, but damage can be repaired with the right tools. No, that's outdated. Another theory that aging is an intentional, programmed process is gaining more and more traction lately. Damage does accumulate over time, but it's not because the cells are incapable of repairing it, it's because they deliberately don't want to repair it. The developmental program that starts with conception just turns self-destructive at some point. We "only" need to reset its state to such that corresponds to a younger age.
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  Could you provide some articles / books on this please?

omeid2 3y ago

> I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible Aging is loss of information, you can't reverse that. You can prevent it though.

Fbnkigffb66tfbj 3y ago
The human body has trillions of cells. Surely there are enough copies of our DNA to recover its original form even if individual copies have extensive damage.
- mlyle 3y ago
  Yah, I don't think it's the loss of information, but a related concept: it's a decline in order. We have a whole lot of redundancy and mechanisms to restore/repair redundancy. But even so, there's a march of entropy upwards; oxidation, genetic damage, cell death, tissue damage, neuron loss, etc. We don't have repair mechanisms for everything the body knows how to build, and the repair mechanisms that we do have become less effective to use (and often less safe) as the body ages.
  - omeid2 3y ago
    > it's a decline in order. That is another way of saying loss of information and increase of entropy.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      While the thermodynamic and the information theoretic concepts of entropy are related, it's not really applicable here. All the "real" information in the system is highly redundant (except perhaps neurological)-- we have billions of copies of the "information". The system's ability to restore itself to the order specified in the plan is lacking.
oceanplexian 3y ago
Why can’t you reverse loss of information? It’s not like the information is particularly unique, we all have the same blueprints. Copy some DNA from someone younger and fill in the gaps Jurassic Park style.
- omeid2 3y ago
  Substitution isn't reversal.
  - verelo 3y ago
    So take a copy when you’re 21 and store it, re-load it every 10 years?
    - speedylight 3y ago
      That’s the basic idea, the problem is how do you reload it? You would need a mechanism that changes the DNA for every one of the trillions of cells in the body.
      - ImHereToVote 3y ago
        Via a viral vector or liposomal bubble.
      - verelo 3y ago
        Yeah, thats a good question but i mean, feels like just a matter of time until someone figures that part out. If we can make GTA V load in under 2mins, we can solve human aging...
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Aging is loss of information, you can't reverse that. You can prevent it though We don't understand aging well enough to say this with any confidence.
- omeid2 3y ago
  This is not true. We understand aging enough to confidently say that loss of epigenetic information is correlated to aging. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36638792/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36638792/
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > loss of epigenetic information is correlated to aging Very different from saying “aging is loss of information.”
speedylight 3y ago
I assume by information you’re referring to DNA? If so we can already sequence human DNA from all sorts of samples (so for example we store a copy of it from a young age, like 20), the hard part would be replacing the damaged DNA with the undamaged copy, in every cell of the body—sort of like reinstalling an operating system. It’s interesting to think about the implications of such a technology, if we can swap DNA with another, fresher copy, we should also be able to modify it and make the body do things it wasn’t previously capable of doing. One idea that comes to mind is expanding the range of our senses, or giving our body a better system to repair and regenerate itself beyond what we naturally evolved to able to do so we can have longer life spans with a quality of life that makes it worth it. It sounds like a bad idea to play god like this, and it probably is, but we’ll never know until we give it a serious try. I remember a while ago a scientist in China modified the DNA of human embryos by using Crispr, the goal was to make them resistant to HIV infection and he was jailed and ridiculed for it. The search space for new and improved capabilities is endless once we learn how to program DNA like a computer. We are probably at least a century away from this level of control, and probably another century before it becomes socially acceptable to do it at scale.
grishka 3y ago
If aging is loss of information, then why does reproduction work? How does a non-zero-aged organism, in which some of the information was supposedly lost, give birth to zero-aged offspring with all the same information intact?

Log_out_ 3y ago

Aging is mamal universal. It's a adaption to predation and I think the key would be to find a mammal that was not predated by dinosaurs. Something like whales. But even they have the predation damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale

grishka 3y ago

> But aging is just damage that accumulates over time, but damage can be repaired with the right tools. No, that's outdated. Another theory that aging is an intentional, programmed process is gaining more and more traction lately. Damage does accumulate over time, but it's not because the cells are incapable of repairing it, it's because they deliberately don't want to repair it. The developmental program that starts with conception just turns self-destructive at some point. We "only" need to reset its state to such that corresponds to a younger age.

throw1234651234 3y ago
Could you provide some articles / books on this please?