So I stumbled on this article about aging in IEEE Spectrum...i'm a geek, I admit. In summary, this is what I got from the article.
We, humans are machines (not mammals from discovery channels). Unlike good man-made machines however, which are made of the best working parts found or created, we are a collection of redundant defective parts. Aging then is when cells fail and requires other cells to take up their jobs...After a while, there are no more cells to replace the dead cells, hence we die...glorious prospect. For those familia with reliability theory, there's a lot of jargon involved, but all in all, all I can remeber is the rate of brain cell death is constant, i.e. it's not because we are older that we loose more brain cells.
Right. Of course it's the rate that is constant...anyway...
And the final paragraph of the article says it all really:"Our life span is a time bomb with many fuses burning at different speeds. Cutting off only one fuse may be inadequate-we need to take care of them all"
Now, that's a deep perspective on anti-aging creams and plastic surgery!
(Full article here): IEEE Spectrum, September 2004, Why We Fall Apart .
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