http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=7102447
"Marie Ellis died -- of natural causes -- at the Eaton Lodge Nursing Home in Kent, southeast England, in early December and was cremated on Tuesday, clutching a packet of her favorite Benson and Hedges cigarettes."
"Apart from her 15-a-day habit, she was also notorious among staff for her unhealthy eating habits, often asking for sugar in her soup and always demanding three sugars in her coffee."
Just think, she might have lived to be 150 otherwise.
Gaaah! My eyes!
It's actually in the genes -- some people produce an enzyme that breaks down the stuff in tobacco smoke which normally leads to lung damage and emphysema.
That doesn't mean that smoking is safe, just that some people are more resistant to its effects than others.
Someone should work on producing that enzyme
Is there any record of someone living up to 150?
Doubtful. Beyond ~120 it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll have some form of Parkinson's if you haven't already died from something else.
Life expectancy is constantly rising in the west, though.
My life insurance company is going to lower their pension expectancies next year... orz
While that is true, I don't think that the increased life expectancy means we're becoming any less susceptible to the effects of aging. We live longer now because of nutrition and medicines that can prevent and/or cure major diseases. Natural aging is a whole different picture--there is nothing that can cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, at present.
Of course, at the current rate of progress and discovery, who knows? There might be a "cure" for neurodegenerative disorders when we're old.
8,000 years get.
IANAB (I Am Not A Biologist) but the aging problem seems straightforward to me. The cells are copying themselves from the last copy. Therefore each cell is a slightly worse copy. Therefore we have aging.
Now, each cell does contain the original DNA. Why is the cell not using the original DNA data to get back on track when the duplication is getting bad? There should be a way to instruct the cell to revert to the original. Likewise, there should be a way to instruct the body to repair damaged body parts.
> The cells are copying themselves from the last copy. Therefore each cell is a slightly worse copy
That is a somewhat simplified statement. Who is to say that the original in any way has to be better than the copy? And the copying process itself cannot be one of simple decay by mimicry. For if that were the case, even heredity between single specimen would have to be constantly atavistic - a trait that is the exception and not the rule in evolution.
Copies of cells contain essentially the exact same genes, mutations notwithstanding. But there's more to chromosomes than genes - and that's what you lose from copy to copy. If you want to know more, look up stuff on genetics, cloning, telomere length...I don't think I could adequately explain it.
That said, most cells do not actually replicate. Heart, muscle, bone, nervous - none of those cells in your body are still dividing; they've long since differentiated into their specialized forms. There are regeneration mechanisms--how else would we recover from injury?--but neural regeneration in particular is extremely slow, prone to problems with reconnections, etc.