As it comes to age, sorry, Cady Heron, but the limit does exist. According to recent studies done by Science Daily, shutting down the aging process is mathematically impossible.
From the days of the conquistadors, people have been looking for the fountain of youth. For some reason or another, people want to live longer, if not forever. No one has found the “cure” for aging, and that’s because it does not exists. A study titled “Intercellular Competition and Inevitability of Multicellular Aging,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that it is quite literally impossible to shut down the aging process because, in multicellular organisms like humans, increasing competition between cells is very dangerous.
One of two things will happen if scientists try to jack with cells in humans: cells will slow down and start to lose function, like when your hair cells go grey instead making more color, or cells will start growing at a crazy rapid rate and cause cancer. Even though every person makes cancer cells as they age, whether or not it develops and shows symptoms — cancer cells will always win when forced to compete because they’re cheaters.
Joanna Masel, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona said, “People have looked at why aging happens, from the perspective of ‘why hasn’t natural selection stopped aging yet?’ That’s the question they ask, and implicitly in that is the idea that such a thing as non-aging is possible, so why haven’t we evolved it? We’re saying it’s not just a question of evolution not doing it; it can’t be done by natural selection or by anything else.”
Basically, things just break over time and you can slap some duct tape on it, but it’s still gonna break. (You can slow aging down but never stop it.) You’re a multicellular organism, and unless you want to stop functioning altogether or get cancer, you’re gonna age. Sorry not sorry.
The cool part of scientists’ failure to end aging is that aging is actually pretty dope. With aging comes wisdom, and also the drive to live your best life now because you know your time is limited. Long life is great, but so is getting older and not having weird body reactions because you’re fooling with biology. Get you some wrinkle cream and hair dye like the rest of us and call it a day.
