What is responsible for aging?

What we need to survive is exactly what helps us progress towards our senescence? That is the question that kept running through my head as I read the reading for this week. Oxygen and glucose are essential for sustaining human life, but more specifically they are needed for proper brain function. A few minutes without oxygen, or a very low level of blood glucose, causes the brain to shut down (which in turn leads to death). Biologically, the ideas of rusting and browning discussed in the chapter make quite a bit of sense.

Science has brought us to the point of understanding some processes that can be thrown in to swim amongst the countless other things that are thought to contribute to aging. Throughout the chapter, the authors insisted that looking at only one scientific process provided only one view on aging and that viewing one aspect leaves other things being overlooked. The ideas that humans are prone to rusting like the Tin Man and browning like a steak on the grill provide simple analogies regarding aging. While the Tin Man and steak represent two different processes, there are countless other processes that can be associated with countless other analogies regarding aging.

In class, we discussed the point of how one views aging with the knowledge their background and expertise has provided them. The most striking example what how an Evolutionary Biologist would define aging, depending on what parameters had been set by the inquiring party. At this point in time, with the varying view points, hundreds of theories and countless analogies we have encountered, I have thought of a visual representation of these varying viewpoints.

Depending on one's background, looking into the globe at the concept of aging will give a different picture. Like the infinite number of ways to look into a globe, there will always be infinite ways to look at aging because we see what we believe. After all, as the author says "with our focus on longevity and survival so far, it is easy to forget that some aspects of aging have little to do with staying alive" (pg. 144).