The Hallmarks of Aging And How to Stop Them
in Their Tracks
After studying the human body for over three decades, I can tell you that our biology is simply amazing. There is such beautiful complexity, interdependence, and coordination when it comes to the biochemical systems that sustain life.
Things go wrong, however, when we start to deviate from living in harmony with nature or in balance with ourselves and our environment. When this happens, it leads to things like disease, discomfort, and lower quality of life.
In other words, disease and accelerated aging are not mistakes. They are our body’s best attempt to deal with a bad set of circumstances. Health and longevity are our natural states, but only if we understand how our bodies are designed to work best. When we act and live in ways contrary to this, we experience the hallmarks of aging.
The Hallmarks of Aging
There are ten distinct hallmarks of aging—the underlying common pathways or mechanisms of aging. But each hallmark is influenced by the others and affected by various imbalances—too much or too little of certain inputs that can negatively impact the expression and progression of the hallmark.
Because there are so many hallmarks of aging, I’m going to break up the information into two parts. In this week’s newsletter, I’ll focus on the first five hallmarks of aging—what they are and how to combat them—and I’ll tackle the remaining five next week. So let’s dig in!
Hallmark 1: Disrupted Hormone and Nutrient Signaling
Years ago, I went to a longevity conference that brought together leading researchers in aging. I met Lenny Guarente there, the MIT scientist who demonstrated dramatic life extension in mice, even in the absence of calorie restriction. On the way to a talk, I asked him about the causes of aging. He simply said, “Sugar!”
Our bodies have exquisite mechanisms for sampling the environment and for sensing the levels of nutrients—amino acids, sugars, and fatty acids. From moment to moment, they modify a myriad of chemical reactions that trigger either autophagy—the process of cellular recycling and cleanup—or protein synthesis—making new proteins and parts. But how do our bodies know what to do?
We have four key nutrient-sensing systems that work together, with overlapping redundancies designed to beautifully protect us from disease and abnormal aging: insulin and insulin signaling, mTOR, AMPK, and sirtuins. Most of the dietary and lifestyle strategies that prevent disease, promote health, and extend life work through these nutrient-sensing systems.
One of the keys to optimizing these systems is to give your body a break from the constant influx of calories on a regular basis through fasting—thus activating autophagy. In addition, it’s important to ensure a high-quality nutrient intake that is low in sugar and starch, high in good fats and phytochemical-rich vegetables and fruit, and high in quality protein; this activates protein synthesis. Regular exercise also activates autophagy.
Hallmark 2: DNA Damage and Mutations
Damage to our DNA is another hallmark of aging. Each day our DNA gets up to 100,000 little hits. The accumulation of these insults accelerates aging. Thankfully, we have built-in repair systems that seek out damaged DNA and fix it. But even if 99 percent of damage is reversed, the remaining 1 percent accumulates over our lifetime.
Our cells also divide, and that means re-creating the DNA blueprint in each cell. Over your lifetime, your DNA produces 10 quadrillion copies of itself through cell division. Sometimes there are glitches in the copy machine, and our DNA blueprint is reproduced with these glitches.