death by old age

yes, exactly thats it. To repair the organism, a Cell must divide herself, and the most often cells divide, the slower they can do it.

 

There's always a reason, be it from an acute disease process, or organ failure due to the damage accumulated over a lifetime. A lot of times, it's a combination of multiple things. Organ function typically declines with aging, such as the kidneys, which decline in function by 50% by age seventy, on average.
 
This theory blames aging on mitochondrial damage by free radicals.
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Samples/shortmed/nelson/radicals.html

 

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure old age wouldn't be put as a cause of death on a death certificate. If the ME sees signs of severe organ damage, and no signs of an acute disease, they're most likely going to chalk the death up to that. Unless they don't find anything pertinent, but then I think it'd technically have to be considered an unknown cause of death, instead of assuming natural.
 
Like I said though, I could be wrong. If old age is an acceptable cause of death, I can definitely see how that'd be kind of a cop out, old age isn't an illness in and of itself, there has to be some kind of secondary cause.

 

The real question comes to our brain.

All of our organs can be replaced. Like car parts. For eternal life.

But the brain holds information that makes you you.

Hypothetically you could copy the information. For a brief moment there would be 2 yous. Or you and someone like you. The new you could replace the old you. Would it really be you?

Why not make several yous?

Unless you can reverse brain aging without replacing the brain, you arent truely extending your own life.

Not saying its impossible. But in general things dont last forever. You can replace parts to make "it" last forever. Which is fine for something with no identity.

I dont see us reversing the aging of the human brain any time soon. Possibly increasing life span. Bit even if we become biologically immortal, remember that our brain is a computer and slows down over time as it becomes updated.

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Read about oxidative stress and couple that with cumulative mutations over time. These and other cumulative, time-dependent fators (teleomeres, etc) eventually cause any of a host of functional degradation in various organs and systems. The body functions as a balance between competing and opposite functioning system variables (see homeostasis) - e.g. sympathetic vs. parasympathetic system activity, acid-base regulation, positive vs. negative signal transduction and the biosynthesis that they regulate, body temperature regulatory systems, etc. As the body ages, certain combinations of degradation of these systems can produce a fairly sudden shutdown in some critical organ or system whereby the metabolic processes spiral down to non-functionality. This can happen in one's sleep or even just watching TV or some other normal state. We would probably say the person "died from old age" but there would be specific underlying physiological cause. Another way to say it is the person's cellular functionality just "wore out".
 
The above is a huge simplification but you the the gist. The 2nd law of thermodynamic will kill us all if we live long enough. 

 

Would yous say that constantly pumping stem cells into you after that age where your body starts to shut itself down,, that you could infact live on another 100 200 years?? Im guessing after a certain amount of time youd need amphetamines to replace the morning coffee haha but seriously would you say they can be the elixar to life?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuN1UqadRIw

 

All jokes aside thats a very basic human question your asking.

 

Cereal- in my genealogy exploring, I have found that "old age" can indeed be listed as a primary cause of death. However, it is usually (but not always) found on older (1940s and earlier) death certificates. 
 
 
Granny

 

I believe something must go wrong and there must be an explanation for death.  There is a point where our cells stop dividing, but I believe that was somewhere in the 120 years range.

 

Huh, I guess that's not too surprising, since autopsies likely weren't as in-depth. I've never seen it, though my experience with such things is pretty much entirely limited to 2010s deaths  What's the latest date you have seen that?

 

look up autophagy, apoptosis and senescence. But Neurosis' picture basically covers our current knowledge

 

 
What is interesting is just say a "fly" has a limited capacity to physically exist. So is their maximum potential life expectancy already preditermined? If so by what and why?

 

Bodies just wear out over time and old age is the thing to call it.