Aging is an inescapable part of life, and new research from the University of Arizona confirms it's mathematically impossible to halt in multicellular organisms like humans. Experts in ecology and evolutionary biology have crunched the numbers, revealing why our anti-aging quests are doomed.
“Aging is mathematically inevitable—really, seriously unavoidable. There is no way out logically, theoretically, mathematically,” said the professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Current evolutionary theory suggests aging might be stopped if natural selection could be perfected, such as by pitting cells against each other to weed out dysfunctional 'slow' aging cells. But the researchers demonstrate this approach falls short.
On a cellular level, aging brings two key issues: cells slow down and lose function (think graying hair from pigment loss), while others speed up uncontrollably, fostering cancer. We all develop some cancer cells with age, even if asymptomatic, the study notes.
The math shows that even perfect selection fails because cancer cells 'cheat' in competition. Interventions targeting one problem exacerbate the other: slow cells lead to frailty, unchecked growth to tumors. “You can slow aging, but you can't stop it,” the researchers conclude. “We have a mathematical demonstration of why it is impossible to solve both problems. You can solve one, but then you're stuck with the other. Things will get worse over time, either way or both: either all your cells will continue to slow down, or you'll get cancer. And the main reason is that things are going backwards. No matter how much you try to stop this, you can't.”
