Читать книгу General system theory of aging. Special role of the immune system - V. I. Dontsov - Страница 5

The most famous and common is, apparently, a statement from which often popular, and often scientific, lectures on aging often begin.

They say that the general theory of aging does not exist, there are several hundreds of theories of aging, but none of them is true, that you need to create a “correct” theory of aging, which will indicate the unknown cause of aging and abolish aging, leading not only to eternal youth but also to immortality.

In fact, everything here is not true exactly the opposite: the theory of aging exist, it is one, it includes all existing “theories” as special cases – the mechanisms of aging, it is impossible to abolish aging as a general phenomenon of life, but also of Being as a whole, but’ eternal youth ‘does not mean immortality.

The common cause of aging is known as part of ontogenesis, part of life itself, as a phenomenon of disruptions in the structure and function of the system accumulating with age, as movements from order to chaos (Comfort, 1967; Galimov, 2006; Giaimo, 2014; Gibbs, 1928; Gompertz, 1825; Gladyshev, 2012; Hayflick, 2007; Dontsov, 1990, 1998; Dontsov, Krutko, 2009, 2012, 2016; Krut’ko et al, 2018; Nicolis, 1989).

In general, it is a natural process in nature, since it proceeds with an increase in entropy; in a particular form, this is known as the second law of thermodynamics – the accumulation of chaos in a discrete system.

But the reason is a principle, not a mechanism; it cannot be canceled (like most fundamental reasons); one can only oppose another principle (self-renewal and development).

The desired “eternal youth” would not lead to immortality, since aging is an increase in the probability of death with age, and eternal youth is only the constant (and not zero) probability of death throughout life. Such a situation would only lead to a different principle of extinction of the “ever young” population with a relatively small increase in Average life expectancy (ALE), but with a very large of psycho-social problems.

Indeed, during aging, when the probability of death increases with age by an order of magnitude, the main extinction of the population is drastically shifted to older ages, whereas with “eternal youth” the probability of death is constant throughout life and the average life expectancy (50% survival rate) sharply shifted to the left, which is typical of all systems with a constant stochastic loss of elements, for example, for the radioactive decay of elements.

From demographic data on mortality in developed countries, it is known that life expectancy in them now reaches 80—85 years or more, that is, the population is guaranteed life expectancy, which is considered by the population as personally expected, “guaranteed” duration of their own lives, about 85—90% of “Maximum” (90—100 years).

On the other hand, the “forever young” ALE would not reach even 15% of the maximum possible life span, and the absolute values of the ALE are not important here since the fundamental mortality curve depends on the principle itself – the immutability of mortality with age ((Figure 1)).

Figure 1. The probability of mortality of the population for an aging (left) and ageless (right) population. Horizontal – time (years), vertical – the percentage of survivors persons. Average life expectancy is indicated by the vertical dotted line on the horizontal time axis. The probability of mortality of the population: ageless population, for 20-year-olds 0.001% per year.

Among other myths, it should be mentioned first of all the idea that there is a Maximum life expectancy (MLE) equal to 100-120-140-170 years, etc. (depending on the personal preferences of the authors), and it can be achieved, it is enough just to study the experience and “device” of long-livers.

However, the available fixed maximum life spans are the Record life span (RLS) the exception is that the “tails” of the curves of the normal distribution of signs are impossible for any large part of the population to achieve. Such “tails” are typical for any statistical distribution and can only be oriented on the life expectancy policy. In addition, the MLE, in general, cannot exist as a definite digit: the extinction of a population is a probabilistic law (a curve, not a digit) and there is always some probability of living longer than a given limit. You can only talk about what percentage of the remaining population (and accordingly what percentage of the extinct population) is considered as the basis of the “MLE”, which should rather be interpreted as SLE (the species limit of life).

At the same time, a sharp increase in mortality with age leads to the fact that the differences between the life span of the remaining 1%, 0.1%, 0.01% and so on, the populations differ not even by years, but by months, therefore the MLE it is quite adequate to consider the life span of the life span for the remaining 1% or even 5—10% of the population

The notion that mortality is determined only by a specific cause, and by removing specific causes we remove the mortality itself, indefinitely extending the life span – the typical “myth of doctors.” This gave rise in the middle of the last century to numerous movements for general improvement. A number of longitudinal studies, however, showed that mortality in such groups, usually focused on the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, as the main cause of death, decreases very slightly, although the mortality from cardiovascular diseases itself is quite pronounced – there is a redistribution of mortality: “Compensatory phenomenon of mortality”, with increased mortality from other causes. For a gerontologist biologist, however, it is quite obvious that mortality is the result primarily of a decrease in viability, and causes of mortality are secondary: mortality does not add up as the sum of causes, but decomposes according to them, while the specific causes of death and internal super-strong effects for the body.

The concepts of the relationship between aging and evolutionary processes are widespread (Flatt, Schmidt, 2009; Giaimo, 2014; Hughes, 2010; Kirkwood, Melov, 2011). The myth that aging is evolutionarily important: like the death of old for “opening the road to the young” is a typical myth of non-specialists in the field of evolutionary theory and ecology. It has long been known, however, that in real life with very high mortality to old age, almost no wild animal survives. On the other hand, in many cases, age experience (birds, mammals) or sizes that increase constantly with age (fish) reduce (!), and do not increase, actual mortality under natural conditions. In addition, evolution can only affect the reproductive period, and the older ages are simply “not visible” to it. Evolutionary influences are important in a certain form – evolutionary found mechanisms of maximum adaptation are not required for the period of aging, and if they are important for the maturity period but have “off” or mismatch mechanisms with age and other unfavorable moments, these features will appear in old age as regulatory mechanisms aging (typically – climax).

A whole group of myths is connected with the possibilities of absolute regeneration of all structures of the body or, on the contrary, with the programmed aging and death, which leads to ideas about biological “hours of death” (Kirkwood, Melov, 2011; Afanas’ev, 2010; Olovnikov, 2005; Rando, Chang, 2012; Walker, 2011). This is usually associated with cellular self-renewal: with the fact that cells, on the one hand, have a life limit within them (Hayflick phenomenon), on the other hand, many cells are immortal in culture, and on the third side, only stem cells are immortal and only update all body tissues. In fact, everything here is not true. It has long been shown that the Hayflick phenomenon is a purely cultural phenomenon and only for a limited cell type, with which the author himself had long agreed, preferring now stochastic ideas about the nature of aging (Hayflick, 2007). Cells in culture change over time, mutate and undergo selection, so over time, it is a different culture (this is well known to practitioners who initially work with one type of cells for a long time – the results obtained on cultures of the “same” cells with different groups of scientists are contradictory).

It is known that self-renewal of cells, such as the liver, is primarily due to the liver cells themselves, and not stem cells – this is clearly seen when regenerating it in an experiment, when almost all hepatic cells can enter during the first regenerative mitosis during the day; only when such regeneration is blocked, stem cells begin to be activated in significant quantities – the so-called “oval liver cells” (Strick-Marchand et al., 2008). Stem cells are not immortal – silent stem cells eventually die for purely probabilistic reasons and mechanisms; stem cells that emerged into division form populations that are also depleted over time, some are replaced by other populations. Whether dividing stem cells can go to rest and replenish the silent pool of stem cells, and not only differentiate into more specific, highly differentiated tissue cells, remains little understood. With aging, rather, the active effects of an old organism on the stem and other cells are revealed, which can be seen in systems of syngeneic transfer between young and old animals (Albright, Makinodan, 1976; Gorskaya, 2011).

The notion that there is an “aging program” is another widespread myth (Kirkwood, Melov, 2011; Olovnikov, 2005; Rando, Chang, 2012). It is enough, however, to indicate that they ignore (or rather, do not understand or even do not know) stochastic processes, which naturally direct any systems to decay, and which do not require any special “program” for this. It is easy to understand on the basis of a mechanical analogue: a mechanical machine is created according to the drawings – “according to the program”, but when it starts to be used, the program is completed and its aging goes not according to the program, but according to the stochastic mechanism, due to the law of increasing entropy.

Thus, it is quite clearly seen that the basis of all the myths about aging is the lack of knowledge of scientific methodology and the inability to apply theoretical methods on the one hand, while inflating particulars on the other. As a result of the extreme specialization of the sciences, there are almost no scientists with a broad view – there are narrow specialists who do not see the big picture. On the other hand, there is the issuance of their own desires for scientific truth, as well as abstract reasoning for experimentally verified facts.

In questions about the cause of aging, the main mistake is a lack of understanding of the epistemological (theory of knowledge) fundamentals: the reason is not a specific mechanism, but a principle, another level of problem analysis. For the reason they give out various particular mechanisms, which leads to the “theories” of aging that grow beyond any measure and which do not “see” each other and any other mechanisms of aging.

The lack of systematic thinking does not allow us to see the problem of aging in general, and the lack of consideration of the hierarchy of the structure of the system does not allow us to see a qualitative difference in the manifestations of aging for different levels of organization of living systems.

Modern scientific analysis of the aging process should be carried out at a high level of abstraction, describing aging as a general phenomenon of the world, pointing out the most common mechanisms of aging and discovering fundamental ways of influencing them; should allow a general mathematical idea, the conclusions of which should not contradict the well-established experimental data on aging, in particular, the probability distribution of age-related mortality, and also clearly indicate the main physicochemical and biological mechanisms of aging.

Only for a man the question of prolonging life and preserving the personality, and especially the question of aging as a phenomenon of life, has become urgent. This, in particular, means that a person currently does not obey the laws of biological evolution and opens up to him purely human tasks and prospects for further development, based on the peculiarities of a human being – his intellect and psyche.

The real victory over aging means not the frozen “eternal youth”, but its further development in the physical and spiritual sense, controlled by the person himself.

For the level of all mankind – the taking under control of the biological nature of man and its further controlled development on the basis of a fundamentally new, that only man has – his mind and psyche.