Education and the Biology of Aging

Edu­ca­tion, Aging…two seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed top­ics, but with more biol­o­gy in com­mon than may meet the eye…

You may enjoy the most recent edi­tions of two great blog carnivals:

- Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion, host­ed by Joanne Jacobs.

- Hour­glass: a car­ni­val of biogeron­tol­ogy, host­ed by Chris at Ouroboros. Chris recent­ly launched this blog car­ni­val to pro­vide a home for “blog­gers who are writ­ing about biogeron­tol­ogy, lifes­pan exten­sion tech­nolo­gies, and aging in general.”

Anne writes my favorite post at Exis­tence is Won­der­ful, link­ing education/ learning/ nur­ture with aging.

She first explains that

“Many peo­ple use the word “aging” as a short­hand not just for the mere process of get­ting old­er (which is not only inevitable for every­thing in exis­tence, but some­thing to cel­e­brate — “get­ting old­er”, after all, means “expe­ri­enc­ing more life”!), but for the phys­i­cal degen­er­a­tion that occurs as meta­bol­ic, immune, and mechan­i­cal side effects take hold as a per­son ages. Per­son­al­ly I find this dual use of the word “aging” ter­ri­bly confusing”.

And then adds

“We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what hard lim­its are on longevi­ty until we opti­mize care. I saw a dra­mat­ic turn­around in my fish when I learned how to prop­er­ly con­fig­ure the tank set­up, and I hope to see the day when human med­i­cine makes a sim­i­lar leap in effectiveness”