Aging is inevitable, but some of the maladies we face as we age may one day be mitigated, thanks to advancing knowledge about exactly what causes our bodies to decline with time.
The landmark 2013 Hallmarks of Aging study identified nine factors that contribute to health decline in advancing age: genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient-sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and altered intercellular communication.
The study was updated in 2022 to include five additional factors. One of these is inflammation.
Chronic, low-grade inflammation has been called “inflammaging” because it is a significant risk factor for disease and death in the elderly. In fact, human aging is characterized by chronic, low-grade inflammation, and most—if not all—age-related diseases arise from an inflammatory process, according to gerontologists….