Metabolism is exceedingly complex, and incompletely understood. This is true of individual cells, let alone organisms made up of very large numbers of those cells. Most of the work done on interventions intended to slow aging takes the form of attempts to alter metabolism into a more favorable state in which aging progresses at a modestly slower pace, usually via the use of small molecules. This approach is doomed to failure at this stage of technological progress. We do not know enough of metabolism, we cannot control enough of metabolism. Studies show that combining any two marginally aging-slowing small molecules is as likely as not to produce an interaction that results in a marginal acceleration of aging. Similarly, researchers here d…
Age-Specific Anti-Aging Interventions as Another Example of the Undesirable Complexity of Altering Metabolism
Metabolism is exceedingly complex, and incompletely understood. This is true of individual cells, let alone organisms made up of very large numbers of those cells. Most of the work done on interventions intended to slow aging takes the form of attempts to alter metabolism into a more favorable state in which aging progresses at a modestly slower pace, usually via the use of small molecules. This approach is doomed to failure at this stage of technological progress. We do not know enough of metabolism, we cannot control enough of metabolism. Studies show that combining any two marginally aging-slowing small molecules is as likely as not to produce an interaction that results in a marginal acceleration of aging. Similarly, researchers here d…