Aging and Inflammation
Aging is a complex, progressive, biological alteration of the organism which ultimately leads to death. During his or her whole life, a human being is confronted with oxidative stress. To measure how this oxidative stress affects the aging process and how it changes cellular metabolism, several substances have been asserted to be biomarkers.
Although aging is the most well-recognized risk factor for many chronic diseases, interactions between the aging process and age-related disease have not been seriously addressed or systematically explored. One of the most noticeable aspects of the molecular inflammation hypothesis of aging is that many age-related chronic diseases undergo a pathway common to the inflammatory process, which is a contributory factor in, or in part of, disease progression. For example, a number of diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, dementia, arthritis, and osteoporosis are recognized as inflammatory disorders, according to recent medical investigations.
Is inflammation a strong determinant of aging?
The premise of the age-related inflammatory hypothesis is based on two established findings: 1) a breakdown of the immune system with age, and 2) altered chemical reactions during aging. Both processes lead to increases in a systemic inflammatory status due to the activation of a wide variety of inflammatory intermediaries through mainly oxidative stress-induced chemical imbalance.
When metal rusts or a cut open apple turns brown, its chemical status is altered. These are simplified examples of the reduction-oxidation process, within the body, it is referred to as inflammation. This process can, furthermore, be designated as, inflammaging, since it is the process of inflammation and aging together.
The continuous production of free radicals leads to the weakening of the anti-oxidative defences. This weakening that occurs with aging then allows an overproduction of unregulated free radicals, which causes an altered status in the immune system contributing to the inflammatory process.
This unresolved chronic inflammation during aging becomes a distorted substitute system, which pushes many of the normal functional changes to become many of the age-related degenerative diseases. Basically, the inflammation that causes aging is being caused by free radical stress.
Implications of inflammation in aging and age-related diseases
Accumulating evidence indicates that unresolved, low-grade chronic systemic inflammation plays a significant role in regulating the aging process and age-related diseases, such as metabolic syndrome, loss of muscle mass, dementia, atherosclerosis, cancer, and osteoporosis. The close involvement of inflammation in these diseases has led them to be named “inflammatory diseases”. Although the precise molecular inflammatory involvement of each disease may vary, the basic mechanisms of the inflammatory substances and other pro-inflammatory mediators are similar.
Concluding Remarks
Putting together all available data, chronic molecular inflammation is a major biological mechanism sustaining the aging process and age-related diseases. Obesity is a major risk factor for health-related outcomes and is strongly and positively associated with inflammatory markers. The inflammatory markers are inversely associated with lean mass, independent of fat mass, which is consistent with an effect of inflammation on muscle mass. These findings suggest the role of obesity-associated inflammation in the age-related process that leads to muscle loss. The key mediators, of inflammatory reactions, have been shown to increase during the aging process. These signalling pathways appear to be modulated by both calorie restriction and exercise.
My recommendations are to eat right for your genes, get lots of physical exercise and take supplements, but targeted supplements that have been found to be low in your body, while the oxidative and inflammatory biomarkers are monitored clinically.
Click here to take my free Oxidative Stress Quiz to see if oxidative stress is causing you to age quicker!