Life Expectancy

I honestly was very surprised at the age the Life Expectancy calculator kicked out for me. It was much higher than what I thought it was going to be. As long as I'm a healthy individual to that age, I will be happy to live that long.

I am satisfied with the age the calculator gave me but I'm afraid there are many more factors that should be included in the calculation. I feel as though if I answered those questions even ten years from now my answers would have changed as things in my life change and my family members age as well. They took into account a lot of things each of us have control over which is very important but the one other factor we should look at to give us a more accurate calculation is doing some kind of gene analysis. Also, I think they should have added in a question about the luck factor; it's a random question but I think it may be a valid one.

Genetics of Aging

http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2002/09/091602t_oldflies.jhtml

My article reinforces what Dr. Bronikowski started talking to us about last week. Researchers found an altered gene that had effectively doubled the life span of flies. However, not only did it double their life span the flies stayed middle age and active for most of their life. A single mutation prevented individual fly cells from using too many calories which caused an increased life span and is what Dr. Bronikowski studied and talked about as well. Aging occurs on the cellular level and each cell has its own built in clock that says how many times it is able to divide. Researchers also know this 'clock' is predetermined for each cell. Aging can be linked to degradation of the telomeres in our DNA and as a cell is continually dividing the strands get shorter and shorter. Cancer cells are the only cells that have been able to overcome this internal cellular clock. I found this article very interesting as it is helping us understand more about aging and putting us one step closer to figuring out the why question of aging.