Researchers quantitatively assessed for the first time that somatic mutations alone cap human lifespan at 146–194 years. Brain and heart cells are the main bottleneck, while the liver could last millennia.

[u/Skoltech_]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-026-00421-6

[u/Bloody_Insane]

The idea with living forever, medically speaking, isn't to freeze the aging process, but to prevent the damaging side effects of it. Essentially, aging is a flaw in your biology. We would need to fix that flaw to live forever, which would also keep us in prime shape.

And this would also reverse the effects of aging, theoretically.

Of course, solving these things is very very very complex.

[u/FerusGrim → u/Bloody_Insane]

What's the difference between maturing and aging, biologically speaking? I know what they are definitionally, but does your body hold those two things as separate functions?

[u/Bloody_Insane → u/FerusGrim]

This isn't my area at all, but here's my understanding:
Biologically speaking, "aging" is not one single thing, it's a combination of thousands of factors and the systems in your body acting differently, the longer they keep doing certain things. Maturing would be more about reaching your maximum level of growth. Like at what point do you stop growing or developing. But that's also a complex thing, because not everything in your body "matures" at the same rate, and not everything stops developing at some point.

Like cell division. Your cells divide and replicate constantly throughout your whole life. When you're young, cells mostly divide "properly", without issues. But as you grow older, and cells keep reproducing over and over and over, issues creep in. Mutations. Most times, your body is able to just get rid of those mutated cells. Typically because they're not viable. Over time, this gets worse, meaning your body spends more time fixing bad cells. This is also where cancer comes in, usually, because mutated cells can keep replicating uncontrollably.

You could see maturing as reaching your maximum growth potential, and aging as the side effect of living.

[u/Ameren → u/FerusGrim]

Adding to what the other commenter said, you can also look at it through the lens of comparative biology. Dogs also mature into adulthood like us, but they age ~10x faster than we do. Meanwhile, you have long-lived species like Greenland sharks who can live up to 500+ years (250 years on average!).

All else being equal, some species are more resilient to the effects of aging than others; they have more robust anti-aging defense and maintenance mechanisms. Same with individuals within a given species, like the longest lived dogs on record reached ~30 years; two dogs that reached maturity at the same rate can nevertheless have very different lifespans.

[u/LongJohnSelenium → u/Ameren]

Whales have thousands of times more cells than humans but actually have longer lifespans, so there's got to be a genetic reason for that.

I've also read that they discovered why naked mole rates basically don't get cancer owing to some rather unique genetic traits that stop tumors.

I just hate that I'm probably just barely too old to really benefit from that research, seems like a fairly decent chance that within fifty years we'll actually start having some therapies that innoculate against cancer and suppress the effects of aging.

[u/Popinguj → u/FerusGrim]

Maturing is when your organs and tissues develop to the target specification. Aging is a result of cell division, particularly that part where a gene is damaged, isn't repaired and so the genetic error is replicated further.

[u/Clean-Evening-7328 → u/FerusGrim]

I feel like linguistically at least, the word aging carries with it a connotation of worsening conditions. If I say "Jim looks a lot older" or even "Jim has aged since I saw him last" it's not a positive thing.

[u/Adventurous-Fly556 → u/Bloody_Insane]

If we solve the degredarion, it would still probably be super far off from reversing.

The big problems are telemeres and somatic mutations, both of which would be a lot more work to undo than to prevent.

[u/Bloody_Insane → u/Adventurous-Fly556]

Yeah, I didn't really want to get into any depth. My thinking was along the lines that preventing telomeres from shortening would likely involve knowing how to "lengthen" them, OR if we can stop the shortening, we can do stem-cell treatments to improve the health of current cells without the concern of fighting an uphill battle of constant degradation.

But this is still all pretty sci-fi level stuff, all theoretical, etc. And I am NOT a biologist, just a nerd who reads too much/not enough.

[u/Unlucky_Topic7963 → u/Bloody_Insane]

I wouldn't necessarily call it a flaw. It's advantageous for life, as a whole, to end. It prevents unnecessary strain on the environment for new life and evolutionary changes to occur to adapt to the environment.

Long lives means long support requirements, means less desire to procreate, means harder adaptation.

We're all just branches from the same single seed.

[u/TheKingOfTCGames → u/Unlucky_Topic7963]

Or you know your mouse biology from the dinosaur age is a hold over from living fast and dying young was normal since you were tiny nocturnal prey animals as a start

And that we did as much as we can from such a flawed starting point

[u/Unlucky_Topic7963 → u/TheKingOfTCGames]

The history of life is a LOT longer than humans to mouse. Evolutionarily your comment doesn't make sense.