Child or old man? Progeria is a mysterious genetic defect. Premature aging: symptoms and ways to combat it

Years pass and sooner or later a person looks in the mirror and notices that his face has changed. Getting up in the morning is no longer so pleasant and at every opportunity you want to lie down and lie down. The thought of your body aging brings little joy. Why does this always happen earlier than expected and what can you do to stop the withering process of your life?

What does premature aging mean?

How does premature aging occur? human body and how to deal with it.

Human chromosomes have sections at their ends called telomeres. They have a certain length and each time the cell divides, this length is shortened. When a cell goes through all its division cycles, it completely loses the telomere. Throughout life, a person loses telomeres and cells remain in his body, deprived of the ability to divide. This manifests itself as signs of aging.

The body ages unevenly. Some systems age faster than others. The skin ages faster than everyone else. The reason for this is frequent update cycles. The skin is renewed every month. Therefore, skin cells lose their telomeres the fastest. Women's breasts also age faster than the rest of the body. She is 2-3 years older. This is due to the dependence of its tissues on hormonal levels. The cardiovascular system is the youngest. It lags behind the rest of the body in aging by 10 years. The reason for this is not known.

The aging process depends on genetic predisposition. If all relatives in a person’s family were long-lived and remained young for a long time, it means that a genetic program of slow aging is observed in the family.

The genetic factor and the role of telomeres are not the only causes of aging. When a person shows the first signs of aging at the age of 20, it means that he has begun premature aging of the body, caused by various external and internal factors. This happens from excessive wear and tear on the body due to illness, lifestyle, and mental background.

Signs of premature aging

1. excessive fatigue;
2. early wrinkles;
3. changing the oval of the face;
4. hair loss;
5. muscle atrophy.

What influences the process?

By understanding more fully what influences premature aging, steps can be taken to either stop it or slow it down.

Influence environment for longevity of the body

The environmental conditions in which a person lives play an important role. The air he breathes. The water he uses to wash himself and drink. Origin of food, such as the geographical origin of meat, vegetables and fruits. For example, people who live in areas near mountains or the sea age more slowly. They breathe fresh air, drink clean water, eat foods grown in the same favorable conditions.

Direct Sun rays have an effect on skin aging, which is also called photo-aging. You may notice that people who fanatically sunbathe in the sun already have dry, wrinkled skin very early on.

Smoking, alcohol, toxic substances significantly wears out the body. They force the body to intensively rid itself of poisons, leading to accelerated consumption of the body’s health resources. Alcohol, even in minimal doses (1 glass of wine), disrupts the functioning of the body, stressing the liver, blood vessels and kidneys. Regular use cognac and wine, supposedly for relaxation, regularly cause harm to the body, accelerating the aging process.

Avitaminosis, a lack of vitamins and minerals in the body inevitably depletes the body, causing it to starve, preventing it from regenerating normally.

Pace of life and stress plays a role in aging, exhausting the body. The intense pace of life puts the body in a state of constant stress, disrupting homeostasis. The body wears out faster due date. Emotional instability also works.

Prolonged sitting slows down blood flow and lymph circulation, changes DNA, starting the wear process. Consequently, early illnesses varicose veins, tension headaches, swelling, muscle atrophy.

Physiological action of estrogens

Lack of estrogen in women leads to early aging, but its excess is also undesirable.

Skin lightening with help cosmetics, leads to photoaging of the skin, triggering repeated oxidative processes.

Excess of the androgen hormone in men it causes aging of male skin, making it excessively oily and acne-prone. Early baldness is also associated with this hormone.

The use of gadgets has Negative influence on leather quality. The reason lies in facial expressions: squinting, which leads to wrinkles and eye fatigue. According to some theories, smartphones provoke the development of cancer, but this has not yet been proven.

Accelerated aging disease

There is a rare genetic disorder called progeria or Werner syndrome. This is a rare disease, with only 80 cases reported worldwide, but it is worth mentioning.

This disease is associated with a gene defect. In children this is the LMN gene, and in adults it is WRN. Their mutation causes the onset of irreversible and accelerated process aging. Occurs in children born from related parents. In adults, metabolic disorders are considered a factor in the development of the disease. connective tissue.

Clinical manifestations are characterized by rapid aging skin, muscle tissue, bones, development of early atherosclerosis (30-40 years), diabetes mellitus.
The disease has no cure and there is no cure for it. You can only diagnose it and develop measures to maintain the condition, when it is still possible to slow down the onset of old age.

It is possible to slow down aging

Since progeria is extremely rare, and there is no cure for it, there is no point in focusing too much on this issue. But regarding premature aging, the picture is different. There are options for correcting this process, slowing down its pace.

Dream. A healthy eight-hour sleep leads to cell renewal, rest of the body and mind. During sleep, the nervous system is restored, the immune system is strengthened, the skin and all internal organs are regenerated. Night sleep should begin at 11 pm. An hour's sleep during the day can renew the body's condition.

Sport. When playing sports, the heart is trained and blood vessels are strengthened. According to statistics, the state of the cardiovascular system in sports-active people is much younger than in those who neglect physical activity.

Active training stops early aging of muscle tissue, improves posture and the quality of joints.

Active mind. If you think about how the human mind affects aging, then you can slow down the aging process of the body with the help of the mind. The mental attitude directly, literally, starts or slows down all the processes of the body. If you tune in to life and active longevity, the longevity program will begin. If you tune in to illness, illness will appear. The human brain is the main commander of the entire human body. By forcing the brain to work correctly, a person is able to prolong his youth. For this, there are special trainings for auto-training, active consciousness, and psychotropic breathing.

Advice: Reading books on transpersonal psychology can greatly help you understand this issue.

Active mental work. The brain is incredibly lazy and, if you don’t train it, you can grow old before your time. An untrained brain makes even a healthy athlete look like a plant with whom it is impossible to have interesting conversations. You need to read books, practice memorization techniques. Include all memory methods - kinetic, auditory and visual memory. You can learn more about brain aging in a separate article on this topic.

Important: fine motor skills actively trains the brain. Therefore, you cannot deny yourself mechanical work.

Active and healthy sex life promotes: good mood, accelerate metabolism, restore the nervous system, tone the body, train the heart and muscles.

Important! Uncontrolled sex and frequent changes of partners lead to the exact opposite effect.

Nutrition. Including foods in your diet that are based on improving and helping the body absorb it.

Aging of the human body is a complex biological process that reflects only one side of the development of the body.

Experts distinguish two types of aging: natural or physiological and premature, which is under the influence of living conditions and various diseases is developing at an accelerated pace.

No matter how sad it may be, the second type, that is, premature aging, is the most common form of human decrepitude in our society.

With this type, age-related changes occur much earlier than with physiological age, and biological age prevails over calendar age.

Causes of premature aging

Signs of premature aging often appear by the age of 40, reducing a person’s quality of life. Among the causes of premature aging are external and internal factors.

Adverse external factors

These include frequent stress, bad habits, disruption of the natural biorhythm, and poor nutrition leading to premature wear of organs and tissues. They often cause diseases that accelerate the biological aging of the body.

People who experience these unfavorable factors are more likely to suffer from arthritis, cataracts, atherosclerosis, dementia, and diseases gastrointestinal tract and oncological diseases.

Diseases

There are a number of diseases that rapidly cause signs of premature aging of the body. If a person is sick with cerebral vascular sclerosis, peptic ulcer, tuberculosis, diabetes mellitus, immune deficiency, signs of senile decrepitude immediately appear in the body - posture, hair, and skin change.

Emotional and mental stress

Stressful situations are harmful to health and cause premature aging. Excessive stress or when it is constant is most dangerous.

The presence of depressing thoughts, the inability to emotionally discharge, talk through a disturbing situation or simply switch, fixation on problems - have an adverse effect on the mental and physical health person.

They call:

• muscle tension in the neck and shoulders,
• headache,
• insomnia,
• indigestion,
• anxiety,
• mood swings,
• negative thoughts
• and feeling tired.

A syndrome chronic fatigue Experts consider it a model of accelerated aging of the body.

Constant lack of sleep

Disturbed sleep patterns or insufficient sleep are detrimental to overall health. Each person has their own need for rest; in order to have a good rest and restore your strength, 7-8 hours of sleep is enough.

If a person does not get enough sleep constantly and for a long time, it may occur. chronic lack of sleep, which leads to disruption of the physiological functions of the body:

• irritability appears, sense of humor is lost,
• change physiological properties brain, which leads to memory loss and inability to concentrate,
• Every day a person experiences headaches and dizziness,
• response response decreases.

And all these signs together create difficulties in solving problems.

Sometimes a person deliberately deprives himself of sleep, explaining that he does not have enough time for creativity or business, mistakenly believing that it is a pity to waste his time on sleep.

Thus, he provokes breakdowns in his health, for the restoration of which he will spend even more time.

It is also important that it is impossible to get enough sleep in advance, the body is not adapted to this, and in the end you can get tired, lethargic, and have a headache.

Likewise, excessive sleep does not bring rest, but fatigue and loss of strength and energy. Healthy body.

Unbalanced diet

Our cells, tissues and organs need energy, which the body receives with food. Balanced diet promotes normal cell renewal and rejuvenation.

IN healthy body Over the course of a year, liver cells are completely renewed, and young skin cells replace old ones 12 times during this period. In order for cells to rejuvenate, they need a balanced diet.

Often, in human food, the caloric content of food intake exceeds energy expenditure. Unspent energy is stored in the body in the form of fat, and obesity causes a number of health problems and causes aging of the human body.

It must be remembered that the body needs amino acids, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, lecithin, Omega-3, everything that is found in natural foods, vegetables, fruits and herbs. By eating right, a person feels full of strength and energy.

Bad habits

Smoking, drinking alcohol and drugs are the main bad habits that take away health and life. Thus, smoking causes a powerful blow to the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

Smoking often causes increased blood pressure and cholesterol in the blood, which leads to heart disease and stroke.

Excessive alcohol consumption destroys blood cells, which can provoke the occurrence of many diseases, such as pancreatitis, diabetes, gastritis, and can cause atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.

Alcohol destroys the liver, disrupts metabolism, and the function of regulating blood sugar. Beer alcoholism, which also destroys not only the organs and systems of the body, but also the human psyche, is no less serious concern.

And drugs lead to complete damage to the body. Drugs are a path to the degradation of society; statistics show that Russia is already in third place in the world for drug use after Afghanistan and Iran.

More than 2.5 million people in our country have drug addiction, destroying your health. Drugs affect the heart, blood vessels, brain, digestion, breathing, the human psyche is disrupted, reproductive ability and immunity are lost. But the most important thing is that drugs significantly shorten a person’s life!

Unfavorable internal factors

TO internal reasons premature aging of the body can be attributed to the impact free radicals, autointoxication, autoimmune processes, dysfunction of the brain.

Autointoxication

In progress normal life a person, his body produces toxic substances that are eliminated by the body itself. But if the excretory system does not cope with its functions, toxic products are again absorbed into the blood, and gradual poisoning of the body with poisons or autointoxication occurs.

This occurs in diseases such as uremia, anuria, constipation and intestinal obstruction, with metabolic disorders associated with diabetes mellitus, thyrotoxic goiter and even with toxicosis of pregnancy. In this case, the person feels unwell, tired, headache and dizziness, nausea or vomiting.

Autointoxication is eliminated by activating the body's excretory function, eliminating the causes that caused it, using medications(diuretics and diaphoretics), blood transfusion…. For renal failure, more radical methods are used.

Exposure to free radicals

Free radicals are the main cause of premature aging of the body, causing atherosclerosis, cancer, heart attack and stroke, skin diseases, immune and nervous systems.

The human body has a system for fighting radicals, but antioxidant enzymes do not always cope with them.

The body needs additional protection against free radicals in the form of antioxidants, which act as traps on them. Such traps are plant bioflavonoids, which prevent premature aging in humans.

It is believed that bioflavonoids and phytohormones are contained in plants that have a dark pigment color, such as: blueberries, blackberries, blueberries, beets, purple cabbage, dark grapes, prunes, beans, beets, black radish...

How to avoid premature aging

To avoid premature aging, it is necessary to increase the body's defenses, optimize the activity of organs and systems, compensating for weakened functions and preventing the occurrence of new disorders in the body.

First of all, strive to eliminate the causes leading to premature aging, which were mentioned above.

Review your diet and try to include as much as possible in it. natural products nutrition. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to obtain from food all the necessary components for health and vital functions, so you can adjust your diet with the help of dietary supplements.

The medical industry and network companies produce dietary supplements based on seafood products, medicinal plants with the addition of bioactive ingredients - peptide molecules of regulatory action that increase the bioenergetics of the body.

The balance of sex hormones is necessary and the most important factor in maintaining the processes of renewal and rejuvenation in the human body, especially in adulthood. The lack of estrogen, which is involved in the synthesis of collagen, invariably affects the appearance of wrinkles, loss of skin elasticity and aging, and hair loss.

A similar condition of skin aging is sometimes observed in young women chasing trendy diets. After all, in youth, estrogens are produced not only by the ovaries, but also by adipose tissue.

Impossible without water physiological processes. All internal processes in the body occur with the participation of water, in aqueous environments.

All cells are surrounded by nutrient gel. containing structurally bound water. And the more water in this gel, the higher the turgor of tissues and cells.

The loss of water by the body is immediately visible on the skin, which loses its turgor and becomes flabby and saggy. The same processes occur with internal organs, which often causes their dysfunction.

Therefore, no one doubts that water is the main indicator of aging of the body. But not all water is equally absorbed by the body. Water with certain physical and chemical parameters is considered beneficial for the body. They take into account:

• redox potential,
• surface tension,
• mineralization,
• pH and other parameters.

Structured or melt water is most suitable for these parameters.

Lifestyle, nutrition, fresh air, physical labor and physical exercise, exercise for the brain, constant training, all these are important components of longevity, therefore, the ability to avoid premature aging depends on each of us.

Progeria(Greek progērōs prematurely aged) - pathological condition, characterized by a complex of skin changes, internal organs caused by premature aging of the body. The main forms are childhood progeria (Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome) and adult progeria (Werner syndrome).

Childhood progeria is very rare. The etiology and pathogenesis are unknown. In most cases, it occurs sporadically, in several families it is registered in siblings, incl. from consanguineous marriages, which indicates the possibility of an autosomal recessive type of inheritance.

In the skin cells of patients, disorders of DNA repair and fibroblast cloning were found, as well as atrophic changes in the epidermis and dermis, disappearance subcutaneous tissue. Although childhood P. may be congenital, in most patients clinical signs usually appear in the 2-3rd year of life.

The child's growth slows down sharply, atrophic changes in the dermis and subcutaneous tissue are noted, especially on the face and limbs. The skin becomes thinner, becomes dry, wrinkled, and there may be scleroderma-like lesions and areas of hyperpigmentation on the body. Veins are visible through thin skin. The patient's appearance: large head, frontal tubercles protrude above a small, pointed (“bird-like”) face with a beak-shaped nose, the lower jaw is underdeveloped.

Muscle atrophy and degenerative processes in teeth, hair and nails are also observed; changes in the osteoarticular apparatus, myocardium, hypoplasia of the genital organs, disturbance fat metabolism, lens opacification, atherosclerosis.

Lena ages five years in a year

Yesterday, at a Moscow clinic, doctors performed the first operation on a patient suffering from premature aging syndrome.

At first, my earlobes began to sag strangely. Then I noticed amazingly deep wrinkles between my eyebrows,” says the 23-year-old girl.

When you first look at Lena Melnikova, you even begin to doubt. Well, how is this a cunning, bored 40-50 year old lady who desires wide fame and plastic surgery? the best surgeons?! Unfortunately, this has already happened.

This is what she looks like now at 23 years old

I can’t even dare to ask Lena about her personal life... Although the girl smiles courageously:

Everything is fine.

Lena has practically no chance. Diagnosis: “premature aging syndrome” (“progeria”). Medical luminaries around the world say that from the moment of illness, people live on average only 13 years. And no one knows how to restore youth or at least calm down old age...

Lena began to experience terrible symptoms five years ago. First, the face aged, and then the skin of the whole body. Elena was then a first-year student at the Mari Polytechnic Institute.

You know, how offensive it was... Guys come up to meet my friend and treat me with emphatic politeness, mistaking me for my mother. They almost asked permission to meet with their “daughter.”

After graduating from the Mari Polytechnic University, the girl decided to have plastic surgery. But a banal circular facelift did not help. She only left scars on her neck and temples. The mysterious process of aging of the body continued. Local doctors were able to advise Elena only one thing - take vitamins and be constantly monitored.

The girl - by the way, a certified engineer-architect - did not despair and went to Moscow. Melnikova became interested in the expensive metropolitan plastic surgery clinic “Beauty Plaza”. Its specialists decided to help the provincial woman in trouble. And completely free.

We decided to try it. If it is generally accepted that nothing can be done, then you need to at least try,” said the clinic’s leading surgeon, Dr. medical sciences Professor Alexander TEPLYASHIN. - Although it is not safe to operate on Elena, because the disease could also affect the condition of the internal organs.

She's so young! She needs to live normally, communicate with young people. First, we’ll make a face, and then we’ll start fighting the disease at the genetic level,” Professor Teplyashin is determined.

“I really trust the professor,” Elena Melnikova persistently convinces us. It looks like she is also convincing herself.

Yesterday morning Elena arrived at the clinic. They began to prepare her for surgery. They allocated a separate room where she waited. While Professor Teplyashin is also preparing for his very difficult work. A quarter of an hour before the operation, Elena is calm.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she repeats and repeats. And in the end he still sobs. Some time ago, the girl was seriously thinking about committing suicide.

The time appointed for the operation arrived. Lena gets up and, looking straight ahead, strides into the bowels of the clinic with an emphatically firm gait. Suddenly she pauses for a minute and speaks clearly more to herself than to those around her: “I was very afraid of the first operation, but now I’m already having a second one. And I have no choice. My last hope". - And resolutely steps towards the anesthesiologist.

The clinic's doctors allowed the photographer into the holy of holies - the aesthetic surgery operating room. The first stage of the operation is the chest. The doctor makes an incision in the skin on the chest and prepares a special bioimplant. The composition is one of the secrets of the clinic. The main thing is no foreign silicone. Like dough, Professor Teplyashin vigorously kneads the implant so that the pliable material almost seeps between his fingers. And finally places it in the body. The second and main stage is the face. And the first difficulty here is to eliminate the scars and imperfections of the previous plastic surgery. The spectacle is not for the faint of heart. But everything seems to be going well...

After Lena Melnikova passes special course rehabilitation in the clinic, geneticists and cell biologists will develop an individual biotechnological treatment program especially for her, which should end with an injection of stem cells. These cells are supposed to expel old age from a young body...

Once upon a time, the beautiful and smart 18-year-old student Melnikova had many fans. But when the disease began to develop, there was only one left who truly loves. The girl does not say his name, but she is sure that he is very worried and is waiting for her in Yoshkar-Ola. In the meantime, in Moscow, unemployed engineer-architect Melnikova lives with her brother.

People first started talking about premature aging syndrome 100 years ago. And not surprisingly, such cases occur once in 4-8 million babies. Progeria (from the Greek pro - earlier, gerontos - old man) is an extremely rare genetic disease that accelerates the aging process by about 8-10 times.

Simply put, a child ages 10-15 years in one year. An eight-year-old looks 80 years old - with dry, wrinkled skin, a bald head... These children usually die at the age of 13-14 after several heart attacks and strokes against the background of progressive atherosclerosis, cataracts, glaucoma, complete loss of teeth, etc. And only a few live to 20 years or longer.

Now there are only 42 known cases of progeria in people in the world... Of these, 14 people live in the United States, 5 in Russia, the rest in Europe...

Features of such patients include dwarf stature, low weight (usually not exceeding 15-20 kg), excessively thin skin, poor joint mobility, underdeveloped chin, small face compared to the size of the head, which gives the person bird-like features. Due to the loss of subcutaneous fat, all blood vessels are visible. The voice is usually high. Mental development corresponds to age. And all these sick children are strikingly similar to each other.

12-year-old Seth Cook looks like an 80-year-old man. He has no hair, but he has the full range of diseases that older people suffer from. Therefore, every day the boy takes aspirin and other blood thinning medications. At 3 feet tall (just over a meter), Seth weighs 25 pounds (11.3 kg).

Ouri Barnett was born on April 16, 1996. Already at the age of five, poor Ouri developed coronary heart disease. The attacks followed one after another. The baby often ended up in the hospital, but he had to be treated with the means that are usually prescribed to older people.

Ouri looked like a man who had suffered a stroke: his legs were weakening, and he began to stumble like a decrepit old man. His eyes were fading upper lip did not move, drooled, speech became unintelligible.

Ouri's mother did a lot to convey to people her experience and her observations of the unfortunate child. From the age of three, the child was taken to filming television programs and scientific conferences. The only condition that the mother set for sensation-hungry journalists was that they should not write that the baby was dying of progeria.

Most famous case progeria, described in the Russian press - the story of Alvydas Gudelyauskas, who suddenly began to grow old when he was already a 20-year-old guy. In just a matter of months, Alvidas turned into a 60-year-old man before our eyes. It was only after plastic surgery that he began to look like a mature man. In the photo on the left - this is what he looked like before the operation, on the right - after. Now Alvidas is only 32 years old.

Until recently, doctors were unable to determine the cause of the disease. And only recently, American researchers discovered that the cause of “childhood old age” or Hutchinson-Gilford progeria is only a single mutation.

According to the director of the National Genome Research Institute, Francis Collins, who led the study, the disease is not hereditary. A point mutation - when only one nucleotide is changed in a DNA molecule - occurs anew in each patient. People suffering from progeria die mainly from those diseases that are characteristic of old age. It has now been discovered that progeria is caused by a mutated form of the LMNA gene.

Seven year old man and his family

Children of the Khans. Rehena, Ali Hussein and Ikramul suffer from rare disease. He's only seven years old, but he's already going bald. This is the most noticeable of the many symptoms of the disease that Ali Hussain Khan suffers from. He is still a boy, but he is already in middle age. This progeria is extremely rare disease, due to which Ali’s body ages prematurely.

Neither he nor his sister and brother - 19-year-old Rehena and 17-year-old Ikramul - have virtually no chance of living to 25.

This disease accelerates the development of children many times over. However, it also causes other problems: for example, a second row of teeth appears in their mouth, and the skin becomes very pale, almost transparent.

Such children become ill with the same diseases that ordinary people suffer in old age. Last year, their sister Ravena, who also suffered from progreria, died of pneumonia. She was 16.

As soon as Ali Hussein begins to speak, it becomes clear that he is captured by childish enthusiasm and absorbed by hopes that are not characteristic of an adult.

“I would like to be an actor, drive cars and planes, be an action hero,” he says. “And then I would like to become a doctor, because doctors test me all the time, and I would like to test myself, and that’s why I wanted I would like to become a doctor someday."

Khany is unique in this sense: this is the only case known to science when more than one family member suffers from progreria. And thanks to this family, scientists were able to make a real breakthrough in understanding the nature of the disease.

Scientists led by pediatrician Chandan Chattopadhyay observed Khanami for two years and came to the conclusion that the disease is hereditary and recessive. This means that both parents can have her gene. In this case, Hana's husband and wife are each other's cousins. Neither of them has progreria, nor do their two other children - 14-year-old Sangeeta and two-year-old Gulavsa.

IN last years The family is being looked after by a Kolkata-based charity. The head of the family, Bisul Khan, says life has treated him and his wife Rajia cruelly. Both of them are natives of one of the villages in the Indian state of Bihar. Local residents called their children aliens, and as a result they had to grow up in complete isolation.

“When we lived there in Bihar, every evening we sat in the room, unable to sleep, because one of the children was suffering from something, then the other,” Khan recalls. “And we thought - me and my wife, we sat down side by side and thought: how can we continue to live? We even thought about ending it all in one fell swoop..."

“But now the children live,” says the father. “They are energetic, they are happy, they live normal life"as far as possible, of course."

For the past two years, Khanami has been looked after by Sekhar Chattopadhyay, the head of the ABC Devi charity house in Kolkata. They now live in this city, although their exact address is kept secret.

The charity organization helped my father find a job as a security guard, but his salary is small, so they also help financially. But no less important than the money are the normal human contacts that the children acquired with the help of the charity.

“We support them and we have become friends,” says Chattopadhyay and bounces Ali Hussain on his knee. “Slowly I became friends with this family, and you just can’t imagine how much they love me.”

Thanks to his support, the Khans say, they now live much more life to the fullest than before. They smile when they talk about their interests and hobbies.

Rehena says she loves Indian films, especially passionate love songs. When I ask if she sings herself, she says that she is shy, but it is still clear that she wants to demonstrate her abilities, and, having received approval, agrees to try.

"I love loving you, and when I don't see you, I can't wait until we meet again," she sings in Hindi.

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What is premature aging and how to avoid it

Added: 2011-04-16

What is premature aging and how to avoid it

Modern scientists distinguish two types of aging - physiological (implies the natural onset and gradual development of characteristic senile changes) and pathological, that is, premature aging of the body.

Premature aging is understood as any partial or general acceleration of the rate of aging, leading to the fact that a person is “ahead” of the average level of aging of his own. age group. At the same time, age-related changes occur earlier than in healthy people appropriate age. In other words, with premature aging, a person’s biological age is ahead of his calendar (passport) age.

Premature aging reduces a person’s quality of life, leads to the development of “diseases of old age” at a young age, and also shortens life expectancy.

The causes of premature aging include a number of unfavorable factors, such as stress, smoking, insolation, disruptions of natural biorhythms, as well as nutritional disorders, which naturally lead to premature wear and tear of the morphological structures of tissues.

Related to this external changes are similar to the manifestations of true aging, although they are not accompanied by the irreversible disorders characteristic of it. Nevertheless, the described factors are the cause of the so-called. age-related diseases, accelerating biological aging - atherosclerosis, cataracts, arthritis, senile dementia, gastrointestinal dysfunction, as well as oncological pathologies.

With premature aging of the body functional state the cardiovascular system deteriorates to a greater extent than during physiological (“normal”) aging. Progressive sclerosis of the cerebral vessels in its symptoms is in many ways reminiscent of senile decrepitude in such signs as changes in posture, skin, hair, etc. The manifestations of cerebral sclerosis and aging are intertwined so closely that the former is sometimes even considered possible reason premature aging of the body.

Signs of premature aging of the body have also been noticed in some other chronic diseases, such as tuberculosis, peptic ulcer, adult diabetes, mental trauma and more. They also appear in immune deficiency. Mental and emotional stress, malnutrition, and ionizing radiation play a special role.

Some gerontologists also consider the so-called chronic fatigue syndrome, a widespread condition among the working population, to be a model of accelerated aging. Treatment of this syndrome is usually complex: normalization of work and rest regime, diet, vitamin therapy, water procedures, physiotherapy, immunocorrection and more.

TO internal factors premature aging of the body includes: autointoxication, exposure to free radicals, autoimmune processes, as well as disorders of the regulatory function of the brain. Autointoxication occurs as a result of a sedentary lifestyle, poor nutrition, and also because of the constant stress that modern people are so often exposed to.

Women are believed to age earlier. This is reflected in the preferences that are usually given to those marriages where the groom is older than the bride, but not vice versa. However, here two phenomena that do not quite coincide with each other are mixed up. According to biological processes, according to gerontologists, women age more slowly and live 6-8 years longer. For example, similar changes in the tissues of old women and men occur in the latter by 8 years earlier, that is, the biological aging of women occurs later. Women's great vitality remains throughout their lives, but outwardly women usually look older than their male peers.

Regular intake of biologically active supplements (general tonics made from natural plant extracts, have a multifaceted beneficial effect on the body, based on natural medicinal properties plants from which they consist) and cytamines (peptide molecules of regulatory action that can specifically correct functional disorders and prevent the development of pathological processes in the body), normalization of the body’s bioenergetics.

In order to adequately increase the body’s defenses and optimize the physiological activity of organs and systems, it is necessary biologically effective nutritional factors, capable of compensating for weakened functions and preventing the occurrence of disorders that lead to premature aging.

Get all the necessary food components with your “regular” diet to modern man difficult. As foods are processed differently, their nutrient content has decreased. Therefore, the population of megacities is faced with a dilemma - either try to get all the nutrients from food and have excess weight, or get the required 2000 kcal/day. by adjusting the diet with dietary supplements.

To sources that are many times greater than food products in terms of the content of nutrients and necessary minor components, they include dietary supplements based on medicinal plants, seafood, products of biotechnological synthesis and other bioactive ingredients, which must necessarily enrich the diet of an older person.

A number of nutritional factors are very important for maintaining the structural integrity of connective tissue, which is the framework of all organs and tissues of the body. Not only the appearance of the skin, but also our health in general depends on how it functions and is provided with nutrients.

After all external signs aging (such as the appearance of wrinkles, loss of skin elasticity, hair loss) are a mirror image of the health of the internal organs, which is also largely determined by the condition of the connective tissue and its ability to retain water.

The most important factor supporting renewal processes in the body is the balance of sex hormones.

It is known that estrogens are involved in collagen metabolism and increase the level of hyaluronic acid in the intercellular (including transdermal) fluid. With age, physiological decline of the functions of the gonads occurs, leading to changes in hormonal levels, which immediately affects the condition of the connective tissue. The external manifestation of such changes is hypoestrogenic skin aging in pre- and postmenopausal women.

However, given the fact that she herself adipose tissue also produces estrogens, similar condition can also occur in young women - as a result of strict and long-term diets, leading to a sharp decrease in subcutaneous fat deposits.

As ovarian function declines, women experience a physiological increase in subcutaneous fat, which makes it increasingly difficult to maintain generally accepted weight standards as they age.

For example, phytoestrogens - components of plants and some mushrooms that exhibit estrogenic properties. Phytoestrogens are initially 100-1000 times less active than endogenous hormones, but the concentration of the former in the body can be 5000 times higher than the latter. This explains the pronounced hormone-like effects of phytoestrogens.

The maximum amount of phytoestrogens is contained in such medicinal plants, such as black cohosh, red clover, licorice, cultivated soybean, alfalfa, burdock, etc.

Phytohormones increase skin moisture, as a result of which they help smooth out fine wrinkles, slow down the growth of hair on the face and body, stimulating their growth on the head, and have anti-inflammatory and oncoprotective properties.

Water is the second most important substance for the human body after oxygen, because... All physiological processes in the body occur in aqueous environments and with the participation of water. Interstitial fluid, due to the presence of glycosaminoglycans (glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid) in it, is a gel that surrounds and nourishes the cells.

The tissue gel may contain greater or lesser amounts of structurally bound water. Accordingly, the more this gel is saturated with water, the higher the tissue turgor and vice versa. Therefore the main external manifestation water loss during aging - flabby skin that has lost turgor. But the same processes also occur in the tissues of the internal environments of the body, which leads to dysfunction of organs and their systems. And today there is no longer any doubt that water is the main indicator of aging.

The problem, however, is that water is a product that is poorly absorbed by the body.

In order for water to enter the tissue, certain physical and chemical parameters are important (surface tension, redox potential, pH, mineralization, etc.). If the parameters drinking water Their characteristics are close to those of body fluids; water is biologically active and accessible to cells.

The diet for the prevention of premature aging and diseases characteristic of old age must include a complex minerals.

Amino acids are the main parts and structural compounds of a protein molecule. Some amino acids can be synthesized in the body. These amino acids are called non-essential. Amino acids that the body cannot synthesize are called essential.

All amino acids are very important in nutrition, since they are plastic material for building tissue structures, and also have a regulating effect on various functions body.

The main rule in the fight against the process of premature aging is a radical change in lifestyle. If you don’t want to grow old ahead of time, you only need to eat healthy food spend as much time as possible on fresh air, do physical exercise every day, and give up all bad habits.

Be healthy!

“Looking at this flabby face, sunken eyes and flabby skin, one would hardly think that this is a child. However, this is so.” Many people know the story of 5-year-old Bayezid Hossain, who lives in southern Bangladesh. The boy suffers from a rare genetic disease - progeria, in which the body and the body age eight times faster than usual. It all starts with muscle atrophy, degenerative processes in teeth, hair and nails, changes in the osteoarticular apparatus, and this process ends with atherosclerosis, stroke and malignant tumors. As we see, progeria has not at all encouraging symptoms, which develop into fatal dangerous diseases. Therefore, such patients always face a fatal outcome. But is it possible to alleviate their suffering and even prolong their life? Or perhaps scientists are already one step away from creating a cure for this disorder? We'll tell you in today's article.

Hutchinson's syndrome in a child, Wikimedia

Infantile progeria, or Hutchinson (Hutchinson)-Guilford syndrome

For the first time, a disease in which the body ages prematurely was identified and described in 1889 by J. Hutchinson and independently in 1897 by H. Guilford. The syndrome, which manifests itself in childhood.

Despite the fact that progeria is a rather rare disease (only one in 7 million newborns is diagnosed with it), over the entire history of observations of this disease, more than 150 cases have already been recorded in the world. At birth, children look absolutely healthy; the first signs of accelerated aging begin to appear in babies aged 10-24 months.

The cause of the disease is a mutation of the LMNA gene; it produces the protein prelamin A, which forms a unique protein network - the internal framework of the nuclear envelope. The result is that cells lose the ability to divide normally.

While studying patients, geneticists also discovered disturbances in DNA repair (restorative function), cloning of fibroblasts (the main cells of connective tissue) and the disappearance of subcutaneous tissue.

As a rule, progeria is a non-hereditary disease, and cases of its development are rare, but there are exceptions. In several families, such a mutation has been registered in sibling children - descendants of closely related parents. And this indicates the possibility of an autosomal recessive type of inheritance, which manifests itself in people in adulthood. By the way, this happens to one in 200,000 people.

Progeria in adults, or Werner's syndrome

Back in 1904 German doctor Otto Werner noticed dramatic changes in appearance and condition in people 14-18 years old. He discovered the syndrome, which is associated with sudden weight loss, stunted growth, the appearance of gray hair and gradual baldness.

All these transformations of a teenager into an old man are associated with a defect in the WRN gene (ATP-dependent helicase gene). The role of the WRN protein it produces is to maintain genomic stability and maintain the structure and integrity of human DNA. Over time, the mutation disrupts gene expression, DNA loses the ability to be restored, which is the cause of premature aging.

Unlike young patients, who do not lag behind, and in some cases even surpass their peers in mental development, in adults the opposite effect is observed, because progeria begins to have a detrimental effect on their intellectual abilities.

About 10% of patients by the age of forty are faced with such terrible diseases as sarcoma, breast cancer, astrocytoma, and melanoma. Oncology develops against the background of diabetes mellitus and dysfunction parathyroid glands. Therefore, the average life expectancy of people with Werner syndrome is 30-40 years.

The world's first treatment for progeria. American scientists tested a unique drug

At the moment, progeria is considered incurable disease. The lives of people with Hutchinson (Hutchinson)-Gilford syndrome are cut short at the age of 7-13 years, but there are isolated cases when patients lived to be 20 or even 27 years old. And all this thanks to some kind of treatment.

However, specialists from the Progeria Research Foundation (PRF) and Boston Children's Hospital were not satisfied with such statistics. In 2012, they began the world's first clinical trials of a drug that could help rapidly aging children. And, as reported by EurekAlert! , they succeeded in this matter.

The study of patients with progeria lasted for 2.5 years. Scientists invited 28 children from 16 different countries to participate, 75% of whom were diagnosed with the disease. The children came to Boston every four months and underwent a full medical examination.

Throughout the entire period, subjects were given twice a day special drug farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), which was originally developed to treat cancer. The research team assessed weight dynamics, arterial stiffness (a parameter for the risk of heart attack and stroke), and bone stiffness and density (a parameter for the risk of osteoporosis).

As a result, each child felt significantly better. The children began to gain weight, there were improvements in bone structure, and most importantly, in the cardiovascular system.

According to doctors, the results of this study are very encouraging. In the future, it is planned to continue studying FTI drugs and their effect, which will give Additional information O cardiovascular diseases and the normal aging process.

“The results of this trial are encouraging for our family. We are excited and hopeful about Megan's future. We are grateful to the Progeria Research Foundation and all the doctors for their commitment to helping my daughter and all children with progeria,” said Sandy Nighbor, mother of 12-year-old Megan, who participated in clinical trials.

Progeria in culture and life

Believe me, it's never too late, or in my case, never too early to be who you want to be. There is no time frame - start whenever you want. You can change or remain the same - there are no rules for this. We can make better or worse choices, I hope you make the best.

This monologue is taken from David Fincher's film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is based on the story of the same name by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

From birth, the hero of this famous story was an outcast, because... from infancy he had the appearance and health of an 80-year-old man: he had wrinkles all over his body and atrophied legs. However, time passes, and Benjamin, on the contrary, does not grow old, but becomes younger. Many different vicissitudes happen to a man, and, of course, love happens in his life.

IN real life There are no such miracles, and people with progeria never grow young. But, despite their illness, such people never cease to be happy. In particular, Leon Botha, a South African artist, musician and DJ, is known to the world not only for his creative activity, and also by the fact that he was able to live with a terrible disease until he was 26 years old.

Leon was diagnosed with progeria at the age of 4, but the disease did not ruin his life. This man loved to enjoy every minute, although he realized that his imminent death was inevitable. For example, in January 2007, a man organized his first personal art exhibition in Durbanville, the theme of which was hip-hop culture as a way of life. Let us note that the “young” man had several such shows.

Botha was also involved in DJing and turntablism (a type of DJing) and performed in famous clubs under the pseudonym DJ Solarize. In addition, he collaborated with the South African group Die Antwoord and starred in their video for the song Enter the Ninja.

But, unfortunately, progeria spares no one. Therefore, on June 5, 2011, Botha died from a pulmonary embolism - a pathological condition when part of a blood clot (embolus), detached from its primary site of formation (often a leg or arm), travels through the blood vessels and blocks the lumen of the pulmonary artery.

Today scientists all over the world are studying this mysterious disease. They want to move it from the list of fatal to the list of intractable. It is worth noting that science has already achieved enormous results in this direction. However, many questions remain that need to be understood, namely: what are the similarities and differences between special cases of progeria and normal aging of the body, how the genetic causes of Werner and Hutchinson (Hutchinson)-Gilford syndrome are related to each other, and how to resist accelerated aging of the body. Perhaps, after some time, answers will be found, and specialists will be able to prevent the development of the disease, thereby prolonging the lives of people with progeria.

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