A Review of the Endocrinology of Aging

Here is an open access review of what is known of changes in the endocrine system that occur with aging. This is many steps removed from the low-level cellular and molecular damage that causes degenerative aging. It is a good example of a body-wide set of linkages between organs and signals and processes in which every change or failure in one component part will cause corresponding reactions in all of the other components. A sizable field of medicine continues to focus on these changes, trying to find ways to shift levels of hormone signals to be closer to measures taken in youth. In past decades this has produced some legitimate treatments for a variety of age-related conditions that are better than nothing, but unfortunately also a fraudulent network of false "anti-aging" claims and purported therapies that cloud the waters and make any online discussion of this topic difficult. Where legitimate, as an approach it is acting at the wrong level, chasing after secondary and later effects in a very complex system rather than addressing the root causes of changing hormone levels. Consequently it has been challenging to produce more than marginal benefits, which is much as you'd expect if you're trying to tinker a broken system into better performance without actually fixing the breakage. Still, here as elsewhere, there is enormous inertia and resistance to the new concepts of addressing root causes rather than messing with metabolism in this way, and researchers continue to wo...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs