I was reading an article in New Scientist about the aging process as it relates to blood stem cells. The article dealt with a woman who had lived to be 115, then died even though she was in apparently good health. Because she was so long-lived and so healthy for most of her life, she bequeathed her body to science.
She was actually in great health, energetic, and mentally clear and sharp until shortly before her death. But something related to the aging process had obviously killed her.
When studying her physiology post mortem, researchers found to their surprise that she had just two blood stem cells left in her body at the time of her death.
These two cells had been doing the job of creating all of her white and red blood cells.
We start life with a large number of stem cells, including the ones that make red and white blood cells. That number declines as we age. If we have no way to replenish them, this may be a built-in mechanism keeping us from living very much past the age at which she died. (What appears to be an “aging program” may just be the body running short of stem cells; or perhaps we’re programmed to run short.)
But what if we could replenish our supply of blood stem cells?
Read more newlifelongevity.com