The Garbage Theory of Aging

Cleaning up the mess of everyday living is something we all do, take out the trash, dust, vacuum and all kinds of tasks that keep our homes livable.  What was once desired and useful, is now yesterday's news, clutter, whatever you want to call it, it's gotta go.  The same thing happens inside your body, there are "consumables" of daily living, like signaling molecules and enzymes, that are disposable after one use.  They've done their job and now they're history.  That's the easy part.

There's some cellular waste that is broken and can no longer function.  Stuff like damaged mitochondria and toxic cells, once functional, then turned threatening when their structures become damaged.  All this more "complicated" waste should be managed if your lysosomes are functioning properly.

A lysosome is a tiny little cellular incinerator bound by a membrane and stoked full of enzymes, whose job it is to break down your biological waste products, so you don't die from accumulated toxins.

Bad things happen when your lysosomes don't work right.

As you age, it becomes more difficult for your lysosomes' normal enzymes to break down the more complicated waste products you throw at it.  Before you know it, these waste bloated lysosomes hog all the real estate in your longer lived heart and brain cells.

Leading to what?  You guessed it, disfunction from clogged up junk. To make matters worse, brain and heart cells don't replicate, so the junk doesn't split in half.  Now, your little incinerators are working harder and harder, squandering their enzymes, trying to break down waste product, but it just accumulates.  

Hence, the garbage theory of aging.

Researchers have been blaming faulty lysosome function for the clogged arteries we know as atherosclerosis.  The junk clogs up the tubes and blocks the passage of blood into your arteries.  Usually, your enemy, LDL, otherwise known as "bad cholesterol" accumulates and sticks to your arterial walls.  Your body then turns on chronic inflammation, as a call to action for your immune cells to clean up the mess.

When you're young and healthy, your body can manage the clean up, but when a damaged blood vessel is forced to deal with constant high blood cholesterol, toxins from cigarette smoke and extra body fat, the clean up is much more difficult.  In fact, it's only a matter of time until the fatty plaques burst and flow into your blood, getting stuck in the smaller blood vessels, blocking off their flow to either your brain and you get a stroke, or your heart and you have a heart attack.

But, it's not just the LDL "bad cholesterol" that's the problem, it's the exposure to free radicals, inflammation and excess blood sugar.  Complicated as it sounds, the research is focused on preventing the lysosomes from getting over stuffed in the first place.  Meanwhile, as the scientific research continues, in developed countries, atherosclerosis is the number one killer.

Next thing is deteriorating brain function, also a result of badly functioning lysosomes, as seen in the brains of patients afflicted with Parkinsons and Alzheimer's disease.  

There's abnormal proteins all over the place!

While scientists won't draw specific conclusions, without more testing (of course) they do agree that in the presence of junk, brain cells just don't do well.

At this point, you're most likely thinking, it's time to cleanup your act.  A good start would be to keep your arteries healthy, flexible and clean. The Omega 3's found in Dr. Dave's Best Wild Red Fish Oil are probably the best supplement you can find, to take care of your heat and help you maintain a healthy brain.  

However long it takes researchers to understand what's accumulating in your lysosomes, or your brain, or your blood vessels, take whatever action you can to clear out the garbage now to preserve your precious heart and brain function.  Fish oiltoday, for a healthy tomorrow.