Is There a Stress Response That Makes You Live Longer?

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There's nothing biologically, certainly there's nothing in the laws of physics, but even biologically, there's nothing wrong with really repairing ourselves to keep them going. It's just that our biology chooses not to do that because we've outlived our usefulness. And some mild forms of stress, this idea of hormesus, where you have a mild stress and that turns on our stress response, makes an animal live longer. You know, that's the kind of thing that, you know, intermittent fasting or clor restriction, or some of these drugs might be doing.

Aging -- everybody does it, very few people actually do something about it. Coleen Murphy is an exception. In her laboratory at Princeton, she and her team study aging in the famous C. Elegans roundworm, with an eye to extending its lifespan as well as figuring out exactly what processes take place when we age. In this episode we contemplate what scientists have learned about aging, and the prospects for ameliorating its effects -- or curing it altogether? -- even in human beings. Coleen Murphy received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University, and is currently Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics at Princeton. Home page at the Lewis-Sigler Institute Lab web page Princeton Profile Google Scholar publication page Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.