Mechanisms of Aging
- Breathe Free USA
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Cannabis is known to accelerate aging in users and exposed individuals, This article is included to give an overview of the biological mechanisms of aging and to give a reference point for other resources that talk about how cannabis affects these aging mechanisms.
The article notes that aging is “a list of biological processes that deteriorate with age in virtually every organism studied, that contribute causally to the functional decline and disease risk that define aging, and that interact with each other in ways that create self-reinforcing cycles of biological deterioration.”
Mechanisms of aging discussed in the article include:
1. Mitochondrial Dysfunction
Mitochondria creates ATP, or energy that every cell runs on. With age, mitochondria becomes progressively less efficient, generates more damaging reactive oxygen species as metabolic byproducts, and accumulates damage to its own DNA that impairs its function further. The result is a gradual decline in cellular energy availability that compounds across tissues and decades, creating the metabolic foundation on which many other hallmarks of aging build.
2. Inflammaging and Cellular Senescence
Persistent, low-grade inflammation. progressively damages the tissues it pervades, impairing organ function and driving the development of cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, metabolic dysfunction, and cancer.
3. Loss of Proteostasis and Disabled Autophagy
Cells lose the ability to remove damaged proteins and organelles. “The cellular environment becomes progressively more cluttered with dysfunctional machinery, and the accumulation compounds the energy failure and inflammatory activation that other hallmarks produce.”
4. The Genetic and Epigenetic Architecture: Telomere Attrition and Epigenetic Alterations
Increases cell death and senescence, contributing to #2 Inflammaging and Cellular Senescence above. Also alters gene expression in ways that impair cellular function and contribute to the loss of cellular identity that aging produces at the tissue level.
5. Stem Cell Exhaustion
The body can’t generate new cells to replace damaged or dead cells.
6. Deregulated Nutrient Sensing and Altered Intercellular Communication
Leads to increased accumulation of cellular damage, more inflammation, impaired tissue repair, and other cellular alterations that feed into the above mechanisms / processes.
All these biological processes work together as a self-reinforcing system. The article notes, “What makes the hallmarks framework powerful is not any individual entry on the list but the recognition that these processes form an interconnected network in which each hallmark feeds the others. Mitochondrial dysfunction generates oxidative stress that damages DNA and accelerates telomere attrition. Senescent cells release inflammatory signals that impair mitochondrial function and activate mTOR, suppressing autophagy. Disabled autophagy allows damaged mitochondria to accumulate, compounding energy failure and oxidative stress. Inflammaging impairs stem cell function, accelerating tissue deterioration. The cascade, once established, is self-reinforcing.”
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Research by Dr. Stuart Reece discusses how cannabis accelerates aging.
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Read full article on aging: The Sympathetic-Parasympathetic Imbalance Theory of Aging: Autonomic Dysregulation as an Upstream Driver of the Hallmarks
Published on Healthspan
Author: Daniel Tawfik
