Wear and Tear
Wear and tear theories of aging suggest that as an individual ages, body parts such as cells and organs wear out from continued use. Wearing of the body can be attributable to internal or external causes that eventually lead to an accumulation of insults which surpasses the capacity for repair. Due to these internal and external insults, cells lose their ability to regenerate, which ultimately leads to mechanical and chemical exhaustion. Some insults include chemicals in the air, food, or smoke. Other insults may be things such as viruses, trauma, free radicals, cross-linking, and high body temperature.
Read more about this topic: Nancy Merz Nordstrom, Biogerontology, Biological Theories of Aging
Famous quotes containing the words wear and/or tear:
“All of childhood’s unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“I could see the thing
with its black head
but there wasn’t a tear left
and the scar of my wound
was hard.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)