• Question: if we age does our blood and why do we age ???

    Asked by lillypop18 to Nick, Lilly, Alan on 18 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      I don’t think blood ages, but the main reason that we age is because other things in our bodies age, like our skin and our bones. Ageing is quite a complex process actually, with lots of changes occurring in the human body and the human brain, so its an area where there’s a lot of research going on.

    • Photo: Lilian Hunt

      Lilian Hunt answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Ultimately, we age mostly because some of our cells in our body can no longer divide and replicate and die. This can lead to all sorts of physical signs like wrinkly skin and aching joints but ageing is so complex that there’s so much more to it to be discovered. Our blood doesn’t age because it is constantly replenished by the stem cells in the core of our bone marrow 🙂

    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Individual blood cells die all the time, and are replaced by new blood made in our bones. There are different types of blood cells that live for different lengths. Red blood cells live for about 120 days, so whenever you take red cells from a anyone they are 60 days old on average.

      Ageing is a very complicate thing, and you can tell form looking at people that people of different ages have different things happening to their bodies. Over the past century, the average lifespan has doubled to over 80 years because of better medicine and living conditions, but people still age.

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