How Long Will I Live

When I first saw my results to the life expectancy test it seemed higher than what I would've guessed.  Then again with technology and medicine continuing to improve the number seemed pretty accurate.  Most of the questions were what I expected, with what you eat and how much you exercise, and family health history.  However, I thought it was interesting how much they focused on cigarettes and tobacco.  There was 4 or 5 questions strictly related to smoking and secondhand smoke, which made me realize what a big potential impact that must have on people's life expectancy.  Other questions that I thought were very interesting and unexpected were the how often you floss question and how you barbecue your fish, poultry, and meat.  I'm sure all the questions asked had relevant reasons to estimate each individual's life expectancy, but I think guessing someone's life expectancy by just asking a certain number of questions is hard.  There are so many outside factors that can effect how long someone lives or potential things that could happen in society we don't even know about yet.  I found this quiz very fascinating, because I have never guessed how long I would live so it was interesting the things that were taken into account when estimating my life expectancy.

The Genetic Theory of Aging

http://longevity.about.com/od/researchandmedicine/p/age_genetics.htm

The article I found was titled, The Genetic Theory of Aging.  I found this article to be very interesting and highly relative to our discussions on how genes relate to aging.

The article discusses how our lifespan is largely determined by the genes we inherit.  Our potential age is determined at the moment of conception, however some of how long we live can be explained by learned behaviors, such as what we eat and how active we are.  The article goes on to say how some genes are harmful while some we inherit are beneficial.  Certain mutations of genes happen after birth with exposure to toxins, and fine radicals can also cause gene changes.  I thought this was interesting, because it directly relates to what we discussed in class.  Another interesting fact I found in this article was that as much as 35% of your lifespan can be explained by genes, which is a large percent to be based just on genes.
Overall I found this article very helpful in elaborating on the specific topics of genes and aging we had previously discussed in class, which helped my overall understanding.

What Processes Cause Aging

I thought the reading this week was very interesting, and definitely got me thinking about aging.  The oxidation theory was very intriguing to me.  With my major not being at all related to the field of science I was able to learn a lot about the complexity of the theory.  Some of it was difficult for me to grasp, but it was still very interesting.  It's weird to think that oxygen works in both a way to keep us alive and age us.

I appreciated that the metabolic processes were put into easier to understand terms of rusting and browning.  Browning being described as what happens to meat when being cooked, and rusting as more of the build up of free radicals.  This made it easier to understand the processes and put them more into context.