• Question: Why does the average human only live until about 80?

    Asked by caitlingriffin1994 to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Hi Caitlin,

      because, even if we don’t get a disease like cancer, eventually the bits of our bodies that we absolutely need to survive wear out… So for instance our heart is a muscle and it has to pump every second for ever… so over 80 years that’s about 2.5 billion times!

      think how your shoes wear out as you wear them or your jeans get holes in… our bodies are like that except that we can repair ourselves a bit (so we last a long longer than a pair of shoes), but eventually we get less good at repairing and everything is a bit more tired and not as good as it was…

      They are finding ways of keeping your body better at repairing itself as you get older though, so it’s likely that in a few hundred years people will be able to live longer!

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