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Why do cells decay? Why do we die?

I understand how cells decay. There was a good answer on this before. Here it is: ---------- "Not sure if this helps, but everything in nature is bound by the Law of Entropy. All objects want to find a level of equilibrium, this includes chemical reactions and molecules. Your body and other organic material is always creating and recycling which is essentially out of balance with the some of the basic opposing forces of found in nature...wind, water, heat, and gravity. Once the life form ends it's cycle the forces of nature break down the organic material to its lowest point of equilibrium. Dust to dust... From a simple point of view... In the human body if you stop drinking water, the air around you is always working to evaporate the water in your body. The body's cells need water to function, so if you don't refill the water, this will begin the decaying process. Many of the chemical molecules, especially proteins, in your body need water to stay together, remove the water and the molecules colapse (decay). Some chemical bonds need oxygen, if you stop breathing then those chemical and molecular bonds begin to decay. If you stop eating, there are a bunch of chemicals and molecules that your body uses that won't work if you don't keep ingesting them." ------------- But that's not really my question. I want to know why do we die. We die because our cells decay when we get old. Our bones become fragile. Why? Bones become fragile because our bone density becomes smaller. But here is what confuses me. There are cells in our body that die all the time (like skin and hair among other things) however, they are replaced when our cells divide. When our cells divide they are basic clones of each other, so if that's true then why do we even age? And if our cells are constantly dying in our brain as well how is it we can retain memories when an entire section of your brain has died and all the cells have been cloned? Think about it, a man who is 40 years old has not one cell that he was born with. He doesn't have any of the same cells from when he was 20 either. Essentially we are constantly dying and being reborn. What I can't get my mind around is what makes us age?

Public Comments

1. because eve ate the apple and then gave it to adam!
2. Why ask why? Try bud dry.
3. Firstly, brain cells die and do not replicate. You are born with the maximum amount of brain cells you will ever have in your entire life, from that point on every brain cell that dies is one that is lost forever. Furthermore, when cells replicate they can often copy themselves wrong, causing a mutation that disrupts the process. think about it, if you have one mistake in one cell, no big deal- until that cell replicates and its replica replicates exponentially. Cancer is a perfect example of this. Ideally, your cells would never make mistakes, but that is impossible due to environmental factors that effect the outcome of replication.
4. Brain cells doesn't regenerate.
5. You pose a good question, & ive thought of how we are constantly dying, but ive never thought about the reborn part< interesting! Its one of those questions that can not be answered, its like asking "whats the meaning of life" or "where does God come from?" Nature knows what its doing. It's a good thing we die or else the world would be completely over-populated & a chaotic mess. Personally, im not interested in trying to pro-long natural life more than it already is. its just not natural & sometimes you just gotta move on.
6. Our cells, while they are basic copies of previous versions, are not exactly the same. Even if they are 99.999999% identical, eventually that number will change. If they replicate 1 million times in a lifetime, then that makes them only 36.7% identical to the original cells. With these changes, mutations, comes disease. Old cells age us. Inside a cell, telomeres at the end of each chromosome contain genetic information that gets clipped away with each cell division. At first, telomeres are long enough that they can handle a snip here and a trim there. But after they hit a certain length, the information is lost.