Found an interesting article, repost it here.
If humans had been built from the blueprints of a bird or a reptile, we’d probably be breezing past our 200th birthdays and aiming for 500. Instead, we’re stuck with a biological “warranty” that expires at 80.
Why? Because we inherited three massive piles of evolutionary garbage from our ancestors—short-lived, “live-fast-die-young” rodents. Evolution didn’t have time to refactor the code; it just slapped some duct tape on it and called it a day.
Here are the three “sh*t mountains” currently killing us:
1. The “Good Enough” Cleanup Crew (HSP-UPS)
Inside your cells, proteins have to be folded perfectly to work. If they fold wrong, they become toxic.
- The System: We have “debuggers” (HSP) to fix them and “shredders” (UPS) to recycle them.
- The Glitch: In our rodent ancestors, these systems were “trash tier.” Why? Because they needed to grow fast and breed even faster. They didn’t need a brain that stayed clean for 80 years; they just needed to function for two.
Evolution’s “Three Daily Questions” for your cells are:
- Can it eat? 2. Can it mate? 3. Can it breed? If the answer is “Yes,” then the system is “good enough.” This is why, as we age, our brains get clogged with protein “trash,” leading to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Evolution doesn’t care if your brain works at 90—you’ve already raised your kids.
2. The “Disposable Product” Strategy (DNA Repair)
When a cell’s DNA gets damaged, it’s a crisis.
- The Dinosaur Approach: A dinosaur or a large reptile is a “long-term investment.” If a cell breaks, the body kills it immediately and replaces it.
- The Rodent Approach: Our tiny ancestors were cheap. Instead of “deleting” broken cells, they just put them into a “zombie state” (senescence). They stop working, but they stay in the body.
To prevent these “zombie cells” from becoming tumors, rodents made a desperate move: they turned off the repair kits (telomerase) in most cells. It was a temporary patch to stop cancer just long enough to have a litter of pups. We inherited this “disposable” design. Our DNA quality is basically designed to fall apart after the “breeding window” closes.
3. The “Always-On” Growth Switch (mTOR)
This is the big one. There is an ancient “master switch” in your body called mTOR. It’s supposed to toggle between Growth Mode (when food is plenty) and Repair Mode (when food is scarce).
- The Original Hack: Millions of years ago, our ancestors became warm-blooded to fight off infections. But by staying warm ($37^\circ\text{C}$), we accidentally deleted one of the “OFF” switches for growth.
- The Modern Disaster: Evolution assumed we’d eventually run out of food. It thought, “Surely they won’t be sitting in a climate-controlled room eating 3,000 calories a day, right?” Wrong. We are now constantly in “Growth Mode.” Our cells are dividing and building non-stop, combining with our “trash-tier” cleanup crews from Pile #1 to create a metabolic train wreck. We are essentially redlining a car engine while the garage is full of trash.
The “Bird” Solution
Even though birds are also warm-blooded, they solved this by essentially “unplugging” the upstream switches. They barely use insulin; they don’t have the high-glucose/high-insulin pathway that triggers mTOR. Meanwhile, their AMPK (the energy-sensing “repair” switch) is almost always ON. They effectively abandoned the regulatory volatility of this pathway.
If we want to live like birds, we have to manually override our “rat blueprints.” This is why modern science is so obsessed with drugs like Metformin or GLP-1s. We’re basically trying to “unplug” the growth switch and force the body to finally do some chores.