Longevity is built step by step and second by second – each little decision that you take will affect your near future in ways you wouldn’t even expect. The fourth age patients that I see almost every day support this gut instinct of mine – they were mostly moderate people, enjoying life’s pleasures in little steps and without greed.
Yet although I live in a capital city with few access to real nature besides natural history museums, botanical gardens and farmer’s markets, I learn about life from the most unexpected places – like natural life documentaries as the recent one I borrowed from the British Library “Life in the freezer” – see the YouTube link below to watch the documentary in full.
There are huge differences between the “winner takes it all” culture of seals – in which the alpha male owns a huge number of females, constantly defending his territory – and the “fair share” one of emperor penguins – where pairs are faithful for life and both partners rear the young equally.
Life is a movement of organic particles – occasionally switching from one organism to another through (breast)feeding and scavenging decaying matter – and just when you think you found a place with no life, someone will soon prove you wrong. Take for example the Dry Valley from Antarctica where the dry winds evaporate all water, leaving desiccated remains of seals – and yet! – there are lichens living inside these rocks.
Growth is slow where temperatures drop – both for the animals as well as for the plants – and resources are even more important than in warmer environments, where trees can afford to lose their leaves in autumn and regain those nutrients in the spring. Not so in harsh winters as decay is slow, so it is more economical to keep their leaves all around, adapting narrow needle shapes to lose as few heat as possible – and this works: notice the oldest individuals in the world: the Sequoia trees. The hypothesis that slow growth may cause longevity is permeating gerontology, so studying life surviving harsh winters may prove fruitful.
Many underwater invertebrates living in this natural freezer can stand the below-zero temperatures by secreting their own natural antifreeze proteins – this is a highly potential area of research for the millions of patients who need to buy time because their cures were not yet developed. Would you accept being frozen in time for some uncertain future if you were one of these patients?
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- Mummified Seals (thelastdegrees.wordpress.com)