Peter Attia· MD
the genome is fairly intact in old people and old animals we've sequenced the genomes of lots of old mice and all the genes are still largely intact so what's going wrong well the other part of information that you inherit from your parents is the epigenetic information okay and I use that term loosely but basically it means what's the pattern of gene expression which genes to turn on and off at which time and that is analog information okay that has to be analog because instead of just being a single code it has to operate in three dimensions actually four if you count time and so that's an analog system and it's constantly adapting to what we eat what we what we drink if we run when we sleep and you have to turn genes on and off all the time but that pattern of gene expression that's set down when we're young because it's analog analog information doesn't last very long anyone who's had a record player or magnetic tape knows that these things don't last and that's the problem I think with aging is that we don't lose the digital information so the compact discs of our lives is still intact when we're old but it's as if we've got a scratch CD and the cells don't read the right genes at the right time anymore and they lose their identity