The measurable, inevitable tendency for the body’s complex biological systems to lose order, efficiency, and functional capacity over time, leading to cellular damage, hormonal imbalance, and the progressive decline associated with aging. This term applies the thermodynamic concept of increasing disorder to the human organism, representing the natural drift away from optimal homeostatic balance. The primary objective of anti-aging medicine is to actively counteract or slow this physiological entropy.
Origin
The term is a clinical-translator concept, borrowing the principle of entropy from physics and applying it to the irreversible degradation of biological systems, a key tenet of biogerontology. “Physiological” specifies the application to living, dynamic systems, making it a central theoretical concept in longevity research. It serves as the scientific definition for the aging process itself.
Mechanism
Physiological Entropy manifests through mechanisms such as telomere shortening, accumulation of senescent cells, and progressive mitochondrial dysfunction, all of which reduce cellular efficiency and increase systemic disorder. Hormonally, it is driven by the decline in key regulatory hormones, leading to a loss of precise feedback control across the endocrine axes. Counteracting this requires interventions that actively restore order, such as targeted hormone replacement and cellular repair strategies.
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