Cells communicate with each other in the form of so-called messenger substances. In the brain, these can be z.B. Be dopamine, GABA or acetylcholine. The immune cells use a different language and send out interleukins such as IL-6. All of these transmitters ensure that the various cells in our body can work together. As we age, however, communication becomes increasingly difficult and prone to errors. In this article, we use a few examples to show you what changes in our body and also give you a few tips from research on how to address the altered intercellular communication
What do we mean by intercellular communication?
Before we start with this topic, we first need to clarify how cells communicate with each other. This is not as trivial as it might seem. If an immune cell suddenly detects an intruder on its patrol through our blood vessels, it can only communicate this by using special messenger substances.
To give you a more understandable example, let's take a quick look at how our body brings sugar into the cells. When we eat carbohydrate-rich food, our blood sugar increases. These sugar molecules have to get into our cells, z.Binto the muscle cells so that they can be converted into energy in the form of ATP with the help of mitochondria .
But the glucose molecules floating in our blood can't get into the muscle cells on their own. Someone has to open the "door" for them first. This is done by the hormone insulin, which binds to the insulin receptor and thus unlocks the door for the glucose molecules. This allows the sugar to be quickly removed from the blood and transported to its site of action after a meal. As you can see, there are different components to the language of the cells:
- The transmitter: In this case, the pancreas, which produces the hormone insulin and also releases it into the bloodstream
- The "language": Imagine that each hormone (insulin, testosterone, cortisol), each neurotransmitter (dopamine, noradrenaline) and each mediator (interleukins) represents a language of its own
- The receiver: In order for the spoken language to be understood, the receiver cells need receptors. Without these, a cell is insensitive to the signals, so it does not "understand" the language
Insulin resistance - an aspect of altered intercellular communication
Let's stick with our example and look at how communication changes over the years. Let's assume that you regularly eat too much and unfortunately your stressful everyday life has not really allowed you to exercise for years. What could happen now is one of the most common clinical pictures in Germany. Your cells become increasingly insulin-resistant.
To stay with this fictitious example: Whereas it used to be enough for your pancreas to release 10 units of insulin into the bloodstream after a plate of pasta, you now need 20 units for the same amount of pasta. The reason? Your insulin receptors have become less sensitive to insulin. They now need more messenger substances to react at all.
The nasty thing is, you won't notice anything at first. Only when your pancreas exceeds its limit and the blood sugar level still doesn't go down will diabetes mellitus have manifested itself. You can also find out more about this in our article on insulin resistance.
Medicine provides a whole arsenal of different drugs in the fight against diabetes. But you don't have to let it get that far!
Changed cell communication - more than just sugar metabolism
Many processes in the body change with age, not just sugar metabolism. Particularly noteworthy is the so-called inflammaging. This neologism, which consists of the two words "inflammation" and "aging", has been defined as an independent hallmark of ageing, as it plays a crucial role in the ageing process.
Inflammatory processes are part of everyday life in our body. What we perceive as fever or swelling in an illness is in fact mass communication between immune cells. But it can also be much "quieter". For example, visceral adipose tissue secretes a number of hormones and inflammatory substances that are associated with all kinds of age-related diseases. This almost "silent" inflammation is one of the main aspects that appears to be responsible for some diseases in old age.
Did you know As you have already seen, a healthy blood sugar metabolism is essential for healthy ageing. Especially in the early stages of insulin resistance, two other substances can help you in addition to a change in diet, exercise and fasting . Berberine is a naturally occurring substance from barberry and works in a similar way to the diabetes drug metformin.
And Inositol, which has been shown to improve blood sugar control in women with PCO syndrome in clinical trials. Inositol can also be found in our innovatively formulated MoleQlar ONE.
Sirtuins take hold
When talking about inflammation, our family of longevity genes is not far from the scene either. We are of course talking about the sirtuins, a gene family with seven members (see also longevity pathways). Multiple studies have shown that SIRT1 can downregulate inflammatory genesvia NF-kB, among others.
A drug-induced activation of SIRT1 confirmed this finding, while a reduction in turn resulted in the development and progression of inflammatory diseases. SIRT2 and SIRT6 perform similarly, albeit partly via different molecular pathways. However, the complex structure of intercellular communication extends beyond inflammation.
The bystander effect: intercellular communication works differently
"The probability of providing help (prosocial behavior) to people in an emergency situation decreases with the number of people present in this situation" is how the Dorsch Dictionary of Psychology describes the term bystander effect. All well and good, but what does this have to do with intercellular communication and ageing?
The phenomenon that age-related changes in one tissue lead to age-specific changes in other tissuesfalls under the molecular biological concept of the bystander effect. Let's imagine that one immune cell "encourages" another to do nothing with the next bacterium, but just watch. This is somehow also a form of the spreading failure to provide assistance, isn't it? In this respect, psychology and molecular biology are more closely intertwined than we think.
In addition to inflammatory messengers, there are other examples of " contagious ageing". Senescent cells can trigger senescence in other, still healthy cells via direct contact. Among other things, free radicals (ROS) are involved in this process (seemitochondrial dysfunction ). Similarly, impaired kidney function in humans can increase the risk of heart disease.
However, this bystander effect also has something good about it, because it also works backwards , as studies have shown. Interventions to extend lifespan that target one tissue can delay the ageing process in other tissues. Molecular biology is ahead of psychology!
Restoration of faulty intercellular communication
We've now heard a lot about how faulty intercellular communication occurs. Time to think about how to prevent it. This is exactly what researchers have been thinking.
There are various ways to restore communication. Particularly relevant here are various fasting methods to extend the healthy lifespan and also the transfer of systemic factors that have been isolated from blood. In addition, the administration of anti-inflammatory agents such as acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) in mice showed an increased life expectancy.
The intestinal microbiome is very exciting and still comparatively unexplored. The intestinal microbiome is known to influence the function of the immune system and metabolism. It therefore seems possible to extend the lifespan of humans by changing the composition of the intestinal bacterial ecosystem. More on this can be found in the article on the 11th Hallmark of Aging.
Threat and resource
There is convincing evidence that ageing goes beyond the cell-autonomous level. There is a generalized change in communication between cells, which fortunately also offers opportunities for intervention. Similar to stem cell exhaustion, many hallmarks of aging have altered intercellular communication as a final pathway.
The small upheavals at the level of the individual cell due to genomic instability or telomere shorteningresult in a general response that is sometimes beneficial and sometimes detrimental in its breadth. The balance shifts visibly towards harm with ageing.
However, the bystander effect also shows that the body's adaptability in old age can be both a threat and a resource. The question remains as to how we can actually use this resource. Research still owes us this answer.
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Changed intercellular communication - Conclusion
Our cells communicate with each other every day in a wide variety of languages, completely unnoticed by us. Only in old age, when the changes in intercellular communication become noticeable, do we feel some of the consequences. Depending on which cells are affected, we can already do something about it today. Particularly with regard to insulin resistance, there is very good data that sufficient exercise, a healthy nutrition, fasting and nutritional supplements, such as berberine, can reverse insulin resistance.
The next article in this series is about the tenth hallmark of aging: Inflammaging.
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