Why Do I Have to Die?
The longer you are alive, the more likely you are to die. Why is that?
Posted August 23, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Here is the most profoundly important, and most profoundly obvious, statement that you will read today: The longer you are alive, the more likely you are to die. This is true for you, your dog, the birds and the bees and lizards and reptiles and flies, etc. Why is this? What do you and these other creatures do every day that gets us all closer to death? The answer contains the solution to slowing how fast we are approaching our final days. The answer is simple: We eat.
Why is eating so bad for the brain and body?
Food is made up of carbon atoms. A carbohydrate is a ring of carbons; a fat is a long string of carbons; a protein is a mesh of carbon atoms. The carbon atoms are held together with bonds of energy. We eat carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, and consume the energy of these bonds by breaking them. This is how we stay alive. The energy is needed for our bodies to do literally everything. For a more entertaining explanation of this process, see my TED Talk .
Why does this process age us? The answer is in how we rid our cells of those leftover carbon atoms once we’ve consumed their energy. The solution was discovered over 2 billion years ago—we use the oxygen in air. Inside every cell in our body, we combine each leftover carbon atom with molecules of oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. This is the process of living, and everything would be perfect except for one little problem: There are always a few stray oxygen molecules hanging around that don’t get combined with carbon. The stray oxygen atoms cause problems that age us, slowly, one cell at a time.
Why is oxygen bad for me?
Because oxygen is also exceedingly toxic to cells, it must be utilized very carefully and conservatively. Indeed, scientists have recently discovered that the genes that control energy metabolism have been highly conserved across millions of years of evolution, from yeast to humans, and that these genes influence the rate of the aging process. Essentially, the better we negotiate our energy-oxygen exchange with our indwelling mitochondria , the longer and healthier we live as a single individual and as a species.
In general, the hemoglobin in our blood does a decent job of regulating the oxygen levels near the individual cells of our bodies so that those cells have the oxygen they need for respiration, but not too much to kill them outright. These cells have also evolved numerous antioxidant systems that would allow us to live to be 115 years old, if we were lucky and ate very, very little food. But most of us are not that lucky, and most of us eat all the time and just keep on breathing, making ourselves vulnerable to the consequences of oxygen.
With normal aging, because we insist on eating and breathing, tissue-damaging molecules called oxygen- free radicals are formed by our mitochondria. Free radicals become more prevalent with every day of eating and breathing and slowly overwhelm our natural antioxidant systems, destroying our neurons and just about every other cell in our bodies. Think about the unbelievable irony of this process: The very thing that you do every day to stay alive, eating and breathing, is actively, slowly, and unavoidably killing you. It turns out that each species' maximum lifespan may be determined by how well it handles the consequences of breathing oxygen.
What is the solution?
You have three choices to prevent the deathly consequences of eating and breathing. First, you could breathe a lot less—not really an option, although living at a higher altitude is almost as good. Second (and the best option), you could consume fewer carbon bonds, i.e., calories. This should be your new mantra: Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. Or third, you could consume foods that protect you from the oxygen you’re inhaling; we call these chemicals antioxidants. Antioxidants can be found in colorful foods; indeed, it’s the color in these foods that are the antioxidants that will protect you from the villainous oxygen. Many different foods and drugs contain chemicals that can protect us from the consequences of breathing. Two of my favorites are coffee and chocolate.
Facebook image: Pressmaster/Shutterstock
Wenk, GL. (2019). Your Brain on Food . Oxford University Press.
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Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology, neuroscience, molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics at the Ohio State University.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.