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 Quote from Mental Floss T-Shirt: 

Entropy: It Ain't What It Used to Be.

(http://www.mentalfloss.com/store/product.php?productid=16260)

oh, science jokes.

This week, I was particularly interested in the concept of how things falling apart relates to aging and death. Can you die of "old age"? From my Biology class in high school, I have an interest in the role of telomeres, which are basically junk sequences of DNA on the end of a particular strand. Each time replication occurs, some of this sequence is deleted. It protects the good parts of the DNA, the sections that code for proteins. But what happens  when these junk sequences fully disintegrate? The DNA molecule itself would probably start to wear away. 

This raises the question, are our bodies only meant to last for a certain amount of time? And if so, is there any way to artificially extend that time period? Do certain people "break down" at different rates? I know there are specific world populations, such as certain Japanese islands and some Mediterranean peoples, that have a much higher life expectancy than the rest of the world. These people have both genetic traits and lifestyle choices (diet, stress levels) that seem to extend their life range. Entropy is a really interesting concept to apply to biology.