Oxidative damage can be life-threatening at any stage of life. For the body immediate repair is top priority – that’s to overdo any necessary task for short-term damage control and prevent immediate death. And like a wound that needs to be repaired to save a young animals’ life, molecular damage needs to be repaired as well. But the program for immediate repair is short sighted and could act like a flawed mechanism driven by the body’s main growth pathway mTOR. This pathway which is useful for growth and repair early in life, could turn harmful and deadly when overactivated later in life.
