Why Do We Live for Much Less Than 100 Years? A Fluid Mechanics View and Approach

Blood flow in arteries induces shear stresses on the arterial walls. The present work is motivated by the implications of low shear stress on the human arterial system and its effect on the duration of the life of a subject. The low and/or bidirectional wall shear stress stiffens the arterial wall and in synergy with the fluctuating tissue stress due to the fluctuating blood pressure activates the mechanism of aging. If the shear stress were not low and/or bidirectional and if it did not contribute to local endothelium dysfunctions, the tissue stress alone would take more than 100 yr to cause a failure on the human arterial system. Applying the s-n diagram (tissue stress against the number of cycles to failure) to determine the fatigue life of the aorta, for example, we find that in the absence of other pathogenic factors, for a tissue stress 1.2 times bigger than the tissue stress of a non-stiff aorta, the potential 100 yr of life are reduced to nearly 80 yr. Calculation of the rate of variation of the tissue stress of a subject with time may lead to a possible prognosis about the evolution of wall stiffness and its impact on the arterial aging of this subject. Further patient-specific in vivo mechanistic studies complemented by molecular imaging are needed to contribute to the formation of a data base, from which improved models describing the evolution of the arterial stiffness can be developed. Accordingly, the degree of stiffness of the aorta compared with existing data from a corresponding data base may provide with information about the degree of the fatigue of the aortic wall and its possible future behavior and lead to a patient-adapted medical treatment as a means of a would-be preventive medication.