Space's Affect on Aging?

We've all heard the terms before, our hearts give out, or our bodies expire do from stress, but would it be different in space? Gravity has its affect on animals, including wear on the heart and bones, and ofcourse theres still alot of diseases floating around on earth, so would living entirely in space affect our lifespan?

If you took away the gravity of the heart, and the diseases on earth, would people live past 100?

As far as I know (which is admittedly not very much!), being weightless actually has a bad effect on the heart, as it has nothing to pump against, so needs to work harder.

Not having any diseases would mean the body wouldn't have any immunites to anything, so should you be exposed to anything, you'd get sick (which is why I'm NOT a fan of anti-bacterials in the home).

Bones also waste away due to lack of gravity.

As tek said, living in a microgravity environment is really bad for us humans. We need gravity to remain healthy.

For reasons not yet understood, prolonged living in space (like on the space stations) causes the human body to start dumping reserves of calcium from the bones. That's why astronauts in space have to take calcium supplements and exercise lots, to help stave off this loss. I don't know of any other adverse effects or beneficial effects to living in space, assuming that the proper precautions are taken. (radiation shielding, etc)

about the lack of gravity in space;
but this can easily be corrected by letting the spacestation rotate to create a fake gravity, right? That is why one should give spacestations the shape of a globe too, as a globe's orbit around itself and the planet it orbits is easier to calculate than other shapes.
Or would one still loose the calcium from the bones?

id go along and spin the station around, that would work if you could get it to go fast enough, would have to create some type of gyro center though so the objecs inside dont move really, not sure how it would work, have to do some research

If you go with the theory of Time Dilation, space could have an effect on aging. However, living in space under the "ideal" conditions would only extend your life by two, three years. Not exactly significant. Now, if you were going at a speed of about .5 c's, then you might get a significant increase of ten or fifteen years.

[edit on 9-1-2006 by ElBandito501]

yeah, thats true.... 2 or 3 years isnt all the much if you think about it, maybe a couple years to say you have, but what are you really going to do in that time?