'Do No Harm' - what if you structured the school experience around preserving and enhancing the molecular health of staff and students?
I recently read the brilliant Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan. Perhaps it’s part of a mid-life crisis, but understanding why I seem to age a decade each week has become an increasingly fascinating topic for me.
Now, I’m no biologist—I stopped studying biology at 16! My knowledge is limited to a few casual areas of interest (mostly related to health complications I’ve encountered and had the motivation to research). So, diving into a book on protein folding and molecular biology by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist was a big leap for me. That said, Ramakrishnan is an exceptional writer, making even the most complex ideas accessible to laypeople like me. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
But let’s shift focus: if our main goal is to build better schools and develop healthier, higher-achieving students, what can these scientific insights teach us? At first glance, cellular health and aging may not seem like an immediate concern for school leadership, but the more I explored this topic, the more I realised its relevance.
Below, I’ll condense some of the most fascinating insights from my notes and follow up with a few ‘blue sky thinking’ ideas on how we could apply this knowledge to curriculum design, student well-being, and school structures.
The notes (I used AI to condense them for me):
Understanding Cell Health and Aging – A Simplified Overview
1. DNA, Mutations, and Repair
DNA can be damaged by chemicals, radiation, and even water. Over 100,000 common substances can alter DNA.
Ribosomes (protein builders) are surprisingly adaptable, but mistakes in protein production can have severe consequences.
The body has a built-in repair system, using backup copies of DNA to fix errors.
If damage is too severe, cells either:
Stop replicating (senescence)
Self-destruct (apoptosis)
2. Aging and the Role of p53 & Telomeres
The p53 gene repairs DNA but also limits cell division when errors accumulate.
Whales, which have 20 copies of p53, rarely get cancer.
Telomeres (chromosome ends) shorten each time a cell divides. When they become too short:
The cell malfunctions or dies, accelerating aging.
Some cells (like cancer and reproductive cells) use telomerase to extend their lifespan.
Chronic stress increases cortisol, which reduces telomerase and speeds up aging.
3. Epigenetics – How Environment Shapes Genes
Cells "lock in" their function using methylation and histones.
External factors (e.g., stress, diet, toxins) can turn genes on or off, affecting long-term health.
Example:
Children born during famines inherit stress-related changes, leading to lifelong health risks.
Identical twins can have different traits due to environmental factors.
4. Protein Folding & Aging
Even perfect DNA can still produce faulty proteins.
Aging causes proteins to misfold, clump together, and disrupt function—leading to diseases like Alzheimer’s.
The body defends itself by:
Tagging faulty proteins for destruction (ubiquitin system).
Recycling damaged proteins through autophagy (cellular cleanup).
Pausing protein production (Integrated Stress Response - ISR) to prevent overload.
5. Mitochondria – The Cell’s Powerhouse & Aging Clock
Mitochondria produce energy but also release Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which damage cells over time.
This "cellular rust" accelerates aging, damages DNA, and weakens mitochondria, creating a vicious cycle.
Antioxidant supplements don’t help—in fact, studies show they may shorten lifespan!
Faulty mitochondria trigger chronic inflammation (called inflammaging), accelerating the aging process.
6. How to Slow Aging & Improve Cell Health
Caloric restriction lowers TOR (a growth regulator), switching the body into repair mode instead of rapid cell division.
Consistent, moderate exercise helps reduce mitochondrial damage.
Avoiding stress preserves telomeres and slows aging.
Good sleep, learning new skills, and avoiding UV exposure contribute to long-term cellular health.
Key Takeaways
✔ Eat less, eat more vegetables✔ Exercise regularly (but not excessively)✔ Manage stress and get enough sleep✔ Stay mentally active – learning new skills promotes cell health✔ Minimise exposure to environmental toxins and UV radiation
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So, how can we then apply this to ideas on school curriculum and structure?
Health & Well-being Policies
Nutrition & Diet – Promote a balanced diet in school meals, focusing on whole foods and antioxidants while educating students on how food impacts cellular health.
Physical Activity – Implement moderate, consistent exercise to improve mitochondrial function and slow aging, avoiding excessive stop-start activities.
Stress Management – Introduce mindfulness, meditation, and quiet spaces to combat stress-induced aging. Train teachers to explain how stress affects DNA and telomeres.
Sleep & Recovery – Encourage healthy sleep habits, limit caffeine after midday, and reduce blue light exposure in classrooms.
2. Science Curriculum Integration
Biology & Aging – Teach telomeres, DNA repair, mitochondria, and epigenetics while running experiments, or simulations, on mutations, antioxidants, and external stressors.
Medical Ethics & Longevity – Debate genetic engineering, Alzheimer’s treatments, and life extension. Have students design potential aging-related experiments.
Mitochondria & Exercise Science – Investigate how exercise improves cellular function and track fitness data to measure effects on stress and inflammation.
AI & Protein Folding – Provide access to AlphaFold or simulations to let students explore protein structures and real-world applications in medicine.
3. Student-led Research & Innovation
Personal Health Tracking – Let students monitor their sleep, diet, and exercise to analyse their impact on cognitive function.
Competitions & Challenges – Host biohacking, AI-based aging predictions, and longevity research contests.
4. School Design & Learning Experience
Environment & Movement – Use natural lighting, standing desks, and movement breaks to reduce oxidative stress and improve focus.
Interdisciplinary Integration – Link history (lifespan evolution), economics (aging populations), and philosophy (ethics of immortality) to biological studies.
5. Teacher & Staff Training
Training on Stress & Health – Educate teachers on how lifestyle factors influence cognitive function and encourage staff to model healthy habits.
Key Outcomes:
I think we are looking here at a lot of collapsed timetable time and co-ordination of curriculums so cooking, sports and biology all work together, or in parallel, on topics like this to promote health.
I strongly believe that schools should adopt a sort of Google Esque ‘do no harm’ approach to their management of curriculum and the school day.
Dragging kids out of bed at ungodly hours, forcing them through huge social and academic pressures, offering them only limited opportunities to rest and relax, offering them poor or unvaried diets, and forcing them to sit in uncomfortable classrooms can do all kinds of damage to them – we are supposed to be enhancing their prospects, not issuing lasting damage to their mental, physical and molecular health.
Same applies to the teachers – too many schools (almost literally) grind their staff into the ground (so much so that you often think it is a deliberately strategy to reduce costs by breaking teachers when they are in their 30s so they can be replaced by cheaper ones out of training… - this is almost certainly the business model of international private schools…).
However, this is clearly not very healthy for your staff – and obviously the children they will then teach! So, reduce cortisol on your staff needs to be almost a starting point when designing the structure of the day, scheduling assessments and parents evenings etc.
The younger your staff ‘look’ – the better you’re doing as a headteacher 😊
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