Can you imagine living a
healthy life well into your 120s? That could be a reality sooner rather than
later. We all want to live a much longer, much healthier life. We want our
friends, parents, and children to live long and in vigor. Aging saps our
strength and ability to enjoy life, cripples us, and eventually kills us. Tens of millions die from medical conditions caused by aging
each and every year. Serious scientific efforts are
presently underway to understand and intervene in the aging process - not just
to prevent frailty and disease, but to also repair and reverse the root causes
of aging. And this is the cutting edge of research today.
The theory is that if
the aging process is slowed down, then all the diseases and pathology
associated with aging can be slowed down as well. Scientists believe that this
can be achieved because all of our cells contain a DNA blueprint that could
keep our bodies functioning correctly forever. In the decades ahead researchers
will assemble new biotechnologies that can defeat aging, restore the old to
health and vigor, and prevent the young from ever suffering the ravages of age.
But how can we achieve this goal?
- Step 1: Stop Damaging Health
- Step 2: Adopt a Better Diet and Lifestyle
- Step 3: Support and Advocate Longevity
Science
Step 1: Stop Damaging Health
Tobacco in any form –
smoked, chewed or sniffed, is harmful to longevity and so are all the
recreational drugs. Any beverage beyond the levels of moderation and a sedentary
life style are totally unacceptable for maintaining a healthy life.
Step 2: Adopt a Better
Diet and Lifestyle
If we do not forget to
take our car for servicing periodically then why do we forget to visit your
physician? This is particularly true for doctors themselves, and they have,
over the years, proven to be the most careless. Fortunately, it's neither
difficult nor expensive to use diet and lifestyle to live a longer life. Fast
food catered by the multinational food chains are making you fast disappear
from this earth, and hence their name. It is best to avoid them and stick to
home cooked nutritious diet. Fruits as God have sent them, instead of packaged fruit
drinks and beverages and regular balanced diet will prevent you from getting
overweight. A calorie restricted diet,
daily exercises, brisk walking and some health supplements are what we can do
at our end, but some steps need active interventions by the government and the
society like reducing carbon emissions and increasing the green belt. Instead
of spending our retired life in busy metropolitan cities, choosing quieter and
cleaner suburbs or rural housings with appropriate health back-up may go a long
way in increasing longevity.
Step 3: Support and
Advocate Longevity Science
Today with newer science
we can envisage how aging should be
repaired and reversed. Aging will one day be cured,
just like any other medical condition, but will that be soon enough and will we
still alive, healthy, and active to see it. A revolution in biotechnology is
presently underway, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence
(SENS) but right now they do not have much to show.
Naturally the first
question in longevity science, that comes to our mind is – why do we get old?
What is the cause of ageing? Scientists have today trimmed down the list of
causes to the following eight:
·
Accumulating AGEs
·
Buildup of Amyloid
Between Cells
·
The Failing Adaptive
Immune System
·
The Failing Innate
Immune System
·
Declining Lysosomal
Function
·
Mitochondrial DNA Damage
·
Nuclear DNA Damage
·
Buildup of Senescent
Cells
The
US Food and Drug Administration recently gave the go-ahead for clinical trials
to be conducted on the world’s first anti-aging drug Metformin, used widely for
treating Type 2 Diabetes.
The
drug has already been proven to extend animal lifespan, and the FDA has
resultantly decided that trials should be conducted to see if it has the same
effect on humans. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence was found last year by
researchers at Cardiff University, who observed that patients with diabetes
taking metformin were living longer than others who were not diabetic, in spite
of diabetics having an average life expectancy that’s eight years shorter.
Metformin is believed to have life-extending possibilities for humans
because of its ability to increase the number of oxygen molecules released into
a cell. This process is believed to boost cell robustness and longevity.
You
might feel that Anti aging science is very noble and so must face no opposition
from any quarter. Unfortunately that is not the case. It means different things
to different people and all these interest groups have their own axe to grind.
- For the scientific community, anti-aging research
refers exclusively to slowing, preventing, or reversing the aging process.
There is, as of 2015, no proven medical technology that allows this goal
to be accomplished in humans nor is there any currently available method
(short of waiting for people to die) to accurately measure the effects of an alleged anti-aging
therapy.
- In the medical and more reputable business community,
anti-aging medicine means early detection, prevention, and reversal of
age-related diseases. This is quite different from tackling the aging
process itself, and a wide array of strategies and therapies are currently
available which goes into the various health corporate check-up packages.
- The wider business community - including a great many fraudulent and frivolous
ventures - views "anti-aging"
as a valuable brand and a cunning way to increase sales. At the worse end
of the scale, this leads to snake oil and tiger bone salesmen,
"anti-aging" creams that scream hoarse to make skin look younger
and free of wrinkles and age blemishes! If I choose to be very charitable
with them then their concept “to look and feel younger in some way" -
has no bearing on how long you live or how healthy you actually are.
So Anti-aging is both a
valuable brand and important science that all these groups are attempting to
control or profit from it and in many cases their aims are at odds with one
another. Scientists feel, quite rightly, that the noise and nonsense coming
from the anti-aging marketplace is
damaging the prospects for serious, scientific anti-aging research. If people are under the impression that anti-aging means
high-priced cream from Revlon marketed to the gullible and brand-aware, no government
is going to give funding for a serious proposal in aging research. Government
too are silently scared that if the longevity really increases exponentially
then the pensioner hands may outnumber productive hands, as has already
happened in many developing countries. It is getting more and more interesting,
isn’t it!
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