Executive Summary
Anti-ageing strategies should focus on increasing healthy years of your life – preserving well-being or restoring it.
Living beyond the human age limit of 115 years may be a goal for scientists but you are better off not striving for them, given the currently available technologies.
Offering exotic creams and magic treatments, the skincare industry convinces us that ‘anti-ageing’ means ‘looking younger’. But that is a shallow purpose or definition. This brief article suggests a better ‘anti-ageing’ approach for us.
Immortality
The quest for immortality has intrigued mankind for millennia. There are stories of Gods and Kings yearning to be immortal. According to the Indian mythology, there are seven Chiranjivis or immortals.
But would you want to live forever, roaming the earth? As per Mahabharat lore, Asthwatthama – one of the Chiranjivis – was cursed with a wound on his forehead that never heals. Do you wish to live eternally with a disease like diabetes or arthritis?
Immortality exists in nature though – a species of jellyfish, Turritopsis dorhrnii, is known to be biologically immortal. How does it do that? By reversing its lifecycle every few years. That would be akin to you somehow turning back into an infant and living life all over again.
I hope you don’t want this ‘anti-ageing’ strategy.
Lifespan
What about living as long as we are meant to be?
Various cultures and religions have their own interpretations of the length of human life. Mesopotemians believed that death was meant to reduce overpopulation. The Bible says it is the God’s will that humans should not live longer than 120 years.
Closer to science, human beings are said to have a genetic upper limit of 115 years. But at that age, your family and peers will be long gone. Living so many summers will bring its own social challenges.
Cellular Ageing
Interestingly, if the age limit is genetically programmed into humans, can we tweak that ‘program’ code? Some scientists believe that in future, we will have technologies to do so. As per them, if we can control something called cellular ageing, we can live up to 1,000, or even 20,000 years.
Imagine clicking a selfie with Cleopatra in person! But then Queen Nefertiti would be alive, preventing Cleopatra from becoming the queen in the first place.
Longevity
Most societies consider the age of hundred years as the pinnacle of longevity. Cultural cues, including birthday wishes, tell us to aspire a century of life.
Read on this website: Diet secrets of centenarians.
But people who hit that coveted landmark have many frailties: muscle weakness, dodgy walk, wrinkled skin, missing teeth and sometimes, bothersome diseases.
We need a better measure of longevity that we can aspire to.
Healthspan
While lifespan indicates how long you live, healthspan refers to how long you live healthy and disease-free. Ideally, you want both but things could become complicated.
What if you have a lifespan of hundred years and a healthspan of eighty years? You may live hundred years with the final twenty of them bedridden, staring at the ceiling.
Most people don’t want assisted living with debility. In other words, when you talk about a long life, you are asking for healthspan, not lifespan.
Increasing healthspan looks like a very good ‘anti-ageing’ objective. The challenge is to define what is healthy enough, which I will cover in another article.
Read on this website: How to Prevent Ageing and Age-Related Diseases.
Looking Young
Wrinkled skin and greying hair are signs of ageing. So protecting the skin and hair are superficial but classical ‘anti-ageing’ goals.
Aged skin or hair don’t hamper your health, but in our society, they signal that your well-being is on a decline. For actors and TV anchors, they are a career risk.
We can have two approaches: Prevent the damage or fix it as it arises. The latter involves botox injections and hair transplants – superficial interventions that don’t improve physical health, but are psychological boosters.
Averting premature skin and hair damage can be an ‘anti-ageing’ objective that improves appearance but not health. Read on this website: How to prevent wrinkle formation 15 years earlier.
To Read More
- Scientific American: How old can humans get?
- The Economist: A $3bn bet on finding the fountain of youth
- Slate: A New Study Argues You Might Be Able to Live Forever
- BBC: Why do we die?
- CNN Health: Why do we die? The latest on aging and immortality from a Nobel Prize-winning scientist
- Nature Aging: Why Gilgamesh failed: the mechanistic basis of the limits to human lifespan
- Aging Cell: Can aging be programmed? A critical literature review
- Cell Cycle: Aging is not programmed
- Nature: Contesting the evidence for limited human lifespan
- PNAS: Evolution of the human lifespan and diseases of aging: Roles of infection, inflammation, and nutrition
- Cell: Geroscience: Linking Aging to Chronic Disease
- The Journals of Gerontology: Inconvenient Truths About Human Longevity
- Aging Cell: Dietary restriction and aging, 2009
- On this website: Can fasting slow down ageing?
- Nature: Maximum human lifespan may increase to 125 years
First Published on: 7th December 2024
Image Credit: wayhomestudio on Freepik
Last updated on: 25th January 2025