Health

I Age, You Age, We Age…

A quick quiz:

All living creatures grow old. True or false? True, of course.

All living creatures, even if they escape accidents or serious illness, will eventually die of "old age." True or false? Oddly, that’s false.

What’s popularly referred to as old age is a biological condition known as "cell senescence." And though the vast majority of cell types share that quality, researchers have identified a few types of animals whose cells essentially don't wear out, or become senescent—Latin for (not surprisingly) "old."

These non-aging creatures include the famed Galapagos tortoise, lobsters, sharks, and alligators. Unlike humans and other species who reach a fixed size at maturity, these guys just keep on getting larger. And an old lobster, for instance, has the same fast reaction time as a young one.

So why don't they live forever? Because, like the aging populations, they're vulnerable to accidents, disease, and predators. So while there are Galapagos tortoises around today who were frolicking in the water before the American Civil War, there are none that we know of from the days of ancient Greece and Rome. Sooner or later, their luck is bound to run out.

Still, this raises the question: if cells can learn not to age, then why can’t we humans teach our own cells that nifty trick? Mankind has been engaged in that intellectual and scientific odyssey since long before DeSoto went searching in vain for his fabled "fountain of youth," and the search continues today. Open almost any magazine, or turn on late-night TV, and you'll find potions, pills, and powders—from wrinkle creams to vitamins, and much more—that promise to turn back the clock, at least for a while, on our inexorably aging cells.

But what does the newest scientific research tell us, about the possibility of extending our life spans? There’s good news, and bad.

The good news: our life spans are already extended. A child born in America today can expect to live, on average, into his or her late 70s and beyond; whereas a child of colonial Williamsburg, two centuries ago, was fortunate to live to the age of 50. And with our continuing advances in medicine, we can logically expect the length of our lives to keep inching upward, decade by decade.

The bad news is that there are no magic therapies on the horizon to turn back our biological clocks, or even to freeze them in place. The most reliable ways to add years to our lives are by three strategies that aren’t new at all: regular exercise, good nutrition, and maintaining a healthy body weight.

If you’ve been less than rigorous at those life-extending skills in the past, then today—and this website—are a great place and time to start.