A central truth about growing older, besides the extra familial and financial responsibilities you pick up along the way, is the fact that your poor body kind of falls apart with every passing birthday. Humans are living longer, and yet our bodies as they currently exist are not exactly designed to meet the challenges that advancing age can bring.
And so scientists like S. Jay Olshansky, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, are studying ways to slow the aging process. “More people today are living to 65, 85, and 100 and beyond than ever before, but it has created a Faustian trade,” Olshansky told Reddit in an AMA last week. “In exchange for our longer lives, we now live long enough to experience heart disease, cancer, sensory impairments, and Alzheimer’s disease.”
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Scientists like him, who study longevity, are looking for ways to make the aging process a little less miserable, by extending the number of years that individuals can live healthy lives. Recently, Olshansky gamely answered a wide range of questions on Reddit about his work – here are some of his most fascinating answers.
First things first: What is the best way to measure biological aging?
Interestingly, this is a question that, at least for now, does not have a great answer. “It is generally acknowledged that there are no reliable biomarkers available today that provide a definitive measure of either biological aging or rate of aging, but that doesn’t mean scientists won’t find a reliable bank of biomarkers in the future,” Olshanksy writes. At the moment, the best way of judging a person’s biological aging may also be the most superficial one, he added:
Has the first person to eventually live to their 200th birthday already been born?
No, probably not — and, in fact, this question is almost beside the point. The primary goal of scientists like Olshansky who study longevity is not to extend life, per se; it’s more about extending the healthy years of a person’s life. He writes:
Some are claiming that calorie restriction is the key to slowing the anti-aging process. Is there any truth to that?
No, thank God. Though studies in mice and primates have been promising, Olshansky doubts that these conclusions can directly apply to humans. He explains:
How soon can we expect for some kind of evidence-based anti-aging pill to become available?
Olshansky declined to estimate an actual date, and he also noted that whatever the intervention ends up being, it may or may not arrive in pill form. And yet the idea generally isn’t too far-fetched:
Is there any supplement currently on the market that people can take in the meantime?
In a word, no. “There is nothing on the market today that has been documented to slow aging in humans, period,” he wrote. “If anyone is making that claim, protect your wallet and your body.”
Fine. But what does he do personally to slow down aging in his own body and mind?
This happens to be a question that longevity scientists must answer all the time; as such, he has a finely honed answer:
You can read the rest of the AMA here.
This article was written by Melissa Dahl from Science of Us and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.