As the baby boomers get older, a larger and larger segment of the population is very interesting in anything about anti-aging. Be it special creams, surgery, nutrition, genetic manipulation, hyperbaric chambers, there are many avenues of research. Some people will have you believe that anti-aging is not possible. I think this is untrue, but it requires that the concept of anti-aging be defined properly. Obviously, you cant get any younger. Time affects each of us in the same way. We are all moving forward as the clock ticks off each second. Aging, however, is not necessarily an event that occurs as a strict function of time. Consider two cars of the same make a model, being driven off the lot at exactly the same time. One car is maintained very well. Repairs are addressed quickly. Salt is never left on the body or the underside. Fluids are changed on a regular basis. The other vehicle is driven hard, rarely cleaned and is never given a single oil change. At 40,000 miles, the cars should already be operating differently. At 100,000 miles, it is likely that the second car is no longer running. It aged more quickly than the other car, even though they are equally old. The same is true for the human body, with an interesting exception. The human body is made from living cells. They regenerate constantly which means that you are not stuck with the cells you have today. Tomorrow you will already have about 400 billion new cells. Given a healthy diet containing appropriate levels of nutrition and a limited intake of preservatives and other chemicals which you body not only does not need, but can even harm you, the number of healthy cells in your body will gradually increase and the number of less-healthy cells will decrease. This amounts to anti-aging as the cumulative effects of the aging process lessen over time. Imagine if removing the rust from a spot on a car resulted in the metal being able to heal. It doesnt because its not alive. Your body is alive though and it does heal when you remove the source of damage. Because of this, improved nutrition should be considered a critical component to any anti-aging approach. Heres the catch. It seems the human body may have certain timers which have an impact over things like how tall you are, when you enter puberty, and so on. Some of these timers may also slow down hormone production and there may be timers, which ultimately end your life at some maximum life span. Some of these things may be helped with nutrition. For example, hormone balance can be greatly affected, both positively and negatively, by nutrition. Other so-called timers may be normal biology and therefore happen no matter what you do. Some of these timers might be affected by genetic manipulation, but no such technology exists so dont believe any claims about changing your DNA to extend your life for about another 50 years. Either you support normal biology in an effort to bolster your potential for optimal health or you manipulate normal biology and do something that is unnatural. There is no third option. Its your body so choose wisely. |
