Ageing- Necessary Evil or Curable Malady?
Recently scientists have begun to look at ageing in a different way than ever before. In the past ageing was seen as an inevitable and underlying force of nature. As the saying goes – death and taxes… right? Dr David Sinclair of Harvard University has challenged this, and recently stated, “the first person to live past 120 years has already been born”.
In the last ten years a unique perspective on ageing has begun to emerge. Regardless of what ageing “really” is, from a practical, medical perspective ageing appears to be, more-or-less, a set of symptoms that worsen over time leading to age-related illnesses. These “symptoms” of ageing are things like the decline of NAD+, a fundamental process in the body for energy creation within our cells – without which we cannot survive. Or, for instance, the ability of the body to replicate cells and kill off old cells – leading to a build-up of old cells over time and corresponding physical deterioration.
So, if this is the case, can these symptoms be treated in the same way that any other disease might be treated? Or even prevented. Increasingly, the answer to the first question is a resounding yes. Some activities such as fasting; and taking supplements such as NMN (that boost declining production of NAD+) appear to “switch on” key processes that significantly slow the decline of these key body functions that we are calling the aging process.
This is not simply playing with words (disease/death) – in fact, the WHO has recently listed death as a “disease”, ultimately implying that there are a finite and identifiable set of symptoms which should presume possible cures, thereby opening up avenues to funding and research that were not traditionally considered relevant for this topic.
Now that we better understand these fundamental symptoms that we call ageing, we are also able to evaluate how they are measured and thereby how they present in a healthy person of, say, 20 years old; in comparison with someone who is 50. For instance, blood glucose for a 50-year-old compared to a 20-year-old will be different. This is what scientists are calling “biological age”. And if they are correct, reversals of all the key indicators or markers logically give us a reversal of our “biological age”.
We now know what we believe to be the full set of ageing symptoms (even if we are sometimes uncertain as to their root causes or complexities), and scientists are now working to better understand the activities, supplements and drugs that target these symptoms causing what looks to be slowing and, in many cases, reversal of biological age. So, what’s the next big question?
I would hazard a guess that the question on everyone’s lips is “how does our biological age relate to our natural, or birth, age?”. Does a reversal of biological age equate to an actual lengthening of life and what happens when we are in the position, sometime in the seemingly near future, to reverse more than we age – do we simply keep living? Dr Sinclair thinks this is so, and moreover argues that we are currently able to claw back around 3 months per year – and this gap is shortening as we speak. Ultimately, he argues, once we can claw back one year every year, the ageing process at a biological level, at least, essentially stops. While this seems incomprehensible, the logic at least is sound; and the latest experiments in gene therapy etc. appear to show rapid promise in this direction. Dr Sinclair’s answer, which I like, claw back what biological age you can and as research develops improve your gains alongside it. I for one will take that advice. If nothing else, you're living longer and healthier – and who knows, maybe in the not-too-distant-future it's only taxes that will hold out the cool hand of inevitability…
Jason Pilkington