Fountains of youth and magic elixirs have been touted for millennia, each illusion tantalizing
many, and disappointing all. That era has ended, replaced by the awesome science of anti-aging.
New strategies are evolving to improve and prolong the function of practically every part of the
body, organs like the heart, brain, kidney, lung, and more.

Optimism that human healthspans and lifespans will be extended is boundless. Here is what the
CEO of a UK-based anti-aging biotech said recently as he likened the outcome of anti-aging
research to the study of flight. “In 1903, two brothers flew a glorified kite for 14 seconds, the
Kitty Hawk. Fifteen years later they were flying planes in WWI, and 35 years later, the Germans
had invented the jet. Sixty-five years later we landed a man on the moon. For robotics and for
aging, divide that number by 10. That’s how fast this is going to happen.” (see here)

Geneticists and Biochemists

Over the past few decades geneticists have identified gene variants that extend the lifespans of
multiple species. Simultaneously we’ve learned how individual lifestyles influence
our epigenome, that clever regulator that follows through and turns our genes on, or turns them
off (See here). And biochemists have unraveled intricate pathways within our cells that influence
the rate at which they age.

Researchers have learned how to stimulate autophagy (we’ve talked about that neat process
here and here), the housekeeping maneuver by which our cells maintain their health, as well as
mitophagy, a related process that renews our mitochondria (the organelles that supply most of
the chemical energy needed to power the cell’s biochemical reactions.)
Autophagy and mitophagy improve health and very likely prolong life.

Other sources of information

As the title indicates, this is merely an introductory peek. Any single sentence above could be
expanded to full book length by scientists in the field (which I am not), so I am staying simplistic
here. But many of the details are absolutely fascinating. If you would like a check out some the
marvelous things being discovered, you can find further information in either of these two
reviews (here, and here).

All that glistens is not gold

One must proceed with caution. There still are plenty of useless nostrums for sale. The CEO I
quoted above also said this. “There’s an enormous number of charlatans . . . Walk into your local
drugstore, you’re going to see about 50 products that claim to be anti-aging, and I can assure you
that none of them are.”

Here is what someone wrote in 2014: Gullible America will spend this year some seventy-five
millions of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. In consideration of this sum it will
swallow huge quantities of alcohol, an appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a wide
assortment of varied drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart depressants to insidious
liver stimulants; and, far in excess of all other ingredients, undiluted fraud.  (See here)\

But there are good products too

Although there is lots of worthless products out there, even dangerous ones,
there are good ones as well. Some have great potential. I plan to describe a number of those in
future posts, offering more about the awesome science of anti-aging.

Featured Image Cartoon from: <a href=’https://www.freepik.com/vectors/different-ages’>Different ages vector created by pch.vector – www.freepik.com</a>