Aging is An Enemy, So Fight it.

Aging saps our strength and ability to enjoy life, cripples us, and eventually kills us. Tens of millions die from medical conditions caused by aging each and every year. Yet the risk of suffering these conditions in later life can be greatly reduced for most people through diet and exercise. Furthermore, serious scientific efforts are presently underway to understand and intervene in the aging process - not just to prevent frailty and disease, but to also repair and reverse the root causes of aging.

In future decades researchers will assemble new biotechnologies that can defeat aging, restore the old to health and vigor, and prevent the young from ever suffering the ravages of age. Some of these future therapies are already understood and envisioned in some detail, but yet remain in the early stages of research. We would like these breakthroughs to happen while we are still alive and in good health to benefit: we miss out on so much as things stand today, pressed by the lack of time and our increasing frailty with age. Imagine instead a world in which everyone has the option of another tomorrow, and the health and vigor to enjoy it, each and every day. But how can we achieve this goal?

The Limited Means of Today, the Biotechnologies of Tomorrow

Present day medical technologies are far advanced over those available to our ancestors - and as a result we suffer far less than they did. Yet modern medicine can achieve little in comparison to what scientists know is possible for the future. Despite amazing advances in understanding and treating age-related conditions (such as cancer, heart disease, dementia, diabetes, and many others), and despite the cries of the anti-aging marketplace, it is still the case that, for basically healthy people, no presently available therapy or tool can produce even a fraction of the long-term benefits to health and life expectancy provided by regular exercise or a calorie restricted diet.

No existing and available medical technology can improve on these lifestyle choices here and now, today. But if you look to the laboratories, you will see that some researchers can greatly extend the healthy lives of many species, while others put forward clear plans to either slow aging through the manipulation of human metabolism or reverse aging by repairing the biological damage that causes age-related degeneration.

This future awaits, as time ticks away and for now we continue to age just like our ancestors. Yet this is an era of rapid progress in biotechnology and medicine. As the years pass, the remaining span of healthy life that you and I will likely live to enjoy is ever more determined by the ability of clinical medicine to revert and repair the causes of aging, and ever less determined by lifestyle choices. Thus when we reach for longer, healthier lives, it is vital that we lend our support to the research and development of therapies capable of treating the causes of aging. We must ensure that the public is educated, the fundamental longevity science is funded, the clinical applications of that research fully developed, and the resulting rejuvenation biotechnologies made available - and all this as soon as possible. The clock is ticking, after all, and this is the only approach that will allow us live for significantly longer than our ancestors.

Three Steps Toward Longevity

The following three steps outline a starting point for living longer, a sketch of a framework for thinking about healthy life extension:

Step 1: Stop Damaging Your Health
Step 2: Adopt a Better Diet and Lifestyle
Step 3: Support Progress in Longevity Science
Step 1: Stop Damaging Your Health

At its most basic level, aging is nothing more than an accumulation of damage; breakages in the molecular machinery of your cells, a build up of metabolic waste products that your body cannot break down, the flailing of biological systems that are increasingly unable to cope. Ask yourself this: are you damaging yourself more rapidly than you might otherwise be, perhaps more than you realize? Do you smoke? Do recreational drugs oc