Living Longer and Aging More Slowly

The old are not as physically aged as they used to be. Today's old people are in better shape than their predecessors, with access to better medicine and having been exposed to a lesser burden of infectious disease and other causes of cell and tissue damage over the course of a lifetime. Given the pace of progress in medical science these improvements can be seen even over the course of the past few decades. Many of today's researchers look at this and see compression of morbidity, a popular viewpoint in which it is believed that healthy life span can be extended considerably without extending overall life span. This doesn't make a great deal of sense from the viewpoint of aging as a consequence of accumulated biological damage, however. In the damage perspective the risk of death and level of dysfunction and frailty are determined by the present levels of various forms of damage. Reducing the pace at which the damage load increases extends both overall life span and time spent in decline; you can't have one without the other. Making an immediate reduction in damage, such as through some form of rejuvenation treatment, will extend healthy life span and postpone the future decline, but absent further treatments that decline would look exactly the same when it does arrive. The only way in which you might see something that looks like compression of morbidity is if the pace of accumulation for most forms of damage are slowed, but not for one or more late-onset types of damage t...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs