Posted on 11/18/2017 10:07:09 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
WASHINGTON, DC – Is old age a disease? Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens [AMAC], says a significant amount of scientific research indicates that aging is, indeed, a disease. “More important there are many who believe it is a disease with a cure.”
Weber cites the work of Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a well-known biomedical gerontologist. His focus is on extending life spans by intervening at the cellular level, repairing damaged cells and in turn extending life.
Some call de Grey a “mad scientist” but there is lots of independent study being conducted by those in the scientific mainstream to indicate that he is on the right track.
Most recently, researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Brighton in the U.K. released the results of a study that showed aging cells can be repaired. They used naturally occurring chemicals to treat aging human cells with remarkable results.
“When I saw some of the cells in the culture dish rejuvenating I couldn’t believe it. These old cells were looking like young cells. It was like magic. I repeated the experiments several times and in each case, the cells rejuvenated. I am very excited by the implications and potential for this research,” according to Exeter’s Dr. Eva Latorre, one the principal authors of the research report.
Meanwhile, notes Weber, the New York Times reports that the study of the human aging process has evolved to the point where the focus is now on what are called “supercentenarians,” individuals who live longest of all.
“It used to be that a person who reached the ripe old age of 100 was a rarity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, recently reported that the number of Americans over the age of 100 has grown by 44% since the year 2000. The U.S. today is home to more than 72,000 centenarians,” says the AMAC chief.
But the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University, a leading medical investigative group concentrating on how we grow old, believes healthy aging is all in the genes, particularly the genes of the very, very old. The Study says on its Web site “the genetic influence becomes greater and greater with older and older ages, especially beyond 103 years of age.”
Whether the cellular approach or the genetic approach is ultimately successful in increasing the life span of more people in the future, Weber points out that living an extra long life can be fraught with financial danger. It will require a whole new way of thinking about retirement. Modern medicine has already extended longevity and that has resulted in fewer of us being able to retire. Many more people these days have given up on the notion of full retirement at the traditional age of 65. We stay in our jobs longer than we might like or we find ways of supplementing our incomes.
But for many elderly Americans, finding work to supplement their incomes is not an option. Social Security is what puts food on their tables. It’s their principal source of income, meager as it might be, and they would face cruel hardships if their monthly checks were cut. For them, the fact that Social Security faces major fiscal challenges in the coming years is a scary prospect.
“We need to focus, as a nation, on how the less fortunate of us will cope in the brave new world of centenarians and supercentenarians. How will they cope with their everyday lives? For them, it is not a benefit—it is a necessity and it is imperative that our lawmakers find and enact the fixes that will keep Social Security viable for the long term. For our part, AMAC remains relentless in its pursuit of solutions in our ongoing meetings with Congressional leaders. We’ve vowed never to give up and we won’t,” says Weber.
ABOUT AMAC
The Association of Mature American Citizens [http://www.amac.us] is a vibrant, vital senior advocacy organization that takes its marching orders from its members. We act and speak on their behalf, protecting their interests and offering a practical insight on how to best solve the problems they face today. Live long and make a difference by joining us today at http://amac.us/join-amac.
Where is wisdom?
Such arrogance!
We’re on the verge of a vast change in medicine. It’s centered on the gut biome. Near term we’ll see non-pharmaceutical treatments for autoimmune diseases. Without chronic and debilitating issues. lifespans on average will increase.
Faster, please.
Death is term limits. In their narcissistic pursuit of eternal life they disregard the evil that would ensue if the likes of Stalin, Mao, or Hitler could have lived for hundreds of years. Better that we take our three score and ten and be glad of it.
Good luck with that, morons!
If NASA is involved this could get serious fast. Will be interesting how the medical and pharmaceutical community responds.
https://www.cnet.com/news/dna-repair-harvard-university-new-south-wales-nmn-nda-nasa-mars/
Discovery could reverse aging and help us live on Mars
Islam is the disease, leave us die in peace.
No fountain of youth will be found. These “scientists” are deathly afraid of the afterlife because they ain’t going to a good place and they know it.
That’s why they’ll do anything to try to live forever on earth.
Dan Weber, you are not GOD.
HEBREWS 9:27
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.
ECCLESIASTES 3:2
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die;
LOL!! It’s not a disease. It’s a curse.
Wow. Could lead to a Hillary candidacy every four years.
Many who hold a literal interpretation of the Old Testament support the idea that a normal lifespan should be measured in hundreds of years.
Hillary could be the heir apparent to Harold Stassen.
How many are truly happy to have reached that century mark? Most people in their late 80s and 90s that I've known have all said "it's time." My uncle is 97 and almost completely blind and deaf. Up until 95, he was sharp as a tack. He's starting to fall more now and his daily walks became too difficult.
It's frightening to contemplate a world where aging has been conquered. The only births we would need would be to replace people killed in accidents, war, murder, and suicide. A world without children would be awful. Think how new ideas would just end and progress in everything would stop without new people with fresh brains coming into being. Would the fixed supply of people continue to innovate? Would people just tire of living and WANT to die? Would healthy and strong 200 year old people no longer care about anything.
I think that you are absolutely correct on that point. All these antibiotics and fad diets do damage to the essential bacteria in your gut. When you start arbitrarily restricting entire food groups from your balanced common sense diet you are going to alter the makeup of your gut bacteria. You do it long enough and long term problems will result.
We have seen this in vegetarians in the past, now we are seeing problems in people who are restricting "carbs", etc. from their diets. With the vegetarians it was characterized by hair loss, certain types of skin problems and anemia. With some of the more recent fad diets the consequences have been much more serious... cardiac and other internal organ failure. The amazing thing to me is how we humans when faced with better health and increasing life spans always manage to find some way to allow simple stupidity to help reverse the trend.
The other thing that I found interesting in the article was their focus on financial issues related to a longer life span. I have been much busier since I retired than when I was “working”. A good percentage of my efforts have gone towards profitable endeavors. This is not a bad thing... healthy people of any age enjoy engaging in useful and profitable endeavors.
It is when you stop accomplishing useful tasks that you begin to feel worthless and die. The article has a lot of hand wringing over nothing on this topic. I think the article was written by a young person who has little experience with the elderly.
I don’t mind the intent, but I can see lots of us dying from boredom if we live for hundreds of years. The more that things change and all that.
That’s why I ignore advice from some dieticians to stop eating potatoes altogether. Potatoes, according to another FReeper, make your gut bacteria happy, and that’s essential. I’m also a C-Diff carrier, so I especially need to be sure I have happy gut bacteria, so the C-Diff won’t run wild and destroy my large intestine.
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