What good is eternal life if we can’t stay young?

life

Longer lives seem attractive, but as we age we become susceptible to a host of late-life diseases that can prevent us from enjoying our later years. But science is beginning to create ways to increase our healthspan, not just our lifespan.

Research is starting to tease out ways of tackling the problem, according to a recent paper in Nature, from obvious fixes like increasing exercise and eating less to more exotic interventions so far only tested in animals that could eventually help rejuvenate us.

Obviously there’s some low-hanging fruit—not smoking, drinking less, and doing regular exercise are surefire ways to boost your lifespan.

There are also more radical approaches to preventing aging that are just starting to enter the mainstream. Senescent cells, which stop dividing and leak damaging inflammatory chemicals into their surroundings, have long been implicated in aging. A recent study found that using a pair of drugs to wipe them out boosted the lives of old mice by 36 percent.

How many of these interventions will prove effective in humans and how many people will stick to them remains to be seen, but what’s clear is that aging need not be inevitable. The elixir of eternal youth may not be as far off as we think.

Read full, original post: Eternal Life Is No Good Without Eternal Youth

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