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C-VILLE’s Monthly Guide to Navigating Senior Living Options in Central Virginia

Our staff can assist in answering your questions about: Home delivered meals Affordable senior housing options Adult care centers Home care Medicare and ACA counseling Caregiver support Many other resources in the community

Make JABA’S Senior Helpline your first call. (434) 817-5244

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The Problem with the “Anti-Aging” Trend

March 30 - April 5, 2022 c-ville.com

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Everyone is aging. From the moment we are born we begin growing and changing. So why then, at a certain point along that continuum, do we rebel and freak out against that process? A Google search on aging reveals what I’m talking about. You’ll inevitably find articles and advertisements about “anti-aging cures” and reports on medical research and developments that promise to “fight” aging or eliminate it. Indeed, multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos has invested in a bio-tech company called Altos

Labs, which promises to halt the aging process through “cellular reprogramming” and other new technologies. “Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at, “ wrote Bezos in a letter to Amazon shareholders when he stepped down as CEO last year. “ … If living things don’t actively work to prevent it, they would eventually merge with their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.” And this sort of thing is not only

the obsession of multi-billionaires. According to P&S Intelligence, the global anti-aging market is expected to grow from $191.5 billion currently to $421.4 billion by 2030. What are we to make of all this? Again, we can turn to science. A recent study published in Nature Communications addressed the question of whether or not we can slow the rate of aging. Researchers pointed out that primates (humans) actually enjoy relatively long lifespans when compared to other species and found that there’s a direct connection between “life expectancy at birth and lifespan equality in a diverse set of human populations.” In other words, attention given to the health of infants, and declining infant mortality rates, has been one of the main reasons why more people are living longer, healthier lives. What’s more, the study found that human lifespans remain generally fixed due to biological constraints and that “lifespan equality” is the real issue. For instance, while Thomas Jefferson, who died at 83, made it to the higher end of a typical human lifespan, life expectancy at birth during that time was 40 years old. Since then, due to advances in medicine and a variety of economic, environmental and societal factors life expectancy at birth in the U.S. has increased dramatically, to 80 years old in 2020, but the typical biological human lifespan has remained largely unchanged. Today, in developed nations, deaths are typically concentrated

near the end of human lifespans, whereas in less developed nations those deaths may be spread across different ages. The same could be said about people in various socio-economic situations within a population. In other words, our quality of life as we age, not anti-aging cures, are what will likely allow us to “stave off death” and live longer, healthier lives. So, then, what is the current obsession with “anti-aging” and “curing and fighting” aging all about? Well, you could say that fantasies about finding the “Fountain of Youth” have always been a part of our mythologies, and that now we like to think that technology can provide that. Indeed, one of the scientists involved with Altos Labs has called cellular reprogramming technology the “elixir of life.” Of course, while much of this isn’t so much about wanting to cheat death and more about not wanting to look prematurely old, it amounts to a refusal to accept aging and a prejudice against aging. According to the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, who believed the denial of aging and death was a cultural cruelty, that’s a recipe for disaster. “The minute you pit yourself against nature, the minute you pit yourself with your mind against change,” Dass wrote, “you are asking for suffering.” Remember, the aging process began the moment you were born, and it’s happening as you read this. Relax.

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