At first glance, aging may appear to be an inexorable process of wear-and-tear. But that doesn’t have to be the case! There are ways of slowing the progression of time.
Scientists have developed ways to slow aging by getting enough sleep, eating well and remaining physically active. But imagine if we could reverse the aging process altogether: this would be revolutionary!
What is aging?
Aging is a natural part of life that will happen over time. Over time, our bodies become more susceptible to illness, injury and death as cells start breaking down, often genetically determined but also affected by environmental factors and lifestyle choices. Although the process cannot be reversed completely, there are ways of slowing it down such as avoiding stress (which damages cells), eating healthily, exercising regularly and resting well – these could all contribute to slowing aging down significantly.
Scientists have long debated what causes aging; today they understand that various mechanisms contribute to it such as shortening of telomeres, accumulation of DNA damage and metabolic changes that reduce our body’s ability to repair itself and cope with stress.
Researchers have also investigated how environmental influences can have an effect on aging, finding that people’s homes and communities play an essential part in how fast their bodies age. Furthermore, heart disease and cancer appear more often among older individuals than younger ones.
One of the most exciting innovations of recent years has been a method allowing scientists to accelerate the aging of living cells, potentially making possible studies on diseases associated with aging like Alzheimer’s and cancer without using young animals or tissue as models. Scientists first started using this method back in 2007, yet have only just recently been able to mimic it on people.
How does aging occur?
Aging is a natural process that occurs at a cellular level. As cells gradually lose the ability to divide and multiply, this causes build-up of cellular damage which eventually results in cell death – leading to less efficient organ functioning and eventually heart disease and cancer.
Cellular aging is caused by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including genetic predispositions that occur over time, as well as environmental influences like lifestyle choices or stress levels. Although cellular aging cannot be reversed entirely without medical intervention, some medications can help slow or even reverse it.
Scientists have recently discovered ways to halt the aging process at its source: cells. By altering how cells work, researchers can make them behave like younger cells – potentially helping prevent signs of aging such as wrinkles and baldness.
One of the primary changes associated with growing older is losing muscle mass. This occurs because muscles consist of individual cells, and as people get older these cells break down faster than they can be replaced. To offset this decline it’s essential to eat a diet rich in proteins and fibers.
As people get older, their body tends to produce less fat cells due to cells producing fat not replicating as quickly. Therefore, fat accumulation increases, making a person look older.
Recent scientific discoveries have demonstrated that an individual’s biological age often differs from their chronological age, due to various factors like remaining disease-free well into their ninth or tenth decade of life compared to developing age-related illnesses earlier.
Researchers at the Salk Institute published in 2016 found that Yamanaka factors could turn back time on progeric mouse cells using Yamanaka factors and then applied this approach to human cells, where it helped delay aging and improve performance across tissues such as skin and kidneys. They were also able to reverse aging in progeria mice cells by treating their progeroid conditions – significantly extending lifespans of such mice by this means.
How can we reverse aging?
Though it’s impossible to turn back time completely, it may be possible to slow your biological clock by following some basic lifestyle practices. Eating well, staying active and managing stress all contribute to slowing your metabolic rate; ultimately helping your body adapt more easily to aging processes.
Scientists are also exploring methods to slow the aging process at the cellular level, with promising results seen in simple organisms. Some scientists have observed that injecting certain genes can reset cell epigenetics and make cells look younger – with hopes of developing techniques which could reverse aging processes and extend lifespan.
An alternative method involves converting adult cells to embryonic stem cells and then reprogramming them back to mature cells through reprogramming, with this process helping regenerate organs and restore function in patients suffering from genetic mutations that lead to disease. Scientists are currently testing this approach on animals. Harvard researchers have undertaken some of the most exciting work into reversing aging by virally injecting genes into mice that reverse genetic aging clocks; their work led to improved vision and longer lifespans in mice as a result; now scientists are planning trials on human patients as well.
Resetting the aging clock could make testing drugs for diseases like Alzheimer’s easier for scientists. Typically, scientists study how these medications affect young animals or tissues – which don’t accurately represent conditions causing such diseases in people. Reversing aging in mice creates older mice which more accurately reflect human patients and makes testing anti-ageing treatments much simpler.
If these studies prove fruitful, they could offer hope for many chronic and debilitating diseases plaguing society today. But any potential anti-ageing therapies could take decades before going through clinical trials and being approved by the FDA.
What are the risks of reversing aging?
There are various strategies we can employ to delay aging and extend our healthspans, from eating well-balanced diets and limiting stress to screening regularly for common diseases like cancer and heart disease; we may even use supplements which promote cognitive function while decreasing its negative effects.
However, these treatments tend to focus solely on reducing the appearance of aging rather than targeting its cause – biological mechanisms that cause ageing in the first place. Researchers are exploring various approaches for understanding aging processes so technology can be created to reverse them at a cellular level.
Before this happens, human longevity will likely remain limited to incremental increases in our healthy lifespans. Though humans could eventually take a Ship of Theseus approach and replace biological parts with synthetic ones in future times, such advancements remain more sci-fi than real world right now.
Humans cannot reverse the aging process yet; for now it is best to focus on avoiding cell damage through preventative medicine and leading a healthy lifestyle. That is why biological age – which measures how old cells are – is so crucial. By investing in your cell health you can cut years off of biological age and extend healthy lifespan; that makes aging much less daunting! Darren currently resides in Portland with his cat and writes/edits articles related to how our world functions for Gizmodo and Paste magazines.
