Forever Young
JANUARY 25, 2008 TAGS:
By Julia M. Klein
Illustration by Jorge Naranjo
When I was a child, I was convinced that death could be avoided by an act of will. By the time my father died and I turned 50, death seemed to lurk around every corner. Perhaps this middle-aged entanglement with mortality is inevitable, but if so, it's an inevitability that the Baby Boom generation seems primed to resist.
For the leading edge of our generation, after all, youth was a time of literal highs, of Sixties vows not to trust anyone over 30. Now, tragically, impossibly, with the media trumpeting the attendant ironies, these erstwhile rebels and fellow travelers have begun their latest march: into the 60s and looming senescence.
Not so fast, though. So says an avalanche of recent tomes promising to guide us to a 21st-century, scientifically sourced fountain of youth. Their very titles are enticements, siren songs. Take just three of the latest primers:
The first two " authored by physicians " belong to the ever-proliferating self-help genre. They're readable and replete with plans and recipes, tips and tests. They aim to lead us on a quest: through the realms of better sleep, exercise, diet, and health to the nirvana of robust, long life.
Ending Aging (St. Martin's Press), by the biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, is in a category of its own. At once a radical scientific manifesto and an unabashed fund-raising brief for his aptly named Methusaleh Foundation, the book envisions a true " and not so distant " Shangri-La. In this paradisiacal future, where advanced biomedical techniques repair the genetic and cellular damage aging inflicts, human beings may live to be 1,000 years old, with (presumably) nary a push-up required.
De Grey's book, written with his research assistant Michael Rae, juxtaposes utopian pronouncements with dense scientific explanations guaranteed to tax the comprehension of lay readers. Nevertheless, it has already garnered respectful coverage in such mainstream outlets as AARP The Magazine and The Washington Post, which headlined its recent de Grey profile "The Invincible Man."
De Grey argues that our culture is stuck in a "pro-aging trance" " a claim apparently contradicted by the plethora of bestselling anti-aging tracts crowding bookstores. True enough, de Grey concedes, "the anti-aging industry is huge," but he differentiates its panaceas from his own far more sweeping approach. De Grey calls his program SENS " "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" " which, let's face it, isn't the catchiest acronym in the world. But its goal is surely compelling: "the elimination of the almost incalculable amount of suffering … that aging currently visits upon us." Who isn't for that?
The key to SENS is not changing the metabolism of aging, but fixing the damage after it occurs. "Aging," writes de Grey, "… is merely a maintenance problem." He proposes a seven-part fix, focusing on such discrete problems as cell loss and atrophy, "junk" inside and outside cells, and cancer. Stem cell research is part of his plan; so are the elimination of toxic cells, the use of enzymes to clear away "junk" in our body, and the provision of backup copies of mitochondrial DNA. One important hurdle is to try out these techniques on mice, to achieve what de Grey calls Robust Mouse Rejuvenation, or RMR; with that accomplished, he suggests, enough research money will materialize to quickly make SENS a reality for human beings.
Interestingly, some of the same new science of aging underpins the two self-help volumes, which also throw around terms like "telomeres" and "free radicals" (don't ask). These books, too, insist that we can slow the pace and repair the ravages of aging " even if we can't stop it entirely. But, as one would expect, Mark Liponis's UltraLongevity (Little, Brown) and Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz's You: Staying Young (Free Press) detail lifestyle changes that we can undertake immediately. In other words, their focus is more on the gym and the kitchen than the laboratory.
Liponis, also the author of UltraPrevention, is the medical director of Canyon Ranch Health Resorts, a group of well-regarded and pricey spas. Many of his remedies " all couched as means of keeping our "immune system" from becoming "overactive" " will seem familiar enough to spa habitués. The seven steps he spells out involve learning to breathe, eat and sleep properly, as well as to dance, love, soothe and enhance your life. His definition of "dance" covers any rhythmic exercise. "Soothe" encompasses everything from airing out your house " a tip that prompted me to throw open my French doors to the January chill " to aromatherapy massages. And "enhance" includes a dizzying list of vitamins and nutritional supplements that finally inspired me to dip into a bottle of multivitamins I'd bought last February.
You: Staying Young is just the latest in a series of bestselling You books " the perfect title, one suspects, for the narcissistically inclined Me Generation. Its guiding metaphor is the notion of the human body as a city, with arteries like roadways and the brain like an energy grid. Filled with sidebars and cartoon illustrations designed to keep its demands on post-literate readers relatively light, the book covers a dazzling range of factors that it calls "major agers." The goal, Roizen and Oz say, is "to slow your aging on the cellular level" " a perspective that clearly evokes de Grey's bioengineering.
Instead, Roizen and Oz offer a personal armamentarium whose weaponry includes the gentle martial arts practice of chi-gong, meditation, green tea, daily walks, flossing and regular sex. For women, there is a detailed chapter on the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy during menopause, a topic that seems to elude medical consensus. Roizen and Oz are favorably inclined, saying that the right hormone combination (along with aspirin to reduce the risk of clotting) will allow women "a prolonged higher quality of life." Finally, where Liponis supplies eight days worth of recipes, You: Staying Young diagrams a series of exercises and chi-gong techniques.
Will any of this work? Will the right combo of pills and leg lifts really ward off aging and disease? It's hard to say. But, in the end, even de Grey seems to concede some benefit to these lifestyle changes. "Eat well, exercise and support the Methusaleh Foundation," he writes " and we'll all live to see "the dark specter of the age plague driven away by the sunshine of perpetual youth." Certainly, it is pretty to think so.
Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.
Illustration by Jorge Naranjo
When I was a child, I was convinced that death could be avoided by an act of will. By the time my father died and I turned 50, death seemed to lurk around every corner. Perhaps this middle-aged entanglement with mortality is inevitable, but if so, it's an inevitability that the Baby Boom generation seems primed to resist.
For the leading edge of our generation, after all, youth was a time of literal highs, of Sixties vows not to trust anyone over 30. Now, tragically, impossibly, with the media trumpeting the attendant ironies, these erstwhile rebels and fellow travelers have begun their latest march: into the 60s and looming senescence.
Not so fast, though. So says an avalanche of recent tomes promising to guide us to a 21st-century, scientifically sourced fountain of youth. Their very titles are enticements, siren songs. Take just three of the latest primers:
- UltraLongevity: The Seven Step-Program for a Younger, Healthier You
- You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty
- Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime.
The first two " authored by physicians " belong to the ever-proliferating self-help genre. They're readable and replete with plans and recipes, tips and tests. They aim to lead us on a quest: through the realms of better sleep, exercise, diet, and health to the nirvana of robust, long life.
Ending Aging (St. Martin's Press), by the biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, is in a category of its own. At once a radical scientific manifesto and an unabashed fund-raising brief for his aptly named Methusaleh Foundation, the book envisions a true " and not so distant " Shangri-La. In this paradisiacal future, where advanced biomedical techniques repair the genetic and cellular damage aging inflicts, human beings may live to be 1,000 years old, with (presumably) nary a push-up required.
De Grey's book, written with his research assistant Michael Rae, juxtaposes utopian pronouncements with dense scientific explanations guaranteed to tax the comprehension of lay readers. Nevertheless, it has already garnered respectful coverage in such mainstream outlets as AARP The Magazine and The Washington Post, which headlined its recent de Grey profile "The Invincible Man."
De Grey argues that our culture is stuck in a "pro-aging trance" " a claim apparently contradicted by the plethora of bestselling anti-aging tracts crowding bookstores. True enough, de Grey concedes, "the anti-aging industry is huge," but he differentiates its panaceas from his own far more sweeping approach. De Grey calls his program SENS " "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" " which, let's face it, isn't the catchiest acronym in the world. But its goal is surely compelling: "the elimination of the almost incalculable amount of suffering … that aging currently visits upon us." Who isn't for that?
The key to SENS is not changing the metabolism of aging, but fixing the damage after it occurs. "Aging," writes de Grey, "… is merely a maintenance problem." He proposes a seven-part fix, focusing on such discrete problems as cell loss and atrophy, "junk" inside and outside cells, and cancer. Stem cell research is part of his plan; so are the elimination of toxic cells, the use of enzymes to clear away "junk" in our body, and the provision of backup copies of mitochondrial DNA. One important hurdle is to try out these techniques on mice, to achieve what de Grey calls Robust Mouse Rejuvenation, or RMR; with that accomplished, he suggests, enough research money will materialize to quickly make SENS a reality for human beings.
Interestingly, some of the same new science of aging underpins the two self-help volumes, which also throw around terms like "telomeres" and "free radicals" (don't ask). These books, too, insist that we can slow the pace and repair the ravages of aging " even if we can't stop it entirely. But, as one would expect, Mark Liponis's UltraLongevity (Little, Brown) and Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz's You: Staying Young (Free Press) detail lifestyle changes that we can undertake immediately. In other words, their focus is more on the gym and the kitchen than the laboratory.
Liponis, also the author of UltraPrevention, is the medical director of Canyon Ranch Health Resorts, a group of well-regarded and pricey spas. Many of his remedies " all couched as means of keeping our "immune system" from becoming "overactive" " will seem familiar enough to spa habitués. The seven steps he spells out involve learning to breathe, eat and sleep properly, as well as to dance, love, soothe and enhance your life. His definition of "dance" covers any rhythmic exercise. "Soothe" encompasses everything from airing out your house " a tip that prompted me to throw open my French doors to the January chill " to aromatherapy massages. And "enhance" includes a dizzying list of vitamins and nutritional supplements that finally inspired me to dip into a bottle of multivitamins I'd bought last February.
You: Staying Young is just the latest in a series of bestselling You books " the perfect title, one suspects, for the narcissistically inclined Me Generation. Its guiding metaphor is the notion of the human body as a city, with arteries like roadways and the brain like an energy grid. Filled with sidebars and cartoon illustrations designed to keep its demands on post-literate readers relatively light, the book covers a dazzling range of factors that it calls "major agers." The goal, Roizen and Oz say, is "to slow your aging on the cellular level" " a perspective that clearly evokes de Grey's bioengineering.
Instead, Roizen and Oz offer a personal armamentarium whose weaponry includes the gentle martial arts practice of chi-gong, meditation, green tea, daily walks, flossing and regular sex. For women, there is a detailed chapter on the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy during menopause, a topic that seems to elude medical consensus. Roizen and Oz are favorably inclined, saying that the right hormone combination (along with aspirin to reduce the risk of clotting) will allow women "a prolonged higher quality of life." Finally, where Liponis supplies eight days worth of recipes, You: Staying Young diagrams a series of exercises and chi-gong techniques.
Will any of this work? Will the right combo of pills and leg lifts really ward off aging and disease? It's hard to say. But, in the end, even de Grey seems to concede some benefit to these lifestyle changes. "Eat well, exercise and support the Methusaleh Foundation," he writes " and we'll all live to see "the dark specter of the age plague driven away by the sunshine of perpetual youth." Certainly, it is pretty to think so.
Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.
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