Interesting but I am skeptical. People gonna be searching for that fountain of youth forever, and all in vain.

My $0.02 is that when something is introduced into the aging body that turns on the "Fountain of Youth", it is an extremely slippery slope. Good cells growing again too frequently means bad cells (cancer) being fed right along with them. The article mentions as much. Upon first reading, it sounds also like these would end up being performance enhancing drugs, for obvious reasons.

Having said that, I wish them well because I have no urgent need to find out how I fit into my grave. And given the choice of doing triathlon RACING for another 25 years or living a high-quality life for another 50, I know what I would choose. It's a moot point until further notice.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

Hello NealH (that is easy to type) and All,

An attitude of negativity has been expressed in years previous about many diseases that have since been cured in the last 100 years.

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average life expectancy at the beginning of the 20th century was 47.3 years. A century later, that number had increased to 77.85 years, due largely to the development of vaccinations and other treatments for deadly diseases.

Below is a financial reason (keeping in mind that doing triathlons in old age is more important) for the effort and investment to develop a drug (or procedures) to limit cell senescence and other effect of aging to prolong quality human life to a 'drop dead' age.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC4471741/

Excerpt:

"We believe that aging should be seen as a disease, albeit as a disease that is a universal and multisystemic process. Our current healthcare system doesn't recognize the aging process as the underlying cause for the chronic diseases affecting the elderly.

As such, the system is setup to be reactionary and therefore about 32% of total Medicare spending in the United States goes to the last 2 years of life of patients with chronic illnesses, without any significant improvement to their quality of life (Cooper, 1996; Neuberg, 2009)."

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For treating the disease of aging, it is not only drugs bur electronic pacemakers, replacement joints, operations to replace clogged or damaged arteries, eye surgery for clear vision and various disease, hair replacement, gut bacteria replacement, heart ablations, da Vinci robot surgery, ..... and you can probably think of many more .... all extending and improving quality of life for humans. (well maybe not hair replacement)

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

Type 2 diabetes is not an aging problem, it is a lifestyle choice.

Sadly none of this matters since the youth of today are expected to be the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy because of their parents. Obesity is the main culprit for this according to researchers.

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Fit Endurance Coaching - Head Coach|Facebook
USAT L1 Coach | BikeFit Certified Fitter | Contributing Writer - Triathlete Magazine | ROKA

Hello JustinNorCal and All,

http://www.nejm.org/...JMsr043743#t=article

You are mostly correct but there is a vibe out there that says 'maybe not' .....

I tend to agree with you ... but the will to live long is strong ..... and medical science is helping the elderly ......

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28191865



Excerpts:

"But the risk of dying from heart attacks and strokes, both associated with obesity, is in fact lower than in previous decades, according to a leading expert in the field."

"If you take Britain as an example, the probability of dying from the sorts of things caused by being overweight has gone down by a factor of four," says Sir Richard Peto, professor of medical statistics at Oxford University."

The probability of dying before age 50 worldwide is half what it was 40 years agoSir Richard Peto, Oxford University

"If you go back 30 years then the chance we would die from a heart attack or stroke and diseases like that in middle age was 16% whereas it was 4% in 2010."

"This trend is replicated in most parts of the world, in part because the treatment of heart problems is now much better than it used to be.

But some people think that being fatter may actually lengthen rather than shorten life.

Katherine Flegal, an epidemiologist at the National Centre for Health Statistics in Hyattsville Maryland, and her team analysed 97 studies into causes of death and concluded that people deemed "overweight" by international standards were 6% less likely to die than those of "normal" weight."

"But though we may live longer our quality of life may be low.

According to research led by Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, Americans often have to cope with a range of medical problems during those extra years of life.

They are "not necessarily in good health", he told the Wall Street Journal.

Obesity, diabetes, kidney disease and neurological conditions like Alzheimer's are all on the rise, both in the US and in much of the developed world.

So while we can expect extra years, they may not necessarily be golden - which is itself a good reason to stay away from the pies."

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster