Breadcrumb Trail Links

Much of the anti-aging focus isnt about radical life extension or ageless bodies, but rather about dodging the bad stuff until the final years of life

Publishing date:

Aging is getting so old.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Paul McCartney, who turned 80 in June, likes to cap his workouts by balancing on his head, feet in the air, for five minutes and credits yoga ocular exercises (look up, centre, down, diagonally, and then around and around) for keeping his eyesight sharp.

Gloria Steinem, 88, is offering American women seeking abortions the guest room in her Manhattan home. Dont agonize. Organize, the feminist icon told pro-choice supporters after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Harrison Ford, who turned 80 in July, has a fifth Indiana Jones film scheduled for release next year. Beloved British actor Patrick Stewart, 82, who shares a birthday with Ford, recently wrapped up shooting season three of his series Star Trek: Picard and was still rocking a toned midsection and biceps at 75. I dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden (91 in August) does resistance training and eats like a carnivore. I like steak.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

In Canada, Jean Chrtien, 88, is funny and sharp as ever and recently scored as the most popular prime minister in modern Canadian history. Gordon Lightfoot, 83, who has a piece of steel and 10 pins in his right wrist after fracturing the joint last fall is among the scheduled headliners at this summers Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. None of us is getting any younger, the legendary octogenarian singer-songwriter told the Toronto Sun last fall. Were all aware of that. And if we can be doing it, we might as well be doing it.

And, yeah, theyre doing it. Eighty is the new 60, or so the buzzy trope goes. The extension of life is one of the great medical and social miracles of the last century. Life expectancy in Canada in the year 1900 was 51. When parliament passed the Medical Care Act in 1966, men could expect to see their high 60s, women 75. Were now sitting at just under 80 for men, and 84 for women. Nearly one in five of us are 65 or older. Centenarians, the 100 and older, are the fastest-growing age demographic in the country.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Its the triumph of aging, said Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai and the University Health Network hospitals in Toronto. Were seeing lots more people, an incredible number, who are living at much older ages and surviving to those ages in relatively good health.

Its true that people who make it to 100 and beyond dont necessarily make it there in perfect health; half will be living with some form of cognitive impairment, though they do manage problems like heart troubles or stroke remarkably well. And yes, people are living longer, but not universally or uniformly so.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Its largely a benefit of the rich and the middle class, said bioethicist Arthur Caplan. In some countries, if you make it to 50 youre lucky. The poor do not live longer, said Caplan, head of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Almost eight million adults in Canada are obese. Moderate obesity takes, on average, three years off a persons life. Severe obesity, 10 years.

Women generally outlive men. Those kinds of demographics get lost in the 80 is the new 60 buzz, Caplan said. Are you getting first-rate health care? Do you have access to a good, varied, nutritious diet? Do you exercise? Are you in a situation where theres not a lot of stress and worry?

There are hints about whats going on diet, decent health care, more healthy habits, more years in school, it helps to be rich that dont involve any big mysteries.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Fewer children dying from infant infections and diseases, more women surviving childbirth, sanitation, vaccines, antibiotics, surgeries, earlier and better management of high blood pressure and coronary artery disease and strides in cancer care also brought us here. In the 60s and 70s we started realizing smoking was really bad for you, said Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the large and long-running New England Centenarian Study. Make it to 65 in Canada today, and you can expect about 20 years of life expectancy ahead of you, Sinha said. The good news is fewer numbers of those extra years are going to be spent in poor health. Things that would have killed us decades ago like a heart attack or stroke now Ive had people whove had multiple heart attacks and strokes and are still ticking along and youre like, wow, because of the advent of medical science.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Dementia is among the most dreaded diseases of the old. But because of efforts to identify and modify risk factors like high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol we actually have fewer people living with dementia today than we thought wed have 10 or 20 years ago, Sinha said.

Much of the anti-aging focus isnt about radical life extension or ageless bodies envisioned by immortalists, but rather about compressing morbidity, dodging the bad stuff until the final years of life and slowing the onset of age-related dysfunction, so that people live well, and then die suddenly. Youre here, and then youre not.

The oldest human on record is Jeanne Calment, a French woman who died at age 122 in 1997 and who was still riding a bike at 100 and chain-smoking until the age of 117. A Japanese woman, Kana Tanaka, died in April, aged 119. She was chatty, liked soft drinks and board games and worked until she was 103.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

In the aging and longevity spheres, many millions are being sunk into regenerative medicine using cell-based therapies to reprogram cells and wind them back to more youthful states to repair or replace damaged tissue, from battered joint cartilage to scarred heart muscle. Researchers are testing the potential of metformin, the most widely prescribed anti-diabetes drug in the world, and other senolytic drugs to clear out undead senescent cells, so-called zombie cells that are haggard and old and have stopped proliferating but that refuse to die off. Instead, they loiter, oozing inflammatory molecules that drive age-related damage to tissues throughout the body.

Another movement is to push out the lifespan through genetic enhancement, finding ways to manipulate or mimic survival genes that increase longevity. Forget the free radicals and lets all pop antioxidants theory, says Harvard molecular biologist David Sinclair. We have the technology, Im telling you today, to be able to go into our hundreds without worrying about getting cancer in your 70s, heart disease in your 80s, and Alzheimers in your 90s, Sinclair told a recent 2022 Life Itself conference. This is the world thats coming. Its not really a question of if. Its literally a question of when. And for most of us, its gonna happen in our lifetime.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Why do we even age? Sinclair uses an analogy about a nicked compact disc to explain what he calls his information theory of aging. Were not so much losing the digital music in the cell, the genes, he said, but the epigenetic information, the systems in the body that read the DNA, and tell genes whether to switch on or off. A skin cell doesnt want to turn on the same genes as a brain cell. That would be a problem. Genes that arent needed are bundled up. But, like a scratched up CD, the epigenome get messed up over time from DNA damage, and those bundles start to unravel. Genes that should be switched on get turned off, and vice versa. Cells lose their identity and function, Sinclair told his audience. That is why we age, why we get sick and why most of us die. His team is working on a way to polish the CD to get cells working properly again and reverse age-related diseases like glaucoma. In one experiment, they made blind mice see again.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Inflammaging, or inflamm-aging, a chronic, low-grade inflammation that accumulates over time through diet, infections and environmental exposures, has also been implicated. Still, theres no one, tidy biological mechanism to explain biological aging, said Parminder Raina, a professor at McMaster University and lead principal investigator of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. His team has a new paper, not yet published but under review, that found people with early childhood adversity sexual, physical, or emotional abuse, parental conflicts age faster. They have faster epigenetic clocks than kids who werent exposed to those traumas.

We need to understand what normal aging looks like. Once we understand that, it might give us some sense of what early interventions might help, said Raina who, at 62, is in better physical shape than he was in his 30s.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

In some countries, if you make it to 50 you're lucky

He jogs, runs, walks, swims, eats healthy, plays golf. Social engagement is important to him. But he doesnt like the 80 is the new fill in the blank. It implies a certain level of ageism. Theres a tremendous amount of heterogeneity in the way we age, he says. Some age well, despite challenges, others, free of disease, not so well. Having a sense of purpose is critical. Loss of purpose is a deadly phenomenon, Raina said. Above everything else if we can get people to think about how they live, how they engage, how they participate in their communities, what creates purpose, that will take us a longer way on the healthy lifespan path than any drug or medication or biological pathway discoveries will ever do.

The human body is like any machine. It has wear and tear with time, no matter what we do. And that is going to catch up.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Our life expectancy isnt increasing as fast as it once did. There are more centenarians. But, on average, we arent becoming 90-year-olds as rapidly as we saw earlier in the last 20, 30 years, Raina said. COVID-19 already has cut the life expectancy in dozens of countries. In Canada, deaths due to COVID reduced life expectancy at birth by about half a year in 2020, dropping it to what it was six years earlier.

Without some form of physiological or genetic engineering, Caplan pegs the upper limit at about 110 to 115 years max. But one recent paper set the fundamental or absolute limit of the human lifespan at 120 to 150 years, at which point the body simply runs out of resilience. For now, how to live longer and healthier comes down to the basics. The biggest contributor to a rather aptly named molecule known as GrimAge acceleration thought to drive a range of age-related disease is smoking, while a healthy diet has an inverse effect.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

In a recent virtual chat, Perls appealed to his centenarians and their families to send his team samples of their feces. Perls thinks its a pretty sure bet that different populations of bacteria in the gut and the substances those bacteria produce are playing a role in slowing or accelerating aging.

Some of his centenarians are also being asked if they might be willing to donate their brains upon death. Perls explained that the brain is removed at the funeral home, then quickly transported to a brain pathology lab at UCLA where a huge amount of study is performed to try to understand, for example, why the person, when alive, had zero signs of cognitive impairment, but had evidence of Alzheimers disease at autopsy. We call those people resistant, and we want to find out how resistance happens. Understand those biological mechanisms, and it may be possible to develop a strategy or drug to slow down the progression of the big ones, like Alzheimers, stroke, heart disease, diabetes and even some cancers.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

With age the brain shrinks in volume by one to two per cent a year. Others are showing how exercise reduces inflammation in the brain and induces the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus, the area involved in memory. Resistance training seems to have the biggest impact on cognitive function for older adults.

Why isnt entirely clear, but it seems resistance training is more mentally taxing. It includes a cognitive component, said Lindsay Nagamatsu an assistant professor at Western University. Learning to use new machines and the proper form, keeping track of weight loads and reps. Its more of a mentally stimulating activity compared to aerobic training.

On average, we arent becoming 90-year-olds as rapidly as we saw earlier in the last 20, 30 years

What else is good for the brain? A Mediterranean style diet, Nagamatsu said, so a lot of fish and nuts. Alcohol in moderation. Anything that increases inflammation obesity, heart disease, diabetes will affect the brain and increase the risk of dementia. Humans have evolved to the point that, rather remarkably, most of us should be able to live to about age 90, provided we dont squander our bodies, Pearls said in an interview with National Post. Average life expectancies are less than 90 years, and I think thats because people are taking their bodies for granted and can do some pretty harmful things, whether that be smoking or being obese or not getting enough sleep.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Pearls also thinks avoiding, or at least limiting, red meat is a good idea. Sinclairs tips for keeping body and mind in optimal shape include exercising between 10 to 30 minutes three times a week at an intensity that causes you to pant, a little fasting (he eats one main meal a day) and good sleep. Personality traits also seem to matter. Centenarians tend not to be neurotic they tend not to worry about things they cant change, which presumably translates to lower stress, Boston University centenarian researcher Stacy Andersen said on the virtual update with Perls and high in extroversion.

Most, about 90 per cent, are disability free up to their early to mid-90s. It doesnt mean no diseases, ever, along the way, he said. But they have a history of managing these problems much, much better. The goal is about how to age better, which is different from aging longer, Caplan said. For many, their worst nightmare would be living a lot longer but with a devastating brain disease like Alzheimers or Lewy body dementia.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

But neither should older people be considered dependent beings past their due dates. Older workers could be one solution to Canadas labour shortage. We are starting to realize, why are we pushing people out the door at 65? We can probably get another five, 10 good years out of people, Sinha said.

There are some grumblings about inter-generational tensions, that younger people will be denied jobs or advancements if they have to wait for older people to get out of the way. But countries with aging populations like Canada have low unemployment rates relative to younger populations, Raina said, because older people create wealth.

He and others said we need new ways of thinking about policies and social programs, like old age pensions. We assume everybody over 65 is declining. Thats not the case. It is a way more heterogeneous population than their kids.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

But how old is too old to keep working? U.S. President Joe Biden, who turns 80 in November, is showing signs of frailty and loss of energy, said Caplan, even though hes not cognitively limited, and people, I think, politically want a dynamic leader. Part of Donald Trumps magic was that he could come off as dynamic, energetic, and tireless, Caplan said, even though he was obese and taking a nap all the time.

Age is going to hurt Biden, Caplan said. My prediction is he wont run again. Trump may fall to the same problem.

Brain processes like attention, memory, executive function, decision making, planning and judgment are critical core functions in high-risk activities or jobs like flying a plane, or leading a country, Nagamatsu, of Western U, said.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

But its an individual, case-by-case thing. The degree and rate of decline varies widely and isnt just determined by age, she said. Theres no magical age that says time to stop. Im sure that you know some individuals who are much younger that would not be fit to lead a country.

The market is responding to aging consumers with devices to help them stay healthy and independent longer. Some of Sinhas patients refuse to wear the clunky pendants that come with some personal emergency response systems, or PERS. I dont want to wear that cowbell, one told him. But bundle a PERS in a sleek smart watch, and there you have it. We have to remember that older people, like younger people theyre vain, Sinha said.

Why wear something that makes you feel old?

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Sign up to receive the daily top stories from the National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of NP Posted will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notificationsyou will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

Continued here:
Why 80 is the new 60: 'It's the triumph of aging' but not for everyone - National Post

Comments are closed.