Discusses the latest findings on aging, medicine, and psychological health, and offers advice on how to enjoy one's extended lifespan.
Longevity's OpportunitiesBy Thomas T. Perls MD, MPH and John F. Lauerman
The current debate about longevity seems to be shaping up as a battle between those who think we should be able to live forever, and those who think we already live too long. Humanity has unquestionably arrived at a new era of longevity. WHO data shows that average life expectancy is shooting up all over the globe, even more quickly in developing nations than in the industrialized West. Peter Peterson, author of Gray Dawn predicts the age wave will topple pension funds and land like an anvil on the Medicare piggy bank. Many people still believe that advanced age is a curse: aging equals illness, in their minds, so why survive? Live fast, die young, and society will thank you for it.
Longevity boosters, in the meantime, try to tempt us with offers of lifespans stretching past the 100s and 200s. With the careful manipulation of telomeres, or administration of vitamin O, or hormonal nostrums, they say, we can have skin that will never sag, unflinching hairlines, and sex drives stretching from here to eternity.
Few people, however, stop to consider how best to manage the already magnificent opportunities granted to us by the longer lifespans many people are now enjoying. Since the New England Centenarian Study was established at Harvard Medical School in 1992, we have come to realize that advanced age can be a time, not of sickness, but of opportunity. The most vigorous centenarians in our study have not shipwrecked on the shore of their 100th birthdays, but arrived in full sail, taking on new challenges, learning new languages, writing their memoirs, lecturing on mathematics, or painting. Tom Spear, who at age 101 won a 65-and-over golf tournament at his country club with a score of 86, a good score for anyone of any age, and can still hit a 3-wood 180 yards. Anna Morgan, who remained both physically and politically active as a grass-roots organizer until her death at age 102. There are countless people people whose lives continue to be exciting and rewarding well past the accepted age of retirement
Unfortunately, there is a growing industry that sees 70 million-strong aging baby boomers as another kind of opportunity: a financial windfall. The multi-million dollar "melatonin miracle" has been a financial boon for salespeople, but a health bust for consumers. The $20,000 a year course of human growth hormone injections and the bottle of hormone precursor DHEA relieve short-term anxieties, but may prove deadly in years to come.
Why do people fall for these scams? Have we become so used to immediate gratification that we expect eternal youth to come in easy-to-swallow gel-caps?
Our research in the New England Centenarian Study indicates that people live to 100, not by living inspite of disease, but by avoiding or delaying it as long as possible. We have replaced the saying, "The older you get, the sicker you get," with the more accurate observation, "The older you get, the healthier you’ve been."
The key to reducing health care costs lies in persuading people to take the significant effort now to make a difference in their future health and their life expectancy. Unfortunately many young people still think old age is not worth planning for. They need to hear from people like our centenarians, or Sen. John Glenn of Ohio who at age 77 exclaimed that he had experienced the most wondrous and important time of his life when he rode the space shuttle.
Longer lifespans are here to stay. As public health measures and improved medical care continue to reduce death rates from diseases of all kinds, each of our chances for living into our 80s and beyond rise. But obsessing on finding a way to live to 200 is like trying to fly to Pluto before taking in the beautiful view from a shuttle orbiting our own planet Earth. The lives of centenarians show that a normal human lifespan can be both long and full. We need to find ways to help people take advantage of the opportunities that aging offers now: second and third careers, volunteering, great-grandparenting, traveling, and countless other experiences that in many cases would not even be available to younger people who are busy with children or first careers. Reputable and careful scientific studies such as those sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and New York’s American Federation for Aging Research are crucial if we are to really understand aging both socioeconomically and biologically. Rather than jumping to sensationalistic conclusions based upon misguided and unsubstantiated assumptions, we should be trying to reap the benefits of an aging society. If all of us see aging as an opportunity, adopt a "pro-aging," view, and take the opportunity to significantly improve our health now, we as individuals and as a society will have made a giant leap for the better into the twenty-first century.
