Defining Aging
What is “aging”?
Before we can discuss if slowing or reversing aging is possible, we have to define what aging is.
Rather than considering a person as an entire entity with an “age”, it is probably more accurate to consider a person as made up of many organ systems (skin, brain, kidneys, liver, etc). Essentially you die when your “oldest” organ system fails.
If we try to think of reversing aging of an entire person we get the fairly absurd image of taking an old person and turning them into a child. That’s not my idea of reversing aging.
Reversing aging is better looked at on an organ by organ basis. A simple and visible example is skin. The obvious sign of aging skin is wrinkling.
Certainly we know we can slow or reverse wrinkling of skin with adequate intake of vitamin C and lysine. Perhaps throw in a bit of hyaluronic acid too.
Another example is hair loss or hair color loss. Again, these are difficult challenges but we are having some success reversing them.
Another one is hardening and/or narrowing of arteries, which we can also reverse with Vitamin K and proteolyic enzymes. If aging is inevitable, then how come my blood pressure, at chronological age 66, is so low that a twenty year old would be envious of it?
When I first started seriously studying Medicine / Health / Metabolism / Anti-Aging / Nutrition, twenty years ago, one concept hit me as extremely important: the human body has amazing self repair mechanisms. We don’t age because of time, we age because of accumulating damage faster than it can be repaired.
The closest we can come to overall “anti-aging” seems to be boosting mitochondria function. Improve your energy production and pretty much everything else improves.
The makers of TA-65 would like you to believe the secret to reversing or slowing aging is lengthening telomeres. They would be happy to sell you expensive TA-65 pills to address this. They tend not to emphasize that the amazing results they have had also depend on a comprehensive nutrition program (perhaps key being omega 3 fatty acid supplementation).
Comprehensive success is difficult and expensive currently, but in my opinion it certainly is possible. Our current limited success poses the concept that yes, reversing aging is possible, we just aren’t very good at it (and most approaches are fairly expensive for the typical person).